The car is looking good Mitch, sorry i did not get a chance to get a full update today at Karl's,we had to leave fairly early. what is your timeline to get the body done?
Bruce, I don't set time lines. They just come and go and I get frustrated when I don't meet them.
I WILL drive the car again this summer. That is the only parameter I set. Wherever I'm at around the beginning of May, it gets put back to road worthiness. I don't want it sitting in the shop all summer. I have a lot of work I want to do to my '52 truck and a vintage camper I bought.
Then there is finishing the trunk floor in the Malibu and more mods to the '38...I need to live to 135 to get all this done...
That's how i roll (so to speak) too, sounds like a good plan.
Hopefully i will be able to make the Feb. meeting and get a up close look at the car.
Tim H said
Jan 19, 2015
Awesome work Mitch. It almost makes me miss Stan's car... almost but not really.
Got your message. I need to check my schedule then will get back to you.
Lost in the 60s said
Jan 31, 2015
John and I have gotten a little further on the car, although it has been slow going.
I did the last rust repair to the floor pan/inner wheel house.
Again, I put the good remnants of the outer house to use and reunited them with the car, albeit in a slightly different location...
All done and ready for the outer house.
We mocked up the house and quarter for the umpteenth time and I finally decided to weld it on.
Then moved on to the trunk drop. It entailed another hour of fitting and prepping to fit good enough. I had to cut the thing apart to get a good fit. I HATE these things...
I still have the misalignment of the floor/drop/outer house to deal with.
I fashioned an extension panel to fill the gap out of, you guessed it, the outer house remnant...
The extension is welded to the floor but I can't weld it to the drop until we fit the quarter again to be certain the angle of the drop is correct.
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 13, 2015
Back from vacation and back on the car today.
I needed to deal with the trunk pan at the right wheel house before installing the quarter skin. I had cut it in 2 places to reshape it to fit better.
I turned the amps down and the wire speed up on the mig and filled it in.
It looks pretty good now...
Next...
I missed the "after" pic...:drunk:
I got the quarter skin all fitted, flanged, sanded and prepped for install. It's ready for welding.
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 15, 2015
I decided to try my hand at welding the quarter on today. I started by trial fitting the extension housing one last time and wasn't happy with the alignment of the body line. I released the clamps and moved it down 1/16th and the alignment is better. Clamped it all up and put a bunch more screws on to hold the new panel up tight to the body. There were now 31 screws over 8 linear feet.
Round 1 of tack welding and removing the screws.
I saw there was a minor misalignment at the bottom and left that loose to see if I can push it out a little from inside.
I quit counting how many times I went over this tack welding but after 1 1/2 hours, it was done as much as I was going to do today. 8 feet of weld...1/8th inch at a time...
A half hour of grinding and it's ready for the next round of welding in the places I missed.
For better or worse, it's part of the car now...
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 16, 2015
Put in a few more hours today. I wasn't looking forward to the next step on the quarter panel install. I needed to weld on the flange inside the quarter window structure. Looks pretty tight for getting the mig nozzle and hose in there.
First, I reached in with a screw driver and nudged the lower corner out better.
Then I reached in and welded almost blind. I would line up the hole and then couldn't really see well once I pulled the trigger. It actually came out quite well.
Hmmm....too much glare to see detail, but the jam seam is done now.
Then onto welding it to the outer wheel house lip. I'm not happy about the gap at the bottom of the wheel house to rocker, so I left that for now. I'll probably get OCD and make a small filler panel for it...
Most of the trunk drop is welded too. There is a still a 4" square section I need to fit and weld in at the front.
John comes over tomorrow and we'll slice up the other side and get started on replacing/patching the outer wheel house.
I also need to make a template for the Super Sport emblem holes before we cut the whole panel off.
Stay tuned....more fun to come...
