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Saturday, December 20, 2014

Inner fenders and more steering column work

Not a huge amount of progress to report, just chipping away.  Had to spend quite a bit of time organizing the garage and making it a place I can work in, it's spent a long time as nothing more than a couple parking spots.
With that out of the way I got cracking on the inner fenders.  I needed those in place to start mapping out where all this Crown Vic junk is going to live in the fridge.  For those of you that don't know, the 1957-1960 F100 trucks are nicknamed "fridges".  This is because the blocky body style resembles the old Philco-Ford refrigerators of the 60s.  So there you you go, don't say I never taught ya nothin'!

Back to the fenders.  I tried a test fit but the new frame, and especially the upper shock mounts, sit a lot higher and farther outboard.  I couldn't even get them in position to make some marks for what to cut off so I had to trim some first... I used a yardstick and a long straightedge to try to make a sort of three dimensional measurement of where the inner fender would end up.  Decided i needed to take close to eight inches off the bottom of each of them, probably could have cut a little less but it worked.  Here's what it looks like with the inner finders mounted:


Next I worked on the column a bit. If you've been following my build you might remember we had the column mounted initially to get the car moving, but the angle wasn't quite right.  So, I pulled it back out and cut out the gussets we had welded in.  After some cutting and grinding I put the column back in and I think it's where I want it.  Here's a couple pics with the tilt column at the highest and lowest settings:


I'm happy with it, now to make everything else work around the column. It's going to be tough figuring out how to mount the brake pedal assembly(and booster on the other side of the firewall).   Besides the lack of room back there compared to the Vic I also have to leave room for the transmission shift cable.  I have an idea of how I can make the brake pedal assembly fit in there but I need Troy's expert opinion before I start hacking away.  More to come!.  

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