Welded the outer plate in today on the passenger side. Mig welder is pretty nice once you get the hang of it. We stick welded the drivers side but it didn't come out as nice as the mig side in my opinion. I ran out of gas so I ground things down a bit to clean them up. That is until the grinder let out a big flash of light and died in my hands, lol.
Here's a few pics of my welds so far. Maybe not the best but pretty good for a novice I think.

 

Those welds look great, and plenty strong!

 

Finished modifying the 'C' channels and frame. Painted the parts that will be buried under the new frame pieces. Tomorrow I'll tack it in. Pretty boring stuff for now but at least I'm still motivated to dig in. I'm getting more comfortable with the welder each time.

 

Tack welded the 'C' channels in today. Went pretty smooth but then again I did a lot of prep work to get to this point. We had a thunder storm roll through so I stopped welding for today. I'm having a harder time welding vertical and overhead. I suspect it's a gas problem or maybe just me needing more practice. I suck at straight lines too.

 

I think your welds look very good!!

A trick I have used to weld straight lines is to use a guide. I have used a piece of 3/4" angle iron (high side toward joint) clamped to the work, far enough from the line I want to weld that the wire is right on the joint. You can weld straight lines that look like a machine did it.

 

I got some guidance from my buddy the welder. He told me about 'pushing the puddle' rather than pulling it. I think the results speak for themselves. Look how nice the pushed weld came out compare to the other next to it. In all fairness I think the bad weld was where I ran out of gas because you can see porosity in it but nonetheless you can see it's getting better as I go along. Practice makes perfect I guess.

 

Finished the drivers side for now until I can flip the frame over. Too hard for me to overhead weld and work on it. Shot it with a coat of primer to avoid the rust. I think it looks pretty good.

 

O.K., now show us the one you really welded.........

Just kidding, looks great!!

 

Ha, thx Randy. You have to remember there is a lot of filling in I did and then grinding it smooth. Next will be the new shock mount cross member and two more gusset plates forward. The frame will be much more rigid than stock.
If you look closely at the one gusset in pic two the vertical weld isn't great and kinda wanders but it did penetrate well. The horizontal one came out better. I'm leaving them rough.

 

Vertical welds are harder for me too. How much room are you gaining by narrowing the frame?

 

Two inches per side

 

Welded in another pair of reinforcements today. Due to the frame being narrow in this spot these brackets serve to thicken the area and stiffen it up, Also got the upper shock mount brackets and cross bar in. Last step will be to put in the triangular plates over the narrow part of the frame. Since I ran out of wire just as I put in my last weld I decided to stop for the day.
Next phase will be to turn the frame over and weld up the bottom. I'm not a great welder to begin with so doing it from above rather than underneath will make it easier.

 

More pics of upper shock mount:

 

Amen to that. Much easier to weld from above. Hard to get nice straight even welds looking up (and you really need to wear leathers..... ask me how I know.......)

 

tripdeuces-Nice I picked up a few weld tips! Good work!

 

Good work man!!! Its looking good. Keep at the welding stuff. It will get easier as you go. Liking it

 

The welds are getting better. Turned the frame over to get at the bottom welds. Some pics just show areas that will be welded tomorrow. Ran out of gas again and tried using my buddies plain argon but using the argon/co2 mix is much better with less spatter. Picked up a new bottle today.

 

Finished the welding today. Going to clean off the bottom of the frame, paint it and then turn it back over and start on the top and sides. Grinding these welds down is making me think body work is going to suck, sigh.
Very happy the way the corners turned out although there are a lot of beads laid down in that spot.

 

The welds look great! I pickup my mig welder at the end of the month. ;-)

 

Very nice looking work!

 

While sanding the back of the frame I came across the frame numbers. Do they have any significance other than maybe a Julian date and year?

390504 S-44
0 6 6 66

 

I only had time to read the first page here so maybe the question regarding the soft material in the windshield moulding got answered. I took the moulding off of my '69 convertible about 2 years ago and found this same putty material on both sides of the windshield. It was heavily applied behind the stainless moulding. I've owned the car since the mid-'80's and never had the moulding off but this putty looked and felt very fresh - still soft.
I can't say for certain it wasn't applied after the car was built but I have no evidence that the windshield moulding was ever removed from the car so my assumption is it was put in at the factory. The rear of my interior also has the hard orange/red undercoating type material sprayed across both side panels and the rear sheetmetal behind the seat back.

 

Coated the bottom and sides with two coats of paint. Going to knock that gloss off with some satin black chassis paint.

 

Used a scuff pad on the frame and reshot it with satin black chassis paint. You can clearly see the difference between the gloss and satin on the bottom of the engine cross member. I think the satin looks so much better. Time to turn it over remove the braces and paint the top. Then I'll move along to the suspension.

 

Turned the frame over and put the first coat of primer on today. Another coat of black primer and then the final satin coat and the frame will be done. Splined sway bar came today also. Just in time.
Also raised the transmission cross member mounts to a higher position so I had a work around to the mount problem. Now I can remove the cross member from the bottom with ease allowing it to clear the Gear Vendors unit.