-- Edited by Lost in the 60s on Monday 16th of February 2015 04:16:05 PM
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 17, 2015
John and I started the day by doing exploratory surgery on the left wheel well. I thought I might be able to save the original inner brace on that side, but it wasn't to be. It was rusted out too badly to save.
So we proceeded to butcher away. We have gotten much faster with cutting un-wanted parts off now...
The inner half of the wheel house has so much rust damage that I am getting a new one and sectioning in a lot of the back half to save time patching and end up with a cleaner repair.
SShink said
Feb 18, 2015
Mitch, I've decided this is the most extensive 'on frame' restoration I've seen. I think you are just a few body mount bolts away from the rotisserie, but appreciate the work you are doing with the body on the car!
So, let me spend your money and why don't you go ahead and install mini-tubs now while you have the open access? That way you can get those 20's under it that I know you love so much versus the stock look...
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 18, 2015
It's too late in the winter to pull the body now, because, as you well know, that will entail stripping and powder coating the frame and entire suspension.I'm avoiding that until further down the road.
I went to Century Colleges open house last night and applied for the auto body course next fall, so there probably won't be any heavy duty tear downs next winter.
SShink said
Feb 18, 2015
Lost in the 60s wrote:
I went to Century Colleges open house last night and applied for the auto body course next fall, so there probably won't be any heavy duty tear downs next winter.
I'm assuming as an instructor, right? I think you would be awesome doing that with your experience and patience.
jim larson said
Feb 18, 2015
SShink wrote:
Lost in the 60s wrote:
I went to Century Colleges open house last night and applied for the auto body course next fall, so there probably won't be any heavy duty tear downs next winter.
I'm assuming as an instructor, right? I think you would be awesome doing that with your experience and patience.
That was also my first thought.
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 18, 2015
Um...no, I will be a student. I can replace panels all day but can't do final filler to save my soul. I will be learning that and painting. The second half of the year, I can bring a project car in to work on...SCORE. The wife has already told me it WILL be the Camaro. She's waited long enough to see that car beyond a beater.
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 18, 2015
After running to Isanti this morning, I didn't have a lot of time left for the car but I HAD to see if the inner house was going to be a decent match to the car. It didn't match up with the repro outer house I have but I wasn't too concerned as I would only be using parts of both and I would "persuade" them to get along.
I started with the filthy, nasty job of cleaning the old under coating out of the well. I started with the long barrel air chisel. This has a speed control that lets me turn it down to an idle, where you can almost counts the hits. It works really well to knock the hardened sealer, loose paint and rust scale off AS LONG as I don't hit the trigger too hard or stay in one place for more than a couple beats. If I screw up, it WILL hammer a hole so fast, my eyes can't keep up.
I forgot to get a pick of the crap on the floor. Huge mess and WEAR a good dust mask. The dust from this and the next step are terrible. My plastic safety glasses attract dust and after the 10 minutes of using the chisel, I couldn't see out of them.
Then I used the Eliminator to scrape off the remains of under coating, sealer, loose paint and rust scale.
NOW, I'm finally ready to do something fun. I stopped at Northern in Forest Lake and picked up another burn blanket, as I will be cutting the house from the outside with the plasma.
Then I marked the house where I wanted to cut it and proceeded to make a much larger hole...
Laid the cut off in the new house, gave myself a good 1/2" margin and marked it for cutting.
I did cut more off the old house on the car and reshape the new piece a little. It didn't want to follow the curve of the floor very well, but a couple vise grips convinced it to cooperate. It is actually a pretty good fit and will be fairly straightforward to prep and weld on from here. For those wondering, this took 2 hours. It will likely be another hour and a half to have it welded on and ready for the next piece.
-- Edited by Lost in the 60s on Wednesday 18th of February 2015 04:32:36 PM
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 20, 2015
Not a lot got done today. John came over around 12:30 and I put him to work doing the grunt work of prepping the inner patch panel while I cleaned the shop for tomorrow. He did a good job and it's all ready for install. He punched about 60 holes for plug welding and then sanded off the EDP and primed it with the copper weld thru.
