Making progress on the new Maverick

Despite Dale's health issues, we have made some progress on the new Maverick. We are trying to get as much done to the car before Dale has the surgery that will lay him up for a while. He's feeling great right now, and since his natural environment is in the garage, there is no holding him back right now (as long as I don't let him over do it, that is). The car is almost totally gutted, except for the engine and tranny. The gas tank area has been cleaned and undercoated. The new tank has been undercoated and installed. The front and rear windshields are out and the old dried up vinyl top has been pulled off. To our surprise, there was NO rust under it. The new one will be going on this Saturday. The insides of the quarters and the outter wheel houses are totaly rust free. After beating on the rusty parts of the floor with a hammer, we found a few small rust holes, which I have since welded new metal into. There was a funny looking tin patch held on with screws on the passenger side front floor which we pulled off. Nice big hole there leading into the long gone rotted away torque box. Dale and I completely rebuilt that torque box today with 16 gauge steel and welded it in place. We made a floor pan patch panel out of 20 gauge steel and got that welded in too. Looks pretty darn good. We drilled a hole in the box and undercoated the tar out of inside of it, and then plugged the hole back up. That torque box will NEVER rot out again...I hope. Next comes the driver's side floor and torque box. That's tomorrow's job. We found some rot holes in the frame, but nothing that can't be fixed. And now for the real surprise. The odometer on the car is showing well over a hundred thousand miles. We just took for granted that was the car's true mileage. Well, a good friend of ours stopped by today. About a week ago he was talking to the son of the guy we bought the car from. The son told him that just before the car was parked 15 years ago, he and his Dad pulled the original 250 engine out of the car and replaced it with another 250 with only 36,000 miles on it. We checked the engine over and sure enough, it has been replaced. I don't know what the new engine is out of, but the low mileage could explain why it runs so good and why the oil is so clean. This old Maverick just may turn out to be a diamond in the rough. I took a ton of pictures, but haven't had a chance to resize them yet. When I do, I'll post a few pics of the car's progress.

 

Wow, lots of work going on over there !! Progress is good. I'd be interested in a pic of the torque box you guys built.

 

Great news!!!

 

Wow, lots of progress. Can't wait to see pics. I am sure your watching to make sure Dale doesn't work to hard.

 

Jean you should know


but its great news to hear the progress

 

your just trying to make me feel bad. i started a couple of weeks ago on the sprint and it sounds like your already ahead of me. course, i'm retired and have to go to coffee a lot. i did pull the engine, torque convertor and engine mounts today. i get to it every couple of days. course i don't know what i'm doing either so i'm taking my time. good luck. i'd sure like to see the pictures. gives me something to shoot for.

 

You guys are making great progress Jean! Can't wait to see the pics.

 

I'm going to post pics of the torque box rebuild in a seperate thread. In the mean time, here's a pic of the new gas tank and one of the roof after the vinyl top was pulled off and the old glue removed. For as bad as the old top was, I could'nt believe the shape the roof was in.

 

Gas Tank

Is there a place to buy a new gas tank? My tank is caved in and cant get inside to pound it out. Thinking of dropping an M 80 in the tank and run for it

 

Mav looks great...starting to look better than mine

They dont Re-pop the drop-in ones(might wanna do a stang swap)...they do sell the 76 tank at NAPA.

 

You know that if you do any projects like that, you have to make videos for us all to see so we can learn how to do it. :evilsmile I'm looking forward to the vid! YOU DA MAN!!!

 

Hey How Did You Remove The Glue!!

 

Trade secret. Actually, the way I removed it may sound kind of odd, but it works. I sprayed the roof down with WD40 and let it sit. After sitting for about 15 minutes, the WD40 softened the glue enough so I could scrape it off with a dull razor blade. I used a dull blade so it would not scratch the paint up too much. After I was done I washed down the roof, driprails and the front and rear windshield areas about three times with a degreasing solvent to remove every trace of the WD40 and any left over glue. Works like a charm.

 

Thanks jean, I'll Try that!

 

Got the new top installed last Saturday. The guy who installed it did a real nice job. We have'nt done much with the car this week . We have another job we are trying to get done, and then it will be back to the Maverick again.