My 86 1D project

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I am gonna start this thread with what I am doing with my 1D that I have owned since 1992. Poor thing has had a rough life and I am giving it some love. Sadly many would have given up on it...maybe I should have also but I dont do that sort of thing to easily.

This started out as a bad driverside floor pan that has turned into a major project to make the car roadworthy and safe again. I uncovered some major body work that was horribly done long before I owned the car. The original owner was a lying POS and I was young and naive at the time...Car took a major hit on the driver side. 1/4 panel was replaced and done very sh!tty to put it mildly. Driver door was repaired but again not done too great. They cut all the wires when they took the door off and then used solder-less connector to put them back together...what butchers...
The floorpan under the rear seat was buckled slightly and a small crack...etc... I found this out 31 years later but it still burns me up and if I run across this guy....well we will just leave it there...

I will post pics with the mess and the progress. Car is coming along and I will finish it with a plastic-dip paint job. I cant put 7 or 8 grand into a paintjob when the car wont be worth that when finished. The body work, and now donor door will assure that fate sadly...

I will update as I post more pics

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Here are pics of the floor pan driver side...

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Here are some pics of the lower driverside B pillar

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Here is the rear seat area near the seat belt mounts torque box area... there was either rot or the pan was solid...crazy

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Passenger side strut tower... I wish I found a clean SVO that needed a drivetrain....I guess NOT... I had to pull the motor for this one... Internally the frame rail was clean and solid

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I wont be able to have an MRI for years because of all the metal shavings and splinters I got....LOL

Here is the donor clip I used... a 91 LX former drift car... it was pretty clean sadly but beat up

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I powerwashed the carpet...WOW it worked awesome and the carpet is now fluffy and beautiful

[bluemax]

Wow Frank, looks like you are making really good progress on her!

[Erics SVO]

WOW! Great job!

[gbeaird]

That's a LOT of effort, and some great work going on there!! Nice.

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Thanks guys this has been done bc it is my car for over 3 decades...I still have to weld up the rivet holes on the post 86 donor door I got. They put those stupid holes in the door where the dew wipe goes...what was Ford thinking...Totally unnecessary, they could have used the old design with the updated look.

...Dashpads are like 300 bucks...holy crap...looks like I am gonna bondo and goop up the cracks in mine....anything will look better...

My interior panels that I painted came out great! This car is coming along but the exterior still looks like crap....LOL

[cookin86]

I love it. Keep going. Our love for these cars especially for one you've had since 92 makes then worth all the time and every nickel.

[gbeaird]

Thanks guys this has been done bc it is my car for over 3 decades...I still have to weld up the rivet holes on the post 86 donor door I got. They put those stupid holes in the door where the dew wipe goes...what was Ford thinking...Totally unnecessary, they could have used the old design with the updated look.

...Dashpads are like 300 bucks...holy crap...looks like I am gonna bondo and goop up the cracks in mine....anything will look better...

My interior panels that I painted came out great! This car is coming along but the exterior still looks like crap....LOL

Heh, 3 decades. It seems that's how long we've been doing the restore project on our '86!! ;-)

Our dash pad was cracked, too. I located another pad years ago, and did a little trick a friend did to his GTO dash; slather the pad with Vaseline and wrap it in plastic cling wrap for a few weeks. The Vaseline supposedly 'moisturizes' the vinyl covering, and seems to have done so on the SVO dash nicely. I have a dash pad for our '92 B4C Camaro similarly-wrapped, and need to clean it and install it to replace the cracked one in that car. It's odd that the Camaro dash pads all seem to crack (and the replacements are all either stupidly-expensive, or look like cr@p), while the same year Firebird dashes, which are shaped differently, aren't as susceptible.

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I swapped both driver and passenger door with my 1991 LX donor car. I am going tomorrow to get a donor hatch. Once I have the hatch I will be very close to paint. I still have not decided on paint yet.
I broke my butt switching out the door harnesses and electronics but finally got it all working good.
I took the latching mechanism out on the driver door at least 6 times bc the stupid look actuator was binding up and just not working right.
I had to really clean the assembly out and get decades of grime out I guess. All working pretty good for now.

I also had to weld up 5 holes on the donor door where the dew wipe sits (because it is a post 86). Gotta do the passenger side next...

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She is in the paint shop. I decided to paint and not plastidip. Trying to figure out the color...