Then he cleaned up the raw edge from the plasma, sanded all the old paint and undercoating off and primed that too.
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 24, 2015
John and I got back on the car today.
I welded the inner house patch on.
Then we cut off the rest of the quarter to what will be left to weld to. I cut inside the door jam this time to eliminate the vertical seam on the out side.
We fit the skin and I'm VERY happy that we left the front edge on this skin. I wish I had done the other side this way. The seam will be hidden in the door jam.
I'm super happy with the gap and alignment. These AMD skins are a really good product.
I decided to cut the patch for the outer half of the wheel house and see how that fit too.
I drew a line and in 60 seconds with the plasma, had the part cut out.
I set that in the quarter and it will need more trimming and fitting, but is very close already.
Lost in the 60s said
Feb 25, 2015
Spent a few hours fitting the outer wheel house and trunk drop. The outer looked fairly close just throwing it in yesterday, but I know better than to think it will line up easily... It was too far forward and it took major "convincing" to get to move 1/2" rearward. I marked where it met the original and then added the 1" of tape to cut off the extra, so I wasn't fighting that too.
I didn't get any pics of the fitting process...:drunk:
Then I put the skin back on and fitted the trunk drop. I had this fitting good with the original quarter, but of course, it didn't line up with the new one. It took another hour of wrangling, but it does fit pretty nice now and is all prepped and ready to weld on.
After wrestling with the outer house and drop, I was able to get the skin to pull in and align with the forward half of the wheel opening. Hard to see in the pic, but I'm pleased with the final result.
Lost in the 60s said
Mar 3, 2015
Little update on the progress.
Trunk drop welded on and the welds ground down.
Outer wheel house section ready to weld on.
And done
Final trim of the skin and flanging.
I thought I was ready to install the skin today and was sanding the paint off the rocker below it and found pin holes from rust inside.
Too close to the quarter seam to leave it for later, so I cut it out. It continued under the quarter flange too.
I just happened to have a rocker lay-over repair panel and cut out a repair section and backing plates.
I also made a backer to continue the support up to the top of the skin for welding.
At last, on to final fit and prep for welding the skin.
Round one of tack welding. It was 4 pm and I wasn't in the mood to weld it all today, so I have something to do tomorrow.
BLyke said
Mar 4, 2015
looking good!
Lost in the 60s said
Mar 4, 2015
Not happy today. I welded the left quarter on but the seam is very wavy. I even took more time than the right side and it's worse...:drunk:
I am happy that I seamed the front in the door jam. That will look great.
Got it welded to the wheel house too. Still need to get inside the quarter structure and weld it to the rocker and then the trunk drop.
BLyke said
Mar 6, 2015
Into every build a little"Bondo" must fall.
Looking good Mitch
-- Edited by BLyke on Friday 6th of March 2015 05:25:59 AM
66 RAT said
Mar 7, 2015
I'm guessing that your definition of "very wavy" wouldn't be quite the same as that for many of the rest of us. I'm neither a welder nor a bodyman, but I would think it would be quite difficult to stitch together that long span without some distortion of the metal.
dashboard said
Mar 7, 2015
Mitch, you are a sculptor of automobiles I wish I had a small part of your skills and talents. Pat yourself on the back my friend.
Lost in the 60s said
Mar 10, 2015
Since I wasn't coming up with a clever way to push the quarter wrinkles out, I moved on to the tail panel. I have an AMD that initially looked very accurate. I wish I had inspected it closer before I removed the original. The seal channel on the repro isn't even close. Way to shallow and undefined to fit with the quarter panel. I was pretty disgusted with that and ordered an original cut-off out of CA.
So here it sits, waiting for a part.
Lost in the 60s said
Mar 25, 2015
I got the tail panel last week. Lots of "extra" to remove.
