Going nuts with a Sawzall...

Check out what a buddy of mine did with his !

http://tiresmoke.iwarp.com/Valiant.html

 

Jamie,

I admire your dedication to that car . I wish you luck with the project. Keep us posted with your progress. Where there is a will there is a way.

Allen Small

 

Jamie,, you are doing stuff like I used to do. You will learn valuable little things as you go about all this, then if you do decide you can save the car, you will have satisfaction of doing something that most cant do. Either way, you win thru knowledge. Very cool.
Dan

 

wish I could be as dedicated. I got a wagon that was sitting 30 years before we pulled it out of the trees that had grown from under it up around the doors, putting good sized dents top to botton in them. no back glass. Thats my life project. just do a little here and there and eventually have a nice two door wagon. though it would make one awesome car to get my licence in... anyways, good luck on the car. I know personally what a bugger those kind of fixes can be to just get started on. So props on just getting started and making the commitment. That's one of the hardest parts. right next to coming up with the money and time and parts and... nevermind

 

Thanks for all the support guys. I've got a 4 day weekend coming up, and unless my front sump pan comes in for the 2.3 project, I'll spend at least 3 of those 4 days working on this.

 

Got the passenger side frame, torque box and most of the floor cut out today.









I can actually lift the car off the jack stands by hand now. It balances on the rear wheels very easily. If I can't actually put the car back on the road as a car, I may just build a small tube frame under it and throw a hitch on the front and drag it around like a trailer. It's so light, I think another Maverick could pull it with no problem.. oh, and never try to chop through a sway bar with your sawzall. Killed a brand new blade trying, barely even made a cut in the sway bar.

Tomorrow will be more cutting, and I may try to straighten the cowl and rocker.

 

Well, I did some more cutting, mainly just cleaning up the rough edges and removing about 3/4 of what was still left of the firewall, up to the bottom of the cowl. Also removed the windshield. Here's more pics...







Redneck ingenuity at it's finest. I used a couple of comealongs, an old chain, and my '72 to pull things back somewhat where they should be. I pulled a bunch of measurements off my '76 shell, and found the '74 was at some points up to 7/8 of an inch off from where it should be. I now have everything back squared up.

There are two major problems I'm trying to figure out how to deal with right now. The cowl is toast. Not only was it slightly bent upwards more then it was supposed to be in the middle (which I was able to pull back out), but it is also twisted. If you lay a hood on the front of the car with it lined up perfectly with the cowl, drivers side lines up perfect. But the passenger side sits about 3/4 of an inch lower then the hood. I'm going to start by taking the top off the cowl like you would do to repair rust. Then I'm going to take that same panel off my rusted out '76 and set it down on the '74 and see what it looks like. I might end up just drilling out all the spot welds and replacing the entire cowl.

Then there is that passenger side rocker panel. It straightened back up somewhat with the pulling today, but not enough to be satisfactory to me. The metal is still wrinkled where it bent, and I'm worried about the structural integrity at that spot. Plus it still has a huge dent/scrape on the outside where I had ran the car up on a curb down at the Hapeville Ford Plant back in 2005. I have located every spot weld holding the rocker panel on, and I'm thinking about replacing the entire right side rocker panel.

I'm pretty much at a stopping point for now. I need to look into my options for cutting those spot welds.

 

Redneck ingenuity is my specialty sometimes lol,, anyways, do you have access to a porta-power? That might help you in doing some evening of the cowl height. If you go that route, be careful not to change the physical opening of the windshield area. You might want to weld some braces to keep that plum. Or you could use the weight of the vehicle and hang the car by the cowl from something and massage the sides of the cowl where it must have a stress buckle somewheres?
Dan

 

No, don't have a porta-power. The cowl has no visible buckles in it (unlike the rocker), it's just bent/twisted. The panel above the cowl with the vents needs to be replaced regardless for a number of reasons. With that removed, it'll probably only be 30 minutes more work to remove the lower portion of the cowl. Then there will be absolutely no lower channel in the windshield area, so bracing will be mandatory. I have measurements of the windshield opening, both vertically at either pillar, across at the top and bottom and on both diagonals. If I'm doing this much work, I just want to make totally sure that it's right. If there is any sign that this car was ever wrecked when I'm done, I will not be happy with it. They say a unibody car is never the same again after it's been wrecked. I'm looking for this to be the exception.

What's funny, I have three Mavericks here I've been triple checking measurements on. I have yet to pull exactly the same measurement on any three of these unwrecked Mavericks, all being 1/8-1/4 inch different. Quality was job #1? Yea, right.

 

Jamie, somebody, Dan Hines I think, has a body manual with all the factory measurements. You might get him to copy a few pages with the factory measurements for you......

 

Rain, rain and more rain today. All I can do is sit here on the internet. and it's dial up internet at that... DSL is still not available out here in the middle of nowhere...

Why is it always nice and sunny on days I have to work, and then nasty and rainy on days I'm off?

 

Opps...





It's so light now, you can just lift it with one hand by the cowl and it'll sit on the back bumper.

I'm done with it for this week. Next week I'm going to drag out and clean out both my '73 4 door and my '76 shell and decide which will donate it's floor pan, and entire front end.

As for the cowl, I found that it's not bent like I initially thought. I just need to replace the vent panel above it, and it'll be fine. I can also fix the rocker panel.

When I cut the drivers side torque box apart, I found something I was not expecting. It was full of sand and mud! It looked totally solid from the outside, but on the inside it was severely pitted and the metal was paper thin in several places. The new torque boxes will get a through cleaning and coating of rust bullet on the inside before everything is welded back together..

 

I did that once

 

Actually thats not bad on a 30+ year old chassis, what is even scarier is I use to work for a company that contracted to Westinghouse electric and we were making neuclear waste storage containers for the BEC (british electric commision).
This was so they can store their waste in New Mexico (yes they store neuclear waste in Carlsbad NM as well as many other spots in the US, and because they are private industry all that is required is the right licenses and grandfather clauses and they can put it anywhere they want) .....anyways they maintain a fractional tolerence on the storage containers also. The tolerance is +-.250 on a flat mating surface and a similar tolerence on the mating lid, that equals out to being able to have 1/2 deviation on alignment of a sealing surface to hold neuclear waste in(doesnt that make you feel good). In accordance with the size and the structure, and also streeses of driving 1/4" is probably common.