Project K2xPine - Sunbeam Alpine K-Series Swap

bbroderi said:

Have you already bought your K20/K24 or measured to ensure it will fit with the necessary bell housing adaptor? Also, you appear to have clearance issues with the steering cross tubes. There is a cross tube provided for a Ford 2.8 V6 conversion which will give some additional clearance for your trans choice.

 

 

Trans clears the steering rod easily from the location where it best fits to get the shifter into the stock location. I am tucking the radiator forward to give myself plenty of clearance to move the engine and gearbox together with adapter. So no concerns on that front. 

78CobraII said:

What is your needed rear axle width?

The V8 Mustang IIs came with an 8" rear that is likely strong enough for your K24, and it comes with a 4x4.25 bolt pattern. And it's lighter than a 9" rear also.

I belive the wheel flange-to-wheel flange width is 54 or 55 inches.

49.5" flange to flange. 

It's tiny. 

Right three rapid posts and a 15-months in-between posts. What has happened? 

Well, due to some issues with my former boss, I was forced to leave my position in Seattle last April. In the ensuing 8-months post-separation, I started a small business with a friend, taught some classes in Arizona, and pounded the pavement for a new position. I didn't get a lot of work done on the car. It took nearly that whole time, but I was able to secure a new and excellent position. The only problem was...my new position is in New York...Long Island actually. 

So, we packed all our stuff up and in Dec/Jan we moved from being 35 miles from the Pacific Ocean to being 35 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. 

I also went from a nigh 3-car detached garage back down to a tiny 1-car attached garage. However, I do have a large unfinished basement with the new house that provides some workshop space (pics later). My Stella got sold off and I'm back down to my daily FJ and the wife's Mz2. That's okay, it was a bit distracting anyway. 

Now that I've been here awhile and started to really settle in, I'm back to hammering (literally) away at K2xPine - focusing on body work for now. It's cheap to do and I like doing it and there is a lot more of it to do than I thought there would be, because I keep finding Bondo on the car. 

Budget will continue to be tight for a while as we recover financially from two cross-country moves in <18 months. So big pieces (engine, suspension fab, new rear axle) will have to come slowly.

So happy to see an update on this and glad to hear things are getting back on track for you!

Like obsolete said, I'm glad to see updates on this again. I love this project!

I can't imagine two cross country moves in that time frame! Glad to hear things have settled down 

A bit more from the past 14-months. Upon inspection of the floor...

Hmm...yea that seat rail seems like it would have held up in a crash. Long and short both front and rear pans on both sides are getting replaced. 

Moving on - was moving on...packing up. 

Loaded into the container for cross-country. 

Parked in the new garage. 

Getting it unloaded.

Back to work on the body work.

Great to see that you're back at it!

I like the engine swap plan...the Rootes engine is only a little lighter than a Ford 289!

In my second-to-last pic (above) you can see the complete front end I've been hauling around for a few years. It sat in the side yard behind my dad's garage for about 3-years. But the cross-member and frankly A-arms are all solid, because dad also set it on a couple of plastic crates off the ground.

Anyways, it has to be torn down. First challenge...neither my internal or external spring compressors would work. I was sort of able to snake the two halves of one of my externals and then crank it down. But it wasn't nearly enough to take the pressure off the upper balljoint. Enter my 'new' spring compressor: 

A length of 3/8" all thread rod, a couple of thick 1 1/2" fender washers, and an old leaf spring perch. Thread up to the shock tower mount and under the lower A-arm and tightened down until I could use a pickle-fork and sledge to separate the upper from the spindle. Bang bang bang and then back the tension off: 

Now get the lower a-arm off...and here is where I discovered that Sunbeams have some Italian heritage to them. Macaroni bolt! 

Some careful work to extract that + the other extremely rusty bolts: 

Then rinse and repeat: 

Later I'll flip it over and start taking the upper A-arms off. 

Frustration a 3-photo essay...

I wasn't expecting this one to break off, to be honest. It had backed out a good 1/3 the way with minimal torque from my ratchet. And it didn't give any signs of going, one turn and it just sheared right off. 

Drill a hole, insert a bolt remover, no problem right? I started small and then stepped up to enlarge the hole. 

berkeley me...

The bit broke into at least two pieces. One of which is lodged sideways. I can't drill through the hardened bit to enlarge/deepen/shove this thing out of the way. I don't have a hole quite big enough to hammer something in that I can then turn. It's not large enough to get a pair of needle nose in to grab the broken bit piece either. 

BUT, I'm going to eventually have to chop open this cross member to notch it out to get the motor low enough. The bolt extends all the way through and I should be able to grab it from the inside with a pair of vise grips (I can put my fingers in the x-member drain holes and feel the bottom of the bolt. So, I'll hit it the blue wrench, and 'tighten' it out, but turning it all the way through the threaded insert. Otherwise, I guess I'm drilling the whole thing out and putting in a helicoil. I've decided this is all a "Future Rob" problem. I'm sure I won't regret that, right?  