4 HOURS and 78 spot welds later, it is free of all the clutter. UNFORTUNATELY, the entire rear facing surface has many dents and filler applied. I will be sand blasting it and trying to iron out the wrinkles better before install.
It does fit the channels like it should but the left side is a bit low with the lid down. I will adjust the bottom flange to raise the left up a little.
Lost in the 60s said
Apr 8, 2015
I started to sand blast the tail panel and quickly ran into bondo over the ENTIRE surface. I had to stop and grind it off with an abrasive wheel. It was 3/16ths thick in many places...
All but the left 6 inches is wrinkled...
The lock hole was smashed and somewhat pushed out and then filled with bondo. The previous "body person" even ground thru the panel in a couple places. In reality, this panel is scrap but I will have to save it somehow.
I bought some nylon PDR punches and shrinking discs to help with the ironing.
After MUCH hammer and dolly work, I had 2 areas that were oil canning. I hammered them to the outside and hit them with the shrinking disc and water and they pulled right back and tightened up. The disc does work good but it would take a miracle to get all the wrinkles out of this panel. It is good enough to finish with a skim coat now, instead of almost a 1/4" of filler.
Lost in the 60s said
Apr 8, 2015
I got a visit from UPS today...
Yet to come are the door panels and carpet. They shipped a couple days after this.
jim larson said
Apr 8, 2015
Looks like you have some fun work ahead of you Mitch. I guess I better save my tail panel. The lock hole is toast; but maybe someone like you can fix it.
I have heard that the legendary covers and door panels are much better than those from PUI, also more $'s. Chris from Legendary bought the 66 bucket seat covers from my 66 in 2005 to use for patterns to make theirs, they still had the original factory stamps on the backside of the covers.
How does the wind-lace compare to the original stuff?
-- Edited by jim larson on Wednesday 8th of April 2015 05:52:12 PM
Lost in the 60s said
Apr 8, 2015
I didn't open the package to check the texture, but you can see it will need paint, along with the tops and window trim.
dashboard said
Apr 8, 2015
Is it to late to go back to the Summit panel?
Chris R said
Apr 8, 2015
Doesnt AMD make the rear tail panel as well for 66? Might be best to say the heck with it and get a new one of those as well.
Lost in the 60s said
Apr 8, 2015
Chris R wrote:
Doesnt AMD make the rear tail panel as well for 66? Might be best to say the heck with it and get a new one of those as well.
That's what Dashboard is referring to. I have a new AMD tail panel that doesn't fit worth a darn at the quarter panel trunk seal area. It is stamped way too shallow.
I'm going to use the donor on this car and possibly cut the top off the AMD and use it to section the damaged panel on the Malibu. I can't find another donor anywhere for this car...
Lost in the 60s said
May 29, 2015
A fair amount has happened since the last update, but not much progress...
I decided against using the donor panel and sand blasted the original, cut the bottom off of both panels and sectioned the donor piece onto the original.
Mocked in place with clamps and screws and then tacked to hold it together for bench welding.
I added material where the original had been lost to the removal process.
Finished weld and cleanup...
I had to cut off the channels from the donor panel in the background to repair the drilled out ones.
Clamped in place with the quarter channel overlapping.
Chris S said
May 29, 2015
Nice work Mitch. I have been curious as to what your plan was with that panel. It didn't seem as though you were happy with either piece you had.
Nice fab work!
Lost in the 60s said
May 29, 2015
Chris S wrote:
Nice work Mitch. I have been curious as to what your plan was with that panel. It didn't seem as though you were happy with either piece you had.
Nice fab work!
Yeah, that thing was a real pain in the butt. I actually had 3 panels at one time. I sent the repro back to Summit for credit and cut up the one from CA to repair the original.
Lost in the 60s said
Jun 2, 2015
Today I took the tail panel outside and went over it again with the sand blaster....for the LAST Friggin' time. I then painted it with Eastwood 2K epoxy primer in a can. It turned out quite nice until a bug decided to land in the wet paint...
