My 71 Maverick Grabber Build.....

Very Nice!

About how much POR-15 do you think it will take to finish the under carriage? Does it go pretty far?

 

Thank you.....

Thanks, trust me I will in no way be bored with the amount of work I still have to do on this thing.....

Thanks, I am not exactly sure yet how much but I think no more then a quart total for the area covered in the pic's.....

 

Went down after work today and scuffed it all down, masked it and sprayed another coat on it..... It was looking alot better when I was getting ready to leave then it did yesterday after the brush job, it's much more even looking now..... No pic's today, just because.....

 

True Love ¡¡¡

That is the way to show a greate work and real love for your Maverick .... very much love .... thanks for share whit us.

 

from the pic I was sure you sprayed it...looks awesome

 

Thank you, glad you are enjoying the build.....

Thanks, as I stated earlier I brushed the first coat on Sunday so I could get some areas that I couldn't spray without making the runs from hell..... Then yesterday I sparyed a tac coat and one full coat on to get it all nice and even..... After the body and paint are done on the body shell I will be putting a coat of POR15 chassis black on the bottom side and texturing it, this will give it great duribility and scratch resistance.....

 

I went to the shop this morning and rolled the car outside the shop so I could clean up some in preperation for my next mess..... After cleaning and putting the car back inside it's on to some fun stuff, I get to play with new part now..... I got out the AJE crossmember, control arms and instructions so I could start cutting some unneeded brackets off the front frame.....

Here's a good pic of the freshly coated underside when the car was sitting outside.....




The new toys I am going to install.....




The first thing I removed is the coil spring seats in the top of the shock towers..... The first pic is before doing anything and the second is after drilling out the spot welds and removing it.....

 

Next I removed the lower control arm mounts, sway bar mounts and lower portion of the strut rod crossmember..... Then I cleaned up those areas..... I cut the lca mount off with a torch up on the tower above where the tower will be cut later, I did it this way because I don't want to cut the tower inside face or strut crossmember completely out until I get it off the rotissorie( I am afraid cutting either of those will weak it too much and cause the car to sag while hanging on the rotissorie).....


Here's a couple pic's of the spot weld being drilled for removal.....





These are of the frame after removal and clean up.....

 

Now I attempted to bolt the crossmember in place using the oem belly bar bolt holes for alignment purposes per instructions..... The problem I had is the bolt holes were 1/4" closer together then the slots in the crossmember..... So I took the crossmember off and started measuring the frame see if something was missaligned of bent..... After checking everything my frame couldn't be any straighter and the belly bar holes are the exact same distance from the inside edge of the frame rails, once again it just goes to show just cause you bought it for a specific application that doesn't mean it's going to fit without modification..... My next move is to make it fit, so since it is only off by a 1/4" and there was more room on the crossmember to make the slots longer I got out the trusty old die grinder and lengthened the slot 1/8" on each side..... That did the trick, the bolts fit nice and snug on the inside of the slots and the crossmember was centered and straight.....

Next I marked the frame where the other 4 bolt holes needed to be drilled, then removed the crossmember so I could drill them..... They say to drill them 1/2" through and then drill the bottom of the frame to 3/4" and insert there sleeves to protect the frame from crushing, since I have this on a rotissorie I decide to just dirll the bottom of the frame 3/4" - then I will level the frame with the bottom up, drop the sleeves in place - square them and weld the bottom side and grind it smooth - after that I would drill through the top of the frame so the holes would be nice and straight/square..... Now the second problem show it's ugly head, the sleeves they gave me are approximately .600" too short(my frame from the inside of the top the underside of the bottom is 3.200" tall and there sleeves are only 2.600" long..... So I figured I will just make some new spacers but unfortunately I don't have any material that is the correct dia.'s laying around and it's too late in the day to get any, so I will have to pick up some material on Monday.....

Here's the elongated slot in the crossmember.....




Here's the crossmember in place after slotting it.....





and here's the bottom of the frame marked and drilled.....




Here's how much too short the supplied sleeves are.....

 

Since I couldn't finish mounting the new crossmember I went ahead and cleaned up the outer fenderwell area some.....





Here is the unneccessary frame brackets I removed today.....

 

Wow... id be pissed if I spent 1600 or whatever it is for that kit and have it that far off. Great work as always tho.

 

It is what it is..... I do custom car work for a living and it's a shock when you get something that is supposed to work/fit and it actually does without modification of some kind..... and thanks.....

 

great, now i want to do this, lol. keep up the awesome work.

 

What are you using to clean-up/grind the underside of your car?

 

Thanks, and good luck with yours if you decide to do it.....

Most of it was stripped first..... The grinding is done with 2" diameter 36 and 80 grit roloc disc's on a die grinder.....