Last winter I decided to pull a bunch of things off the Cougar to work on while it was wet outside, and I basically stripped everything out of the the cabin of the car.
Among the things I've removed, the most beat up was the heater. I'll try and work on that part through to completion, and chronicle the process.
I've already removed and dis assembled it. The fiberglass heater 'box' was cracked and crumbling, so I removed the blower housing from it, all the metal fittings, and I'm going to laminate additional fiberglass on the outside and inside to re-enforce it.
I've already filled the cracks with epoxy filler, scuff sanded it and I'm contemplating the layup of additional fiberglass.
The blower assembly had stripped threads on the studs that mount the heater to the firewall. I drilled out the rivits holding it to the heater
assembly, cut off the studs and drilled the remainder out of the blower houlsing.
I tapped the holes where the studs were, threaded replacements in, and tack welded them on the inside.
While it seems like a simple solution, it took me a long time of just having the assembly sitting on a shelf before it occurred to me...
I've come to realize most problems I encounter are resolved by putting them asside and letting my subconcious work on them for me while I do other things that are more straight forward to me.
I then painted the assembly with black hammered paint. This was partly because i thought it would look neat, and partly because I had the paint from another project with no foreseeable use.
For additional corrosion protection the inside is coated with a zinc rich primer, and then topcoated with the hammered look paint.
The next step is to glass the heater case assembly referenced earlier. With all the cracks, and generally poor state of the fiberglass originally used, I'm gonig to laminate it with epoxy and a layer of 3 oz S glass inside and out. I figure that should be sufficient to craeate a strong assembly.
In addition to stablizing the deteriorating heater assembly, and my crack repars, the glass will give me a surface to re-build the deteriorated outlet holes with filler
Initially I was concerned with getting a decent layup over the contoured surface, as my shop is not sophisticated enough to have vaccum bagging facilities.
As mentioned abouve, typically when faced with a bit of a problem I don't know how to solve, by just giving it time, usually an alternate solution pops to mind. (sometimes they're stupid ideas but hey.)
In this case, I think I can accomplish something akin to vaccum bag results by layering the glassed component with some non stick film and covering the assembly with a couple hundred pounds of sand until it cures.
Naturally I'll have to build a box to contain the sand, and figure out a convenient way to contain the sand, but at about 12 dollars for 240lbs of clean sand, the price is right.
This should ensure uniform pressure on the irregular workpeice without undue expense. I'll update when I've tried it.
Among the things I've removed, the most beat up was the heater. I'll try and work on that part through to completion, and chronicle the process.
I've already removed and dis assembled it. The fiberglass heater 'box' was cracked and crumbling, so I removed the blower housing from it, all the metal fittings, and I'm going to laminate additional fiberglass on the outside and inside to re-enforce it.I've already filled the cracks with epoxy filler, scuff sanded it and I'm contemplating the layup of additional fiberglass.
The blower assembly had stripped threads on the studs that mount the heater to the firewall. I drilled out the rivits holding it to the heater
assembly, cut off the studs and drilled the remainder out of the blower houlsing.I tapped the holes where the studs were, threaded replacements in, and tack welded them on the inside.
While it seems like a simple solution, it took me a long time of just having the assembly sitting on a shelf before it occurred to me...
I've come to realize most problems I encounter are resolved by putting them asside and letting my subconcious work on them for me while I do other things that are more straight forward to me.
I then painted the assembly with black hammered paint. This was partly because i thought it would look neat, and partly because I had the paint from another project with no foreseeable use.
For additional corrosion protection the inside is coated with a zinc rich primer, and then topcoated with the hammered look paint.The next step is to glass the heater case assembly referenced earlier. With all the cracks, and generally poor state of the fiberglass originally used, I'm gonig to laminate it with epoxy and a layer of 3 oz S glass inside and out. I figure that should be sufficient to craeate a strong assembly.
In addition to stablizing the deteriorating heater assembly, and my crack repars, the glass will give me a surface to re-build the deteriorated outlet holes with fillerInitially I was concerned with getting a decent layup over the contoured surface, as my shop is not sophisticated enough to have vaccum bagging facilities.
As mentioned abouve, typically when faced with a bit of a problem I don't know how to solve, by just giving it time, usually an alternate solution pops to mind. (sometimes they're stupid ideas but hey.)
In this case, I think I can accomplish something akin to vaccum bag results by layering the glassed component with some non stick film and covering the assembly with a couple hundred pounds of sand until it cures.
Naturally I'll have to build a box to contain the sand, and figure out a convenient way to contain the sand, but at about 12 dollars for 240lbs of clean sand, the price is right.
This should ensure uniform pressure on the irregular workpeice without undue expense. I'll update when I've tried it.