While that was drying, I did the last clean up and weld thru primer prep on the car.
Then I put it in place with drill screws and started the final fit.
I had noticed the trunk gap was wider at the back while doing other fitting and wasn't happy with it.
I used a ratchet strap to pull the sides in.
I tack welded it with the strap on and then test fit the extensions again.
I gained enough to make the gap better but spent another hour getting the sides of the quarters pushed out to match the housings again. No pics of that frustration...
Once I was reasonably happy with all the alignments, I welded that sucker in.
jim larson said
Jun 2, 2015
I can't remember where I saw it, but some guys were doing a restoration a 69 camaro. They correct gaps by adding some kind a material to the gap and then filling the rest is a poly, then they pulled out the material that they used to get the correct gap, block sanded and paint. They did this on a trunk lid.
Lost in the 60s said
Jun 17, 2015
I got up the determination to do some seam sealing today. I knew it wasn't going to be fun and it didn't let me down...
I got a gallon of W&G remover yesterday and went over everything one last time.
The new gun is actually too large and bulky to maneuver much in the wheel house. I had to use a bondo spreader to smooth the sealer out some. I had to load the sealer on the spreader to get it in the tight areas. Looks like a kindergartener did it...
Once it's dried well, I'm going to spray undercoating in there, so I'm hoping that hides the sealer.
I still had half the tube left after doing both wells, so I moved into the trunk. I used an acid brush to knock down the heavy areas and to get into the tight spots. Looks better than the wells.
I finally ran out of sealer and could quit...
There is still more to do around the quarter to tail panel and under the floor at the trunk drops but it's a lot closer to going back together now.
While I was doing the sealing, the UPS man car in the door with my new rear deck panel from Legendary. This one is punched for 2 speakers instead of the original 1. I now have the other one for sale.
That's how i roll (so to speak) too, sounds like a good plan.
Hopefully i will be able to make the Feb. meeting and get a up close look at the car.
Got your message. I need to check my schedule then will get back to you.
John and I have gotten a little further on the car, although it has been slow going.
I did the last rust repair to the floor pan/inner wheel house.
Again, I put the good remnants of the outer house to use and reunited them with the car, albeit in a slightly different location...
All done and ready for the outer house.
We mocked up the house and quarter for the umpteenth time and I finally decided to weld it on.
Then moved on to the trunk drop. It entailed another hour of fitting and prepping to fit good enough. I had to cut the thing apart to get a good fit. I HATE these things...
I still have the misalignment of the floor/drop/outer house to deal with.
I fashioned an extension panel to fill the gap out of, you guessed it, the outer house remnant...
The extension is welded to the floor but I can't weld it to the drop until we fit the quarter again to be certain the angle of the drop is correct.
Back from vacation and back on the car today.
I needed to deal with the trunk pan at the right wheel house before installing the quarter skin. I had cut it in 2 places to reshape it to fit better.
I turned the amps down and the wire speed up on the mig and filled it in.
It looks pretty good now...
Next...
I missed the "after" pic...:drunk:
I got the quarter skin all fitted, flanged, sanded and prepped for install. It's ready for welding.
I decided to try my hand at welding the quarter on today. I started by trial fitting the extension housing one last time and wasn't happy with the alignment of the body line. I released the clamps and moved it down 1/16th and the alignment is better. Clamped it all up and put a bunch more screws on to hold the new panel up tight to the body. There were now 31 screws over 8 linear feet.
Round 1 of tack welding and removing the screws.
I saw there was a minor misalignment at the bottom and left that loose to see if I can push it out a little from inside.
I quit counting how many times I went over this tack welding but after 1 1/2 hours, it was done as much as I was going to do today. 8 feet of weld...1/8th inch at a time...
A half hour of grinding and it's ready for the next round of welding in the places I missed.
For better or worse, it's part of the car now...
