 James
and Kimberly Heap
1967 Springtime Yellow Bench Seat Convertible
Our mission will be to restore this one back to stock to show.
This is a low numbers, 1967 Bench Seat Convertible with factory air, power
steering and front disc brakes. It has had a rough life, it has been a
Midwest car starting it's life in Chicago. I have no idea how many owners
it has had to this point, but some have done some numbers on her along the way.
This may take awhile, but we think it will be worth it. Follow along with
us as we take on this new challenge.
January 2006 and let the fun begin! If they only went back together as
quickly as they come apart right? At this point I still had somewhat grand
illusions that this could be pretty easy after working on the coupe. But
as I got further into it, I find more and more rust and poor prior workmanship
(that is being very kind). So after searching on the web on various forums
for advice and a trip to a Mustang Restoration Shop, I decided to build a jig
framework to support the car during it's many rust repairs. We will be
doing inner and outer rockers, complete rear frame rails, and probably one of
the new one piece floors that are now available. Lots of other projects
have been keeping me away from the garage lately, but I look forward to getting
back to this effort in the not to distant future! I may need some
encouragement from my fellow Central Illinois Mustang Association members as
this one will be a long challenge. This is a great hobby, a way to work
out frustrations, by creating new ones!
So just how bad is it's under-side?? Well she isn't
pretty. Instead of just patching in the rear portion of the rear frame
rails it will take complete rear frame rails. The front frame rails are
bad where the front floor extensions and torque box is mounted, but
otherwise the front frame looks decent.
Here are a few pictures of a little progress from over the
winter... The pictures really don't show how messed up this really is!
Someone along the road did some nasty patchwork and actually chopped out the
inner rocker rails and pop-riveted some pieces that did next to nothing back to
the rockers. No wonder the car had a sag to it.
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10/31/2006 After a long break to work on other projects around the
house this summer I'm back to the Mustang! These pictures show some
progress with the complete rear frames rails and transition panel now welded in.
I used the Dynacorn parts and I'm very happy with their fit. The extra
convertible bracing in that area is also back in now. I have some work to
do dressing my welds. Later on I will come back to rear half and work on
quarter panels and wheel housing's one side at a time. The 2x10 was added
to temporally brace the rear seat area when I removed so much of the bracing to
install the new rear frame rails. I also have a temporary 2x4 helping keep
everything lined up properly.
I have one inner rocker and outer rock temporally tacked in place and most of
the floor now cut out. This last weekend I added a jig to the framework to
locate the front frame rail extensions. I patched the passenger side front
frame rail and will be test fitting the torque box on that side soon. I'm
looking forward to the day I can install one of the new one-piece Dynacorn
Mustang floors. So far the jig framework has been a great asset to use to
support and fit the various parts to. The caster wheels allow me to move
the project out to the center of the garage to work on it or to move it help
clean up under.
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11/11/2006 This is one of the typical rust prone area's for these early
Mustangs, the front torque box. I have already cut out most of the damage
in the picture below, but you can see the front frame rail is also damaged.
I cut out all the nasty area and sandblasted the area I would be working on.
I then cut out the rust and welded in new material. At this point I'm just
test fitting the extensions and I still need to trim the patch and weld on a
piece of angle to finish that patch. I will then drill holes in the
extensions and weld them in. Next I will be moving on to replacing the
driver side rocker and inner rocker. Then I will come back to finish
installing a new driver side torque box. This whole area will get painted
with Master's Series rust preventive paint.
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11/18/2006 After about 12 hours of work this week (who really keeps
track?). I now have the driver side inner and outer rocker welded in
place. I also have the driver side torque box welded in. Today I
also cut the toe board pieces to fit (I'm going to try butt-welding them in) and
I have this area sprayed with Master's Series rust proofing paint. So next
week I should be able to weld the top half of the torque boxes in and the toe
boards. A new front floor support should be here any day and then I can
try fitting the floor.
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11/23/2006 This is my first real attempt at butt welding. This is a
process where you cut the patch to the same size (or slightly smaller) and weld
it in instead of overlapping the joint. The thought is that there we not
be a lap to trap moisture and have it rust, also it becomes easier to finish the
bottom side to make the repairs less noticeable. It worked but I need more
practice!!
This is the new one piece seat platform just sitting in position, it appears to
be about 1/4" narrow, but not bad at all. The picture to the right is the
new transmission hump front floor support with my old transmission cross-member.
The new support is quite a bit narrower? Too bad I cut up my old one.
I don't know if I will use spacers when I bolt this in or look at a new
transmission brace or modify this one?? That is a long way down the road.
Today is Thanksgiving and tomorrow I have the day off. I plan to start
fitting the floor tomorrow.
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11/25/2006 The new floor is now about 75% installed. The floor went
in with minimal trimming to install around the corners of the rear seat.
Those pieces I will weld back in to complete the floor. I needed to kind
of roll or twist the floor a bit to get it to go under the inner frame rails.
After getting the floor sitting in place I put a few screws in starting in the
center of the transmission hump both front and back. I then bolted the
under floor convertible bracing together into a unit and jacked them up into
place. I drilled up and spot welded the floor to the lower bracing and the
front floor supports. Then today I installed the upper convertible bracing
using a few bolts through the floor to help pull everything together nicely.
I still have some welding to do at the front and rear as well as a some I will
probably wait until the car is on a rotisserie or up in the air. I don't
like welding over my head any more than I have to. The floor needed a bit
of persuasion on the passenger side of the transmission support where you see I
have a few bolts in place now to pull it together. Other than that it
really fit well. I'm glad we went this route, it is a very nice
reproduction floor.
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1/10/07 It's been a year since we purchased the Convertible!! I have
a little more done over the holidays so here are some updates.
I now have the trunk drop offs installed with the new rear cross member and
convertible bracing. The rear light panel is also installed. I used
an old gas tank to help align everything. Once the trunk area was complete
I removed the rear supports that where holding the rear frame rails in the right
spot and fabricated a new brace to mount to the bumper bolt area. Later I
plan to add a rotisserie to allow me to rotate the car over to finish welding
the floor easier and to paint and detail the under side of the car. It
really makes a big difference to have the back of the car back together.
Next I started patching in new outer wheelhouses. As you can see in the
picture there was a lot of rust that needed to be cut out and replaced. I
approached both sides of the car a little different. I used but welds and
will dress any areas that can be seen to hopefully make the repairs unseen when
done. At this point there is more work to do and I have decided to order
inner-wheelhouses for this side to patch in as well. Hopefully the driver
side I can make my own patches.
I started rebuilding the door hinges, that isn't a lot of fun. I need to
get the doors hung again before starting to fit the new quarter panel skins on.
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Someday will it look like this again? Will I live
that long??
Both very good questions!
This is the Marti report for our '67 Bench Seat Convertible that confirms what
options where originally ordered on our car.
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