Roached '72 Javelin Build for 24 Hours of Lemons!

[Bulletpruf]

Lots of progress this weekend.

New teammate has a bunch of AMC parts including a freshly machined 360 that he has agreed to assemble for the car. Won't be anything special -- dished pistons (9:1 or so), good dogleg heads (090's), mild flat tappet hydraulic cam. Only trick piece will be the oil pan - widened sump with trap doors to keep the oil near the pickup. He has an AMC-powered dragster that runs 7.90's in the quarter - it's an alcohol injected 401 based stroker. Anyway, I think he's the right guy to assemble the 360 for the car.

Got the front suspension assembled on the driver's side.

All the steering components are in place. All new except for the Pitman arm, steering box, and center link.



Area around the trunk lip had some cancer, but nothing worth patching, so we wire wheeled it and hit it with POR-15. We hit it with a top coat after this pic was taken.



Front windshield channel was the same - few spots of cancer, but nothing that needed patching so it got POR-15 as well.



Dug out a dollop of Bondo in the A pillar on the passenger side and found some ugliness underneath. That's structural so it will get a patch.



Wire wheeled the floors and didn't find any major surprises.

[Bulletpruf]

First video is up - here's the link -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3JW4Z0J4Po&t=1s

[Bulletpruf]

Working on patching the floors. Fairly tedious work.



- - - Updated - - -

More pics.

[Bulletpruf]

Still need to screw the patches to the floors, do some final tweaking, plug weld, then weld the perimeter, then finish off with some seam sealer.

[Bulletpruf]

Got two floor pans in this weekend. Fairly time consuming, even when the pans fit fairly well.

The passenger rear took the full patch. It's all welded in, seam sealed, and painted.



On the driver's front, we didn't use the entire patch. It also took a fair bit of work to get it to fit; there was a contour on the trans tunnel that wasn't matched in the patch so I had to form it.



Also sourced a T10 transmission case to replace a busted one.



Fenders are back on, too, along with the front valence. Beat dents out of all of them before reinstalling.

[Bulletpruf]

Driver's side rear floor patch is in. Still need to grind down the welds a bit and paint it.





The passenger front inner rocker is a bit Swiss-cheesy, so it needs a patch. I took the remnants of the driver's front floor patch panel (we only used about 2/3 of it) to make the inner rocker patch. It was flanged, bent, and ribbed, so it took a bit of work to get it flat. Once it was flat, I threw it on the 2' HF mini-brake. Worked fine. Still needs to be screwed down and welded but that'll have to wait until I get back from Montana in a week.

[Bulletpruf]

Got back from vacation in Montana last night. Spent the day today on the road chasing parts. Drove 3+ hours to Houston to pick up a close ratio T10 trans; seller is an AMC guy who races Lemons, and he threw in a pair of 245/40/17 tires that still have a bit of life left.

From there, I drove 3+ hours to Pleasanton (south of San Antonio) to pick up a set of 17x8 Mustang wheels.

Then drove an hour to the shop to unload the stuff.

[Bulletpruf]

Wilwood brake kit for the rear showed up; more good parts to put on a bad car...

[Bulletpruf]

Work continues. We're making progress, but the fabrication and welding is a time suck, and we're only able to work on the car on the weekends. At least I had plenty of help; there were four of us in the shop on Saturday and three of us on Sunday.

Will and I played with fiberglass and resin; had to repair the big crack in the free spoiler that my buddy Andrew gave me. With some trimming and grinding and a coat of semi-gloss black, it'll be ready to go.





Will got to use my Clecos and a rivet gun to attach patch that Scotty whipped up for the firewall.



Lee welded the last floor pan patch in, along with the patch for the inner rocker on that side. Now he's working on getting the seat brackets mounted and harness mounts created and/or braced.

[Bulletpruf]

More progress this weekend. Lee got the seat brackets welded into place. Still a bit of work left to do to finish them.

I got the subframe connector brackets welded to the floors.