Put in a few more hours today. I wasn't looking forward to the next step on the quarter panel install. I needed to weld on the flange inside the quarter window structure. Looks pretty tight for getting the mig nozzle and hose in there.
First, I reached in with a screw driver and nudged the lower corner out better.
Then I reached in and welded almost blind. I would line up the hole and then couldn't really see well once I pulled the trigger. It actually came out quite well.
Hmmm....too much glare to see detail, but the jam seam is done now.
Then onto welding it to the outer wheel house lip. I'm not happy about the gap at the bottom of the wheel house to rocker, so I left that for now. I'll probably get OCD and make a small filler panel for it...
Most of the trunk drop is welded too. There is a still a 4" square section I need to fit and weld in at the front.
John comes over tomorrow and we'll slice up the other side and get started on replacing/patching the outer wheel house.
I also need to make a template for the Super Sport emblem holes before we cut the whole panel off.
Stay tuned....more fun to come...
-- Edited by Lost in the 60s on Monday 16th of February 2015 04:16:05 PM
John and I started the day by doing exploratory surgery on the left wheel well. I thought I might be able to save the original inner brace on that side, but it wasn't to be. It was rusted out too badly to save.
So we proceeded to butcher away. We have gotten much faster with cutting un-wanted parts off now...
The inner half of the wheel house has so much rust damage that I am getting a new one and sectioning in a lot of the back half to save time patching and end up with a cleaner repair.
Mitch, I've decided this is the most extensive 'on frame' restoration I've seen. I think you are just a few body mount bolts away from the rotisserie, but appreciate the work you are doing with the body on the car!
So, let me spend your money and why don't you go ahead and install mini-tubs now while you have the open access? That way you can get those 20's under it that I know you love so much versus the stock look...
I went to Century Colleges open house last night and applied for the auto body course next fall, so there probably won't be any heavy duty tear downs next winter.
I'm assuming as an instructor, right? I think you would be awesome doing that with your experience and patience.
That was also my first thought.
After running to Isanti this morning, I didn't have a lot of time left for the car but I HAD to see if the inner house was going to be a decent match to the car. It didn't match up with the repro outer house I have but I wasn't too concerned as I would only be using parts of both and I would "persuade" them to get along.
I started with the filthy, nasty job of cleaning the old under coating out of the well. I started with the long barrel air chisel. This has a speed control that lets me turn it down to an idle, where you can almost counts the hits. It works really well to knock the hardened sealer, loose paint and rust scale off AS LONG as I don't hit the trigger too hard or stay in one place for more than a couple beats. If I screw up, it WILL hammer a hole so fast, my eyes can't keep up.
I forgot to get a pick of the crap on the floor. Huge mess and WEAR a good dust mask. The dust from this and the next step are terrible. My plastic safety glasses attract dust and after the 10 minutes of using the chisel, I couldn't see out of them.
Then I used the Eliminator to scrape off the remains of under coating, sealer, loose paint and rust scale.
NOW, I'm finally ready to do something fun. I stopped at Northern in Forest Lake and picked up another burn blanket, as I will be cutting the house from the outside with the plasma.
Then I marked the house where I wanted to cut it and proceeded to make a much larger hole...
Laid the cut off in the new house, gave myself a good 1/2" margin and marked it for cutting.
I did cut more off the old house on the car and reshape the new piece a little. It didn't want to follow the curve of the floor very well, but a couple vise grips convinced it to cooperate. It is actually a pretty good fit and will be fairly straightforward to prep and weld on from here. For those wondering, this took 2 hours. It will likely be another hour and a half to have it welded on and ready for the next piece.
-- Edited by Lost in the 60s on Wednesday 18th of February 2015 04:32:36 PM
Not a lot got done today. John came over around 12:30 and I put him to work doing the grunt work of prepping the inner patch panel while I cleaned the shop for tomorrow. He did a good job and it's all ready for install. He punched about 60 holes for plug welding and then sanded off the EDP and primed it with the copper weld thru.
