Ford guy builds a Dodge.

[AZBlues]

Pulled the wiper system out today, greeted by the usual broken plastic bushings:



New ones on order.

[AZBlues]

Pulled the seats and front carpet out. As suspected, the driver's floor pan is roached front to back, but the rest of the floor is surprisingly solid. (Georgia car) Now the search is on for a decent floor section, as I don't want to hash in something that doesn't look right. Someone glopped it over with POR 15 or equivalent, which looks like it at least held it together for awhile.





-AZB

[Steam McQueen]

^ Good stuff, AZB. That driver side floor looks rough indeed. Seems to look worse the higher it goes, guess the goop didn't hold as well on the incline.

I think that's the first interior pic we've seen of your car. Are those drill holes in the lower dash beside the brake release? Mic hook for a left handed cop?

[AZBlues]

Steam, Whatever was once there, wasn't when I got the car; including some mystery holes on the rear deck. More pics are coming. With the seat out, I can remove the brake booster... and reminisce about how I used to be able to do that without taking the seat out. But it's good to be working on the car!

[AZBlues]

Spent a few hours wire cup brushing the frame. The best part of a project is building the car out with new or cleaned and painted parts. I'm getting closer each day.



-AZB

[AZBlues]

Firewall cleaned, sanded and nearly ready for paint. Not the most fun part of a project, nor the most interesting of pictures, but nice to get it done.



Parts!



-AZB

[AZBlues]

With the Holidays mostly over with, back to the muck bustin'. The passenger floor doesn't look too bad, I might do the POR 15/glass treatment, still enough metal there.



The driver's floor is a different story, I believe a leaky windshield seal allowed water to gather there and rot it out.





Someone already tried glassing it, but since fiberglass doesn't stick to rust very well, that method was met with limited success.



So tomorrow, I will do the junkyard crawl until I find the needed floors and get this area sorted out.

-AZB

[AZBlues]

Projects - time is where you can find it. I looked at all the pick'n'pulls for a suitable floor piece, but was smacked upside the head with the reality that this isn't five years ago, and these yards all now have row after row of '90s lozenge shaped, front wheel drive crapwagons that don't have any usable parts for '70s cars. Looks just like the sea of multicolored chicklets that passes for modern traffic. What a disappointment. So just for laughs, and because I knew the answer, I called Desert Valley auto parts, you out of staters may know them from the bullshit reality show Desert Car Kings. They have the parts alright, but at a cost - they wanted $195 for the drivers floor section. OK, that's actually not very bad if you need a specific part for something worth a boatload, but Monacos ain't, and I'm not building a show car. At the p'n'p yards, it would have been maybe 25 bucks, and I'm still stuck in the past regarding parts prices.

So I do a little net dot research and find that nobody makes a floor pan for a '74-'77 C barge, which I already figured, but then if you look at that panel, it's mainly flat with a few channels stamped in. Ebay revealed that a number of sellers offer a panel for a mid '70s pickup, which is much bigger than needed, so there is plenty of material to cut off to make it fit. And for 39 bucks delivered, it was scarcely more expensive than the same size sheet of 18 gauge at the steel yard. Score.



So I cut the rusted area out and got down to solid metal all around.



Tomorrow I'll start mapping the cuts on the new piece to get it burned in. In the meantime, I went to every yard around that might have had the wheels that I need, and found two of them - 15x6.5 '70s era wheels.



Now I just need two more.

-AZB

[58hemifury]

Try car-part.com and look up '74 Monaco wheel, sort by distance, ect and you would not believe the amount of 6.5 inch wheels are out there, that's how I found all of the parts for my Monaco to make it look like a base '74.

[AZBlues]

Thanks for the tip. I'll try that if nothing local comes up.

[AZBlues]

I cut more rust out of the floor, where it goes up in front of the seat. Cut until I got to weldable metal. Made a few patch panels to get back down to a level floor patch:



Used this much of the truck floor pan:



Butt welded the patches, welded the floor section in on a 1/4" overlap.



And that's as far as I got before I ran out of gas. At least it's nearly done, and it's good to be rid of that rust/fiberglass mess.

-AZB

[countrybunker]

Looks good! Just got done doing this exact repair a couple months ago. I think I should have done an overlap as you did for strengh.. But I ended up butt welding it in. The ledge on mine that you fabricated was starting to get pretty crusty, but got to it just in time. Thay came out beautiful! Isnt rust fun?!?!?

[AZBlues]

Thanks CB, your car has been a bit more challenging in the rust area, but for some reason mine was a good deal worse in that area. Rust is a hassle, but rust busting is satisfying like few other areas of restoration.

-AZB

[cynot]

Looks great!

[AZBlues]

Just got the last two 15x6.5" wheels from Desert Valley Auto Parts. Yes, that one, the Phoenix yard on the Desert Car Kings cable show. For all the hassle this yard takes for high prices, the wheels were 25 bucks each, and a $10 tip to the kid who pulled them off of the '75 440 Newport wagon for me.

To answer your next question, no '74-'77 Monacos. A couple of Furys, including a 440 coupe, but that was it. Surprising, considering how many older big Mopars and everything else they had, including approximately one city block of A bodies and at least as many Falcons. It's an impressive yard.

-AZB