Bracing

Before any cutting began, we had to brace the car. The unibody design of the mustang gets a lot of its strength from the roof of the car. This is true for just about every hard top automobile, which is why convertibles have such beefy frames. Depending on how rusted the floor of the car is the chances of it completely buckling after the roof has been cut is significant enough that it should be considered. The floor boards in this mustang were less than perfect with the driver side sporting a 8X3 inch hole through the sheet metal. I know that I will have to replace this but for now I just want to get the roof on and not worry about it. The correct way to approach this might be to buy some torque boxes and weld them in before I do any cutting on the roof. I want to do this in the future but like I mentioned before, I wanted to see how successful the fastback conversion would be before I pour in a lot more money and time.

I wanted to support the car as if it was set on a level surface which in turn will eliminate the moment applied to the frame between the two axles. I had at my disposal several scissor lifts that I used to support the mid section of the car.

In addition I also went to my local Cal Ranch store and bought the cheapest steel fence post I could find. I believe they were about $3.50 a piece and I got two of them to weld between the door space. This provided plenty of support for the car. Now I could stand and even jump around the entire car while restyling to get the roof off with out having to worry that it will buckle on me. In this picture you see my friend Jeremy welding the fence post in place.