Then he cleaned up the raw edge from the plasma, sanded all the old paint and undercoating off and primed that too.
John and I got back on the car today.
I welded the inner house patch on.
Then we cut off the rest of the quarter to what will be left to weld to. I cut inside the door jam this time to eliminate the vertical seam on the out side.
We fit the skin and I'm VERY happy that we left the front edge on this skin. I wish I had done the other side this way. The seam will be hidden in the door jam.
I'm super happy with the gap and alignment. These AMD skins are a really good product.
I decided to cut the patch for the outer half of the wheel house and see how that fit too.
I drew a line and in 60 seconds with the plasma, had the part cut out.
I set that in the quarter and it will need more trimming and fitting, but is very close already.
Spent a few hours fitting the outer wheel house and trunk drop. The outer looked fairly close just throwing it in yesterday, but I know better than to think it will line up easily...
It was too far forward and it took major "convincing" to get to move 1/2" rearward. I marked where it met the original and then added the 1" of tape to cut off the extra, so I wasn't fighting that too.
I didn't get any pics of the fitting process...:drunk:
Then I put the skin back on and fitted the trunk drop. I had this fitting good with the original quarter, but of course, it didn't line up with the new one. It took another hour of wrangling, but it does fit pretty nice now and is all prepped and ready to weld on.
After wrestling with the outer house and drop, I was able to get the skin to pull in and align with the forward half of the wheel opening. Hard to see in the pic, but I'm pleased with the final result.
Little update on the progress.
Trunk drop welded on and the welds ground down.
Outer wheel house section ready to weld on.
And done
Final trim of the skin and flanging.
I thought I was ready to install the skin today and was sanding the paint off the rocker below it and found pin holes from rust inside.
Too close to the quarter seam to leave it for later, so I cut it out. It continued under the quarter flange too.
I just happened to have a rocker lay-over repair panel and cut out a repair section and backing plates.
I also made a backer to continue the support up to the top of the skin for welding.
At last, on to final fit and prep for welding the skin.
Round one of tack welding. It was 4 pm and I wasn't in the mood to weld it all today, so I have something to do tomorrow.
Not happy today. I welded the left quarter on but the seam is very wavy. I even took more time than the right side and it's worse...:drunk:
I am happy that I seamed the front in the door jam. That will look great.
Got it welded to the wheel house too. Still need to get inside the quarter structure and weld it to the rocker and then the trunk drop.
Into every build a little"Bondo" must fall.
Looking good Mitch
-- Edited by BLyke on Friday 6th of March 2015 05:25:59 AM
Since I wasn't coming up with a clever way to push the quarter wrinkles out, I moved on to the tail panel. I have an AMD that initially looked very accurate. I wish I had inspected it closer before I removed the original. The seal channel on the repro isn't even close. Way to shallow and undefined to fit with the quarter panel. I was pretty disgusted with that and ordered an original cut-off out of CA.
So here it sits, waiting for a part.
I got the tail panel last week. Lots of "extra" to remove.
4 HOURS and 78 spot welds later, it is free of all the clutter. UNFORTUNATELY, the entire rear facing surface has many dents and filler applied. I will be sand blasting it and trying to iron out the wrinkles better before install.
It does fit the channels like it should but the left side is a bit low with the lid down. I will adjust the bottom flange to raise the left up a little.
I started to sand blast the tail panel and quickly ran into bondo over the ENTIRE surface. I had to stop and grind it off with an abrasive wheel. It was 3/16ths thick in many places...
All but the left 6 inches is wrinkled...
The lock hole was smashed and somewhat pushed out and then filled with bondo. The previous "body person" even ground thru the panel in a couple places. In reality, this panel is scrap but I will have to save it somehow.
I bought some nylon PDR punches and shrinking discs to help with the ironing.