I blasted the 17x8 Mustang wheels and painted them black.



Decklid and spoiler are done. Took quite a bit of fiberglass mat/resin, and finished off with bondo. Spoiler and decklid were both black, but I stripped about 17 layers of paint off the decklid and got down to the original paint, which is a copper color, so not too far off the faded brown of the car. I hit the spoiler with some reddish brown primer, which isn't a 100% match the decklid or car, but if you're squinting at it from about 100' away, it'll be pretty close.



Tires are on the way - Hankook RS-4 in 245/40/17.

[Bulletpruf]

More progress this weekend.

Got the wheels and tires on and looks like I'm tight on clearance on the front wheels. Had to use 1" spacers to keep the coil spring mount from rubbing the inside top of the sidewall. Not sure if I'm going to stick with these wheels or source some that have negative offset.



Mounted the decklid with the rear spoiler as well. Looks a lot better; these cars look silly without a rear spoiler.

Sitting kind of high now, but there's no drivetrain, fuel, etc.



Also painted some of the underside - floor patches were bare metal.

And then I did some precision bodywork... I'll finish up the patch tomorrow with some rivets and JB Weld.

[Bulletpruf]

Bodywork is all done - pop rivets and JB Weld for the win!

[Bulletpruf]

Front tow hook is done and bumper is now somewhat straighter (read: I beat it with a BFH until I got tired) and reinstalled.



Two captive nuts for the driver's side bumper bracket bolts broke free inside the frame rail (well, it's a unibody, so maybe frame rail isn't the correct term), so I cut the bolt heads off with a Sawzall and then drilled through the frame so I could put a bolt on it. Metal was kind of thin in that area so I drilled two holes in some 1/4" flat bar and used that instead of some big washers.



Started on the cage yesterday. My buddy Lee bent up some nice spreader plates and we got the boxes for the main hoop tacked into place.





Then it was time for the rear tow hook. Pulled off the bumper and rear valence and found a good spot to mount it to the rear frame rail/unibody structure just behind the leaf spring shackle. Took my Speedway Engineering tow hook, sliced it and diced it and drilled a few holes in it so I could plug weld it and then welded it in place. Either my welding is getting better or I have more tolerance for sh*tty welding, because I didn't do much grinding when I was done. I still need to poke a hole in my rear valance for the tow hook to fit through and I need to paint it red, too.

[Bulletpruf]

Main hoop and halo are tacked into place.

[Bulletpruf]

Progress continues, but not at warp speed because of work and family obligations.

Dash bar is tacked into place. Diagonal needs final fitting.

[Bulletpruf]

Diagonal finished, tacked into place, then I cut/ground the tack welds holding the cage to the boxes. Then cut/ground the tack welds holding the boxes to the floor, and dropped the cage down. Now we can get at spots on top of the cage that need welded.

[Bulletpruf]

I was out of town last weekend, but managed to get back after it today. My buddy Lee fully the top of the cage, and then I painted most of it with roll cage paint. From there, we put the cage up on the boxes, and Lee welded the boxes to the floors, and then he welded the cage to the boxes. Took a bit of persuasion to get the cage back in place once the top was welded, but ratchet straps and a porta-power made quick work of that.

[chunger]

Ditto. A buddy of mine had one in high school in Slidell, LA, in the mid 1980's.

Huh, small world. I was in high school in Slidell in the mid 80's. Can't recall the car, but it was a while ago...

[Bulletpruf]

Huh, small world. I was in high school in Slidell in the mid 80's. Can't recall the car, but it was a while ago...

No kidding? I'm PJP class of '86.

[Bulletpruf]

More progress.

Dash bar was crooked so I cut the tack welds on the passenger side, leveled it out, and re-welded.



Working on getting the harness bar in place behind the driver's seat; still needs to come up a few inches.



There needs to be 2" clearance from the top of the tallest driver's helmet to the top of the roll cage. I think we'll be fine, but it will be close.