Mav1970's Insane 69.5 Street Project

Ram Air to my feet perhaps

I changed over to an air conditioning/heater box, where the blower motor is mounted completely inside the car, just above the transmission tunnel. I cut a 5 inch round plate to weld over the original blower motor hole in the firewall.

 

A couple of wooden shingles and some drywall screws should do the trick

 

Are you running a/c? using the factory box, you'll need that hole.

 

I'm not using the air function of the air box - just the heater function. My stock non-air box had the blower moter sticking through that hole in the firewall but the complete stock ac box, that I bought, does not. The ac box picked up one of the non-ac mounting holes that were already there and I only had to drill one more to mount it.

You can see from the photo that nothing sticks through the firewall and the entire blower motor is in the case that sits just above the trans tunnel

 

Ram Air to my feet perhaps
Why not, feet get hot!

 

Got to a couple of more things done today

Even with a nice solid grip using a big Phillips screwdriver, along with the help of an adjustable wrench, 3 of the 4 screws holding the original door striker plates to the door jambs stripped out so I left them alone for some time now. So I finally found a reproduced striker set for a Mustang from CJ Pony Parts and they measured out perfectly so I took the cutting wheel to the old strikers and both were gone within minutes. I found a lot of surface rust underneath them so I was happy to finally have them removed so I can clean the jambs. The driver's side door jamb and rocker still needed the paint stripped off so I got that finished also.

 

A good impact screwdriver is your friend.

 

And a good friend I have in my impact driver ---BUT, I hit it unsuccessfully all the way to a point, where I felt, the next wail with the hammer was going to do damaged to the sheet metal door jamb behind it so I stopped at that point.

Once I freed up the plate from the screws with the cutting wheel, they came right out of the threaded backing plates with just a pair of pliers. I'm thinking that the point, where the screws seemed to be seized, was in the counter sunk part of the striker.

 

Hey Bob. They make this stuff that sprays from a can. It works amazingly well on parts that are seized. Hardley anyone has ever heard of it. It's called PB Blaster. I sprayed many a frozen part and it worked better than a bfh.

 

I've heard of PB Blaster, Gene, but never had a can to try out. I did soak the strikers with Kroil with no luck. I guess they were just asking for the cutting wheel :16suspect

 

Bob, some guys are spoiled, they don't know what "real" rust is...

 

There is something very odd about the metalurgy between that striker and the screws ... they fuse together over time.

No amount of PB will loosen them ... I used a manual impact driver on mine and that helped, but I still had to loosen them with the help of vise grips, grabbing the threads inside the quarter and turning both ends of the screws at the same time.

I think I still snapped one or two ... these things are EVIL.

 

I believe you summed it up - reading your post was like I was actually there with your striker plates

 

Our areas of longitude and latitudes just suck for rust

Dale Doll tells me that "original paint make the best primer" but if I didn't take the car to bare metal, I wouldn't have found half the areas that needed attention

 

Those striker screws are designed to lock into place. Even new cars are unbelievably difficult to remove on occasion. I use a 3/8" impact gun on the lowest setting with a socket from the impact screwdriver set. Use a light touch on the trigger and I have yet to fail to get one out using this method first. Once the head is stripped, you'll be cutting them out as you did.

As far as Dave's comment about being spoiled on rust, we in the south are spoiled compared to you northern guys! I do not envy you at all in that regard!

We do get the occasional traveler though, a constant reminder...