After MUCH hammer and dolly work, I had 2 areas that were oil canning. I hammered them to the outside and hit them with the shrinking disc and water and they pulled right back and tightened up. The disc does work good but it would take a miracle to get all the wrinkles out of this panel. It is good enough to finish with a skim coat now, instead of almost a 1/4" of filler.
I got a visit from UPS today...
Yet to come are the door panels and carpet. They shipped a couple days after this.
Looks like you have some fun work ahead of you Mitch. I guess I better save my tail panel. The lock hole is toast; but maybe someone like you can fix it.
I have heard that the legendary covers and door panels are much better than those from PUI, also more $'s. Chris from Legendary bought the 66 bucket seat covers from my 66 in 2005 to use for patterns to make theirs, they still had the original factory stamps on the backside of the covers.
How does the wind-lace compare to the original stuff?
-- Edited by jim larson on Wednesday 8th of April 2015 05:52:12 PM
Doesnt AMD make the rear tail panel as well for 66? Might be best to say the heck with it and get a new one of those as well.
That's what Dashboard is referring to. I have a new AMD tail panel that doesn't fit worth a darn at the quarter panel trunk seal area. It is stamped way too shallow.
I'm going to use the donor on this car and possibly cut the top off the AMD and use it to section the damaged panel on the Malibu. I can't find another donor anywhere for this car...
A fair amount has happened since the last update, but not much progress...
I decided against using the donor panel and sand blasted the original, cut the bottom off of both panels and sectioned the donor piece onto the original.
Mocked in place with clamps and screws and then tacked to hold it together for bench welding.
I added material where the original had been lost to the removal process.
Finished weld and cleanup...
I had to cut off the channels from the donor panel in the background to repair the drilled out ones.
Clamped in place with the quarter channel overlapping.
Nice work Mitch. I have been curious as to what your plan was with that panel. It didn't seem as though you were happy with either piece you had.
Nice fab work!
Yeah, that thing was a real pain in the butt. I actually had 3 panels at one time. I sent the repro back to Summit for credit and cut up the one from CA to repair the original.
Today I took the tail panel outside and went over it again with the sand blaster....for the LAST Friggin' time. I then painted it with Eastwood 2K epoxy primer in a can. It turned out quite nice until a bug decided to land in the wet paint...
While that was drying, I did the last clean up and weld thru primer prep on the car.
Then I put it in place with drill screws and started the final fit.
I had noticed the trunk gap was wider at the back while doing other fitting and wasn't happy with it.
I used a ratchet strap to pull the sides in.
I tack welded it with the strap on and then test fit the extensions again.
I gained enough to make the gap better but spent another hour getting the sides of the quarters pushed out to match the housings again. No pics of that frustration...
Once I was reasonably happy with all the alignments, I welded that sucker in.
I can't remember where I saw it, but some guys were doing a restoration a 69 camaro. They correct gaps by adding some kind a material to the gap and then filling the rest is a poly, then they pulled out the material that they used to get the correct gap, block sanded and paint. They did this on a trunk lid.
I got up the determination to do some seam sealing today. I knew it wasn't going to be fun and it didn't let me down...
I got a gallon of W&G remover yesterday and went over everything one last time.
The new gun is actually too large and bulky to maneuver much in the wheel house. I had to use a bondo spreader to smooth the sealer out some. I had to load the sealer on the spreader to get it in the tight areas. Looks like a kindergartener did it...
Once it's dried well, I'm going to spray undercoating in there, so I'm hoping that hides the sealer.
I still had half the tube left after doing both wells, so I moved into the trunk. I used an acid brush to knock down the heavy areas and to get into the tight spots. Looks better than the wells.
I finally ran out of sealer and could quit...
There is still more to do around the quarter to tail panel and under the floor at the trunk drops but it's a lot closer to going back together now.
While I was doing the sealing, the UPS man car in the door with my new rear deck panel from Legendary. This one is punched for 2 speakers instead of the original 1. I now have the other one for sale.