Now for the shock towers. Originally, the car had a 289.... one of the previous owners decided that a 351W would be a nice replacement. Too bad their idea of installation tools were a screwdriver and a sledge hammer. As you can see from the picture below..... they were good at using these tools. Now the dilemma...... keep the 351W or move to a smaller 302 or 289 (If I can find one). I racked my brain for a long while looking for a good way to get the 351W in without a Mustang II kit or some one off headers that will drag on the ground when I lower the car for the road coarse. What better time to do a shock tower replacement then when half the apron already gone. Decision made... move to a smaller motor and keep the body stock. Here is a shot with most of the spot welds drilled out and a few minutes into the air chisel
About 15 minutes of air chisel later.... the shock tower is gone
There is one drawback to the air tools, they tend to damage surrounding parts.... especially the first time you use them to remove car parts. I put a few scars in the frame rails that needed to be repaired so that the replacement shock tower would fit properly. Luckily the best part about working with metal is you can always add more with the MIG and grind it back down to level.... here is a pic of the first step in the process
After getting the frame rail back in line, getting the new tower is place was fairly straight forward. The factory has location hole drilled to properly locate the tower during manufacture, so replacement was a matter of aligning the holes and bolting them together.
After a few tweaks to the tower to get the fitment just right, I re-welded all the spot welds and re test fit the battery apron. I'll grind down all the welds once both towers, the battery apron and radiator support have all been replaced
