January 7-8, 2006 - More Teardown (4)
Our plan was to slide the k-member over the exhaust flanges on the
headers. We tried going straight up from the bottom, but the
k-member wouldn't clear the flanges. So we tried slipping one
side over the header first, and swinging the other side into place,
but that didn't work either. The instructions said to notch
the k-member on the passenger side, we figured that might just give
us enough room to swing the k-member up and clear the headers.
We marked the k-member and started thrashing with the cut-off wheel.
After a few minutes we there was a nice chunk missing and we even
took the time to smooth the
edges so we wouldn't slice up our hands while putting the tubular
k-member up into position. To our disappointment the notch
didn't give us enough clearance to install the k-member over the
headers. Our only option was to remove one header.
Coming to this realization put an end to our night. We decided
that we'd take the passenger side header off in the morning and hopefully
we'd be able to move the k-member up to the car, bolt it in place, and
install the header without problem.
We got up bright and early
Sunday morning and starting undoing our previous work - something
we'd get used to. We took off the passenger side header with
ease and I found myself lying on the floor holding a drill with a wire
brush attachment flinging permatex off of the head... it felt
strangely familiar. While I worked on the header removal, Dad
worked on the sheet metal fab.
With the passenger's side header removed the k-member slid into
place with ease. I, however, was left scratching my head as I looked
at the amount of room left to squeeze the header back up into place.
When it comes down to it, sometimes you just have to do the job.
So I grabbed the header and started twisting it and turning it.
At first it didn't seem like it was going to go up there, but at
just the right angle there was enough room for it to slip into place. I grabbed a 1/4" drive ratchet
and sockets and starting tightening the header bolts. I had to
use a universal on a few of them, but it was a lot less painful than
I thought it was going to be. Here's a picture of it installed
and torqued to spec followed by pictures of the driver's side
header to k-member clearance.
While I was working on the header, Dad was working on the... you
guessed it... sheet metal. So much for that being an easy job.
Well, it probably would have been if someone had stopped burning
through the sheet metal and changed the wire to the right thickness,
but that didn't happen until there were two huge gaping holes in the
sheet metal and Dad was standing there with the wire feed gun in his
hand, shaking his head, and saying, "I guess I should have used the
thinner wire." Trust me, it's funny now, but it wasn't then.
We spent the remainder of the day Sunday grinding the heaping weld
that we amassed to close the gaping holes burned by someone.
Eventually I got bored so I snapped a picture of the twins.
I thought I might be able to cut them out and use them on the
website banner...
At somewhere around 7 or 8 Sunday night we called it quits even
though there was a
bunch more grinding to do. I think Dad felt bad, because he
came out the following Wednesday and finished up the weld removal
and painted the sheet metal. To be completely honest it turned
out really nicely, definitely much better than it would have if we
had used a hammer to slam the sheet metal around like the
instructions said. I'm not sure which gauge wire
you should use if you try to weld the sheet metal on a sn95 Mustang
but I'm pretty sure Dad could tell ya. Here's some before and
after pictures of the driver's side sheet metal.