Weld a nut to it.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :

I'm going to be 100% honest. I was thinking of chopping down a 1/4" bolt, inserting it into the hole I have as far as possible and TIG it into place. But...I hadn't thought of welding a NUT to it. 

That's...a good idea. 

I have had success in grabbing the biggest nut that I have and be and slipping it over the broken off chunk of Bolt. I then turn the amperage all the way up on my Mig and make circles until the nut is full of well and it's all glowing red hot. Grab it with vice grips while it's still glowing and turn it right out. I've used this on exhaust manifold studs that were broken off and heads with great success

On the one hand, putting a nut over it and filling it with filler rod, then grabbing and twisting while it was red hot did - not - allow me to extract the broken bolt.

On the other hand, when it tore the top of the free, meaning it is no longer flush with my work surface , it tore off at precisely where the busted drill bit was lodged sideways. Which mean I was able to extract the busted drill bit piece.

Meaning I can now opt for A) continuing to drill it out. Or B) since I have a 3/16" hole through the length of the remaining bolt, I can try one of these straight flute extractors:

Straight-Flute Extractor Set, 5 Extractors Included

https://www.mcmaster.com/2564A22

Managed to drill, hammer, drill hammer, and finally drill out the remainder of the bolt.

Now on to other stuff. 

This week has felt like a 1-step forward, 2-steps back kind of week.

Continued stripping down the old crossmember. Now my upper A-Arms are stuck firmly in place. Even hitting the bolts with my torch didn't unstick them. I had to opt for the 3" cut off wheel and a lot of four-letter words. Each step has been a fight. I have not yet succeeded in getting either of the uppers free. 
 

After getting frustrated, I changed tact and started back after the floors. On the driver's side, I had a bad panel between the floor pan and inner door sill. I needed to know how bad it was. Turns out - bad. I'm going to have to replace the panel (which I knew), the rear floor pan (also knew that), but also about a 4x2" chunk of inner sill. At this point, I'm going to get in there with the aforementioned cut off wheel and cut the section and floor back and have to take a good look at everything. I wasn't expecting that level of fab and while it's only 16-gauge sheet metal, still. This likely means picking up a MIG welder. Because I was fine using my TIG to spot weld in floors, but this is an area I may not be able to get as clean as I need to for TIG.

So year, two steps back. But one step forward:

I was successful in disassembling my lower control arms and spindles. Which gave me a chance to look over the lower balljoints and consider what to do. The UCAs will be custom SPC pieces, which will use Moog/Mopar K772 balljoints. I'm planning to reuse the stock LCAs with a bit of reinforcing. The stock Sunbeam balljoints aren't a bad design. But they also vacillate between being reproduced and NLA. Part of my goal is to escape being stuck with NLA parts. 

So, I took some measurements and decided to look at two options. Either drawing up some pieces that use a Moog/Mopar balljoint and bolt in, mimicking the stock balljoint. Or, using weld-in sleeves and cutting out the old balljoint and welding the sleeve in. I haven't decided, but I ordered up some K772 and K727 balljoint sleeves from Speedway and sized the whole thing up. The K772 looks like a winner. While that is technically an "upper balljoint". It's an upper designed for a 1965 Chrysler Town & Country, weighing in at 4800-pounds vs. the ~2300 the Sunbeam will weigh.

Control arms now completely off, I can focus on figuring out if I want to drop the uppers down and and run a shorter spindle. A 1" drop of the UCA will net about 7-degrees in the camber curve. Really it will come down to cost of getting new spindles. I need to measure my spindles now and see if 1" drop Mustang IIs will work.

Then over to working on the inner sill. I made up the patch panel today. Since I still have a lot of good inner sill, I rolled a 1/8" step onto my patch that slides under a small portion of the existing inner sill, a few spots along the lap then I'll have butt welds in front and behind.

I'm doing all of my welds with my TIG and using mostly through-drilled 3/16" spots, with some full and partial seams. It's how I like to weld sheet metal. I don't have to use much voltage or gas and get strong, fully penetrated welds. Unfortunately, as I got everything setup and tested my setup, then I realized I was out of Argon. Two welding supply stores later and I still don't have gas. My cylinder was out of date, but there isn't an 80 cu/ft cylinder to be had. So, my tank is off to get re-certified.

Can recommend: Matt at General Welding Supply in Holbrook on Long Island - for any folks in the area. He took the time to call around some of his customer's that regularly use 80 cu/ft tanks and found me an in-date cylinder for an exchange. Good customer service seems to be getting rarer these days, I appreciate it on a fundamental level. 

Gotta get everything setup and dialed in here in the next few days. 

In reply to DocRob :

Wow, thats good service!

