My 1989 Crown Victoria.

[slack]

Good to hear you found something local. You talking about the latch? I had to think for a few about what you meant by "loop on the body side."

Yeah me too.

Yeah the whole latch assembly. The lock part on the trunk and this part that screws into the body:


The one on my car now is completely different.

[slack]

As promised. Here's the update from this weekends load of work done!

First thing Saturday morning my friend and I drove out to the junkyard and picked up the parts I was missing to finish the rear end box conversion. I was able to get the trunk, the fillers and the latch from one of their donor cars.

Here's the trunk underside and some of the fillers:


And some of the top. Lots of surface rust that needed to be sanded down:


Here's how it looked after some hardcore sanding. (Done by hand, probably should have used an electric sander and saved my shoulder. lol) As you can see, the fake plastic chrome trim is completely shot. What was interesting was the paint was blue, then the pink primer and under that was a mint green coat of paint as well. Was it normal for boxes to have three different colors under their paint? Or is it possible this trunk was painted previously?


First coat of primer:


Then we started using some rattle can paint. It's close to my car color but not 100% exact. I'm just looking for something to hold over until I can get around to getting the whole car painted. (And to keep the rust at bay)


After the paint was dry, we had to move our location to somewhere we could keep the thing sitting for a few days. We ended up in my friend's brother's work shed. We heated the the place with this turkey frier we found at Home Depot. It was the floor model and marked down to around $30. They were out of regular propane heaters.


We hung the fillers from some wire on the roof and gave them some paint as well.


All and all. Not too bad. Here's what the trunk looked like with one coat of primer and two coats of rattle can. Still needs some good sanding and possibly another coat.


...and I've reached my attachment limit for this post.

[slack]

Continuing from the previous post...

We then taped off the newly painted trunk so we could attempt to paint the shot plastic "chrome" trim. We used the Rustoleum chrome paint. I don't have a pic on me of the after, but it looks chrome-ish. I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with it. I guess I'm going to have to see how it polishes up. Anyone have any suggestions?


We then went out and started a little disassembling to see what we have lined up on the plate to do next. I apparently have some major rot issues on the body seams behind my rear tail light lenses. Ack.


..And with both tail lights off.


Here's the current situation I'm in. I know we can cut the trunk out and weld in another part from a donor car but I feel like that's going to be a bit too much work. As you can see, the trunk shapes are NOT the same on the '88-91 as the '79-87. They are DIFFERENT.


Here is the idea we're going to attempt. We're going to cut the tail lens housing to fit the frame curve so that they sit flush. (Screw stud holes actually line up surprisingly). We're then going to widen the holes in the frame for the actual lens to be able to fit. The '87 and down have a two bulb set up as the 88-91 have a single tail light bulb.

Here's something I threw together in paint right now to give the general idea. It's not even close to exact. I'm going to take measurements after work to get the correct dimensions that need to be cut.


EDIT:
Here's a pic of a trunk from an 86 that I found on craigslist for comparison:

[sly]

I figured there would be more fab work to be had.

[87gtVIC]

I'd honestly pick up some spot weld cutters and get the correct panel. You have rust in that area so it will be taking care of that right away and you will ensure that the trunk will fit correctly. The right piece will make everything easier.

Nice work! About the chrome trim on the trunk I just removed mine.

[slack]

I figured there would be more fab work to be had.

Yeah me too. I remember reading something on this forum a while ago that it would probably require welding. Not much info on the swap in this direction for the rear so it's sort winging it and seeing what fits.

I'd honestly pick up some spot weld cutters and get the correct panel. You have rust in that area so it will be taking care of that right away and you will ensure that the trunk will fit correctly. The right piece will make everything easier.

Nice work! About the chrome trim on the trunk I just removed mine.

That would be the ideal solution. I'm not sure where I could get that panel though. I know the JY out east has a few boxes but I don't know if they'll chop out the body part like that though. I guess I can give them a ring tomorrow and see what they say. My other two concerns are that the sourced panel is even rustier than the trunk lid and also welding in this bitter cold weather. I don't have a garage to work in and at best it would be done in the driveway.

I just checked your thread for the trunk lid without the trim. Looks pretty good. I guess if this idea doesn't pan out I can always take it off as well.

[87gtVIC]

Why does this need to be done during the winter? Can you live with the 88+ year until warmer weather?

Regarding the rear panel. From my experience they would just cut out (like sawzall cut) what you need and you would need to then go in with the spot weld cutters to get the actual piece you need.

[BuffaloRider]

Wow, mad props man! I like the concept of putting the older box front and rear on an 89. The pics are awesome and that's crazy what happened with the thermostat housing.

Why does this need to be done during the winter? Can you live with the 88+ year until warmer weather?

You have to admire his enthusiasm though lol

[slack]

Why does this need to be done during the winter? Can you live with the 88+ year until warmer weather?

Regarding the rear panel. From my experience they would just cut out (like sawzall cut) what you need and you would need to then go in with the spot weld cutters to get the actual piece you need.