 

Nice! Sure didn't take long to fill up that garage with stuff did it? I see you have the same sandblast cabinet I got, only mine is blue. Does your compressor have the capacity to blast with it? I ended up getting a 60 gallon unit that can deliver 18.5 CFM. Works really well. Don't ya just wish you had a unit that would do the frame too?

When you're done that frame and car will be too purty to drive anywhere...

 

At first I was disappointed in the way the sand blaster worked but it turned out by switching the pick up hose size inside the cabinet to the next larger size did wonders. I sure could use a bigger compressor, I think mine is rated at 9.4 cfm max.
I did do some parts of the frame with a cheap bucket blaster but it makes a mess. I did it the hard way with a angle grinder and wire wheels and flap discs. It gets the job done but just takes time.

 

I hear ya on the compressor pressure. I was in the same boat with a 20 gallon one and it just didn't cut it. Even changing the nozzle didn't do much for it on this end. Could be the media being used too though. The new one is a real 'blast' no matter what media I use. LOL sorry, couldn't resist that.

Hey, angle grinders work too! In fact sometimes I think they're a better way to go. I noticed that my frame had all kinds of welding slag on it from the factory. I guess back then it didn't matter because they figured the car would only be around for about 5 years? Suprise! Mine has been alive for 43 years and yours for close to 50!!

The work you're doing is inspiring. I love watching your progress.

 

Put the final satin black chassis paint on today. Then I moved all the suspension parts back out to the garage. That will start this week. It feels good to have gotten to this point.
I was a little 'anxious and hesitant' when I first undertook this rebuild but now I look forward to it every day. Especially the welding. Now I'm fearless with that welder although I have to admit I could have used a 220v model for a little bit better penetration of the base metal.

 

Put some of the suspension components on today. The rear was easy but the front was very hard. Delrin bushings are just not as forgiving as the stock rubber to manipulate around. Had to get creative with the install but I got it. Hopefully tomorrow I'll finish it.
Frame mounts for the engine and the brake line brackets also put on. I may turn them upside down to get more clearance. They seemed close to the upper control arm to me. I might have them on the wrong sides. I'll have to recheck my old pics

 

I used
Just Dashes for my 69 resto.
Expensive / long turn time, however turned out great.
No complaints.

 

I did also 69455. Had the same experience.........expensive and long turn around but the outcome is superb. Just waiting on my instrument panel from Ron and I'll be gtg in that department.
Put the front sway bar in today. The thing is a monster. Still trying to brain storm a way to get the end links to work. Since the lower control arms aren't stock I'll need to figure something out. Another day on that.

 

Put the coil overs in the front today. Still waiting on the coil over bracket for the rear end. When it comes I'll hang that. Since my set up wasn't stock I had to modify how the sway bar mounted to the lower control arms in the front. I think I figured out a way but waiting on those parts also.

 

Ideas
Detroit Speed set up

 

Front

 

On the back end I think I'm just going to use my H-O Racing 1 3/8 sway bar. It mounts like the original to the lower control arms. That's no issue.

I actually have a DSE front sway bar on it now. The problem is their link is designed to mount to the lower control arm using the existing link hole. My Speed Tech lower control arms don't have that set up. They use a spherical joint (heim) instead. I just need to adapt what I have to the DSE set up. I'm not comfortable cutting up anything so I managed to figure out a way to use the best of both products. Once the parts come in and I put it together I'll post pics. I love the DSE link and wanted to keep as much of it as possible.

 

Got the sway bar end links on today. Doesn't look like much but there was a ton of work involved to make it fit since these are not OEM lower control arms.
Also got the rear brakes and stainless brake lines in but got the hardtop front to rear line (my fault) so I ordered the correct one.
Center/Drag link, tie rods, idler arm and adjusters all came in too. That will be going on next.

Called Speed Tech with a question I had and got a nice surprise. He wants me to send him pics of my suspension with their parts and he will post it on their web page, probably Facebook. Kinda neat. I know it's free advertising for them but still a great idea I thought.

 

Beautiful. You're buildin a sweet MFer!!

 

Put the steering gear on today. All torqued, cotter pinned and greased. Had to get new bolts for the steering box and the idler arm so just replaced them with grade 8 stuff from the local fastener store. The bottom bolt on the steering box practically rotted away and the heads on the idler arm bolts were more metric than SAE. Put the steering box lines on temporarily to catch the fluid when I turn the linkage.
New stainless brake lines came in but I can see they will need a bit of tweaking to clear my suspension mods so that is next week. Leaning toward a dual diaphragm 8" booster set up when I get to that point. Hopefully I'll have enough vacuum.

 

. dumb dumb and undercoating is what I see. olds had a penchant for going the extra mile and the price back then reflected this and today it helps preserve them a little better for our uses. I used 3m products on mine and there is no cracking etc in 10 years. make sure you buy urethane products AND USE THEM CORRECTLY. They really hold up. now use them when you are near completion points and try to have a large amount of areas to use them at multitasking with it goes a long way.