Work travel slows things down. But here we are a Sunday Sitrep:

Patch panel for inner sill is made. Next patch is for the forward frame rail. There the old seat mount rotted out and trapped moisture rotting through about a 2x2 section of the frame rail.

To get here I had to first remove the remaining sections of seat mount, which were spot welded to the floor. I tried a cheapo spot weld cutter from HF that exploded on first use. So, center punch the top of the spot weld, 3/16" drill bit it down, and first I used a prybar, then remembered I have an air hammer. Air hammer makes short work of whatever remains of most drill spot welds. Sweet.

Now time for a digression. Mrs. DocRob is a gardener as her hobby. And wanted some planter boxes. I managed to score some very solidly built surplus pallets from a local printing company. They are used to haul heavy aluminum printing press plates in. Each one has a 6" pallet base topped with two pieces of 30x40x3/4" ply. Perfect material for a few planter boxes. 
 

Mrs. painted them up, stappled in some cotton and got to planting. I'm not expecting them to last for ever. 2-3 years at most.

Unfortunately, I way overestimated the amount of wood I would need. So I ended up with 10 spare pieces of 3/4" ply and 8 pallet bases. So, now I'm building myself four 40x40x15" book shelves. Which is a distraction from the car. But I have ~40 boxes of books sitting in my library and no shelves to put them on. Gotta fix it. 

Work is picking up now that the semester is over. But had time this evening to hammer out this little patch panel. It does actually have some dish to it, that's factory and matches the passenger side which is solid. So, I had to bend it up then put a little dish in it.

I measured the contour with my contour gauge.

Then made a little template:

Then used a 1/2" beading die in my bead roller to work the dish in. I would have preferred the English wheel, but it is setup with an 8" hammer wheel currently, not allowing me the ability to work this piece under it, at least for dishing. Once the rough dish was in, I wheeled it relatively smooth. 

This piece will get butt welded into place.

Next up driver's rear floorpan. 
 

I am pleased with this first attempt at rolling a rear floor pan out of 18-gauge flat. Still have to work a little curve into it to match the floor contour. But the wide beads came out nicely. A few minutes with the English wheel took out the curve that rolling the beads put into it making it nice and flat. Now I can make another and then start on the fronts.

Once they're all made the process of cutting  begins. Because none of these pans actually overlap, I can cut and weld them one at a time.

Edit: Oh and since the Hammer Store is having a sale. I used my 25% off coupon to grab a stubby gas lens torch kit. Which should make for nice clean welds. I'm excited to try it out.

That rear floor pan is pretty awesome!

Sunday Sitrep:

I finished rolling both rear pans this past week. The Hammer Store had another sale this week, this time their Surface Contouring Tool. Needing to strip a lot of car down, I decided to spring for one at 100 bucks instead of 150. Worth it. It took me about 20 min to strip the rear valance down to this level  still have to sand out this bondo. Whoever owned the car before the repaint must have parked by feel.

Done playing with my new toy, I knocked out a rough of the driver's front floor pan. Still needs to be trimmed to fit and flanged along the perimeter. But the beads are rolled. Those little beads are high in the footwell and a little uneven. I figure by the time I mount my floormount pedal box and coat these pans with Fertan's Stoneguard you won't really notice. 

Rest of this week is:

1) Knock out the passenger front pan

2) Remove old seat supports from passenger side 

3) Start cutting old pans out

Going through the album this evening and found a few more random pics of things I have messed with over the last 18-months:

The location of the handbrake on the Sunbeam is terrible. Between the driver's door and seat. I more than once accidentally hit my plums on it getting in and out. I decided it needed to be moved. The console was a good spot. So I built a bracket, cleaned everything up and mounted it.

When I disassmbled the doors I discovered my interior door handles were cracked. This is from grabbing and pulling them back and up. Causing lots of stress on a square cut. I decided to make them straight pull back by flipping them. This involves drilling them out and then fitting a clevis pin and safety wiring them. Here's a mockup of drilling

I found a nice reproduction Tudor-style windshield washer pump. So, I fitted it to my dash (which I had pulled and tried a silver hammered finish paint on. Which I have subsequently decided to paint black, instead). 
 

That's it for now. 

As is usual with me, I post for a bit, disappear for a bit, then come back. I'm still slowly working away. Real work always keeps me busy, but I try to get a couple of hours a week in. 

Lately progress has centered around tearing out the rotten floor. I didn't realize the Sunbeam had fully boxes frame rails. Part of this overbuilt aspect of Rootes cars. This means the pans are coming out in small chunks and mostly with an air hammer and 3" cut off wheel:

Once I got the air hammer out it became a bit like opening a tin can:

--

Because ADHD is a thing - when I took a full day off before Thanksgiving, I say down and drew up some new cowl vents in CAD. I sent them over to Send Cut Send to have them cut out of aluminum.

Today's little task was to fit them (currently held in my clecos until my rivnut setter arrives):