Waiting until warmer weather would be too easy. Where's the fun in that? Truthfully though, I probably should have waited a little longer to snatch up the trunk. I've now put myself in a little bit of a time crunch because I can't leave it at my friend's brother's house forever and I don't exactly have a place to put it. Oops.

Good to know about the panel! Thanks

Wow, mad props man! I like the concept of putting the older box front and rear on an 89. The pics are awesome and that's crazy what happened with the thermostat housing.



You have to admire his enthusiasm though lol

Thanks! At this point it probably would have been cheaper just to buy another box CV but my curiosity has got the best of me and now I'm in it for the long haul.

[slack]

Last night my friend and I made some card board mock ups of the tail lights to use as a test cutting platform. We modeled them after the actual tail lights and will chop them to fit in my car. This way we can see if too much plastic would need to be removed to install them and in that case the rear panel would have to be welded in.

So while that's going on, I figured I'd post some older work done to the car earlier this year.

The header panel / front bumper swap:

So, first off we took the other header panel off and the bumper. The bumper is held on by 8 bolts (four on each post) as well as the rub strip. It was surprisingly easy to remove. The header panel had a few screws down the fender that were sort of tough to get to but not really all that bad with a universal and some hand cramming. The worst one is the one allll the way towards the top of the fender. After those were removed and a few misc other bolts, that also came right off.

Old bumper, header panel and new header panel off:


This is how the car looked with everything removed. (Looks like way more work than it actually is)


Thankfully, the bolt holes all line up from the 87 donor with my 89 fenders and bumper posts. Reinstalling was just a simple bolt right up. I used my wire harness for the lights. The one from the 87 was a bit different but mine plugged up no problem.

Finishing up the last few bolts...


And here it is all on:


As you can see, the 89 hood lines do not match the 87. I didn't get around to swapping the hood out for another two weeks or so after I took these pictures. Also, the fender bumper fillers didn't go in until the hood was put in. I don't have any pics of that process.

The hood bolted right on with no modifications. The plug for the hood light is different than the 89s. Right now, it's still disconnected.

The fillers had pilot dimples for where to drill for the screws. You just drill them out and screw them on. I actually used a nut and bolt to hold them on instead of reusing the screws. (I figured it might stay on better)

[slack]

Snapped a few pics while testing out the cardboard taillight mock ups. Looks like there's not going to be too much plastic to cut away. Awesome.

[L1011tristar17]

I had almost the same thing happen with the t-stat housing bolts on my car. However I wasn't lucky enough to get the bolt out. It eventually got fixed, but a bunch of other things got broken in the process!

[slack]

Here's some pics from the rear bumper swap. At first, I tried using the bumper trim from the '87 but as you can see, there is way too much of a gap. Also for the '87 and down there's four pieces of trim. You have the bumper filler that's attached to the bumper itself, the two bumper fillers that attach to the body and also there's a black piece that attaches to the body by the trunk opening. At the time I did this swap, I only had the filler that attaches to the bumper. (I have since acquired the necessary fillers.)

Here's what it looks like when you attempt to attach with the older style filer on the 88+ tail. (It still had room to move up, but not enough to fill the gap)

Back:


Side filler gap:


Here's what it looks like reusing the 88+ filler on the bumper:


Until I finish the trunk and tail lights, this is how I've been riding. Doesn't look too bad honestly.

Edit: In case you're wondering what happened to my chrome trim on my bumper lip, it rotted and fell off. I tried to reattach it with some Aaraldite and some nuts and bolts but that also started to come apart. Right now, it's just sitting as is because I plan on swapping the trunk out.

[slack]

I figured I would also post a messy fix I did on my trunk. There was a hole in the body filler seam up by the rear window. It was cracked and my trunk would fill up with water.

Trying to see how bad it was, I used a drimmel and cleared out all the rot. It was worse than I thought.

Here's what it looked like during the clean up:


In my ghetto repair, I used some spackle tape and rubber filler (I'm not really sure which one but I made sure it worked on metal and was water proof). I don't have a finished picture on me, but here's what it looked light when it was almost done. After the goop pile was finished, I no longer had a trunk that acted like a bathtub for my tools!



I made sure to put back the rubber gasket trim around the trunk to keep water from getting in that way as well after all was said and done. I had to throw out the trunk carpet because it smelled like a rancid mix of stagnant water and gear oil. The smell would waft into the cabin and fill the car with it's awful smell whenever I parked it.

[slack]

Last post today (I promise. haha)

I found a few pics of the car I got the header panel, hood, front fillers, and dash trim from.

It was my friend's girlfriend's car who got halfway through doing an engine swap when her funds dried up and she decided to scrap it. (It was a gorgeous 87 tudor). My friend ended up stripping the car down to basically a shell on wheels before he let it go to the junk yard. (Unfortunately that unmolested perfect dashpad got cracked by his brother on accident when loading it up onto the trailer )

Some pics from the engine pull back in early 2012: