73 on a slow road to recovery... by Done Yet?

11 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

Heres a pic of my donor tulip panel.

8-17-2010

How about some weekday progress...

Nothing better than working all day, and when you get home firing up the sandblaster to help relax LOL  I finished cleaning up whats left of my package tray and the panel behind the rear seat.

Once clean i hung it on the cherry picker and wiped her down getting it ready for a little primer.

After mixing the primer and waiting 30 minutes for the indution time i sprayed the panel.

While my prime was drying i cleaned up my tools and my paint gun. After a long day i sure could use one of these and thats just what i did 

Thanks for stoppin bye Rob

8-22-2010

Weekends Work..

Started out good getting the package tray positioned and clamped, and ready for welding. I fired up my welder opened the valve on the argon and the diaghpragm blew out in my regulator  Being a saturday i tried to hunt one down but all of the welding stores close to me were closed. So not a whole lot of progress on saturday. I wound up going to my job and borrowing the regulator off of there welder so i can get this panel welded into place on Sunday.

This morning i began to weld the tray into place. Heres a few pics of my welding in progress.

And here are a few with all of the welds ground down and ready for primer.

More progress to come heres a pic of whats next up on the to do list. thanks for checkin out my work. Rob

8-29-2010

Starting work on the rear trunk hinge panel...

Because i cut this panel very large from the donor it needed a little trimming before starting to fit it to the car. Heres a few shots of the trimming and some of the metal removed.

Once trimmed up i put it in the car for its initial fitting
HOUSTON we have another problem....... This thing was not going into the car by any means the way it is...Take a look

I had no choice but to remove some metal off of this part to get it to fit. First i cut out the rusty pieces from the inner wheel house where it vertically connects to the underside of the hinge panel. Then i removed the same piece off of the r/s of my donor panel. Close but no cigar, still wouldnt fit. I wound up having to remove the other side as well and cut back the support that welds to the vertical portion of the inner wheel house on the r/s.
The first pic is of the metal removed from the donor panel, the next 2 are of the cut areas inside the trunk.

These parts will probably be welded when i do my quater skins giving me more access to the areas that need to be welded, rather than trying to weld from the trunk opening.

Continued hinge panel

Finally got it to drop down into the car, I began to cut grind and fit. This job really required another set of hands. After clamping one side down i would go the other side and start to line it up, and the first side would move. I got plenty of exercise running from one side to the other all day LOL. On one of my cuts to the drivers side i forgot to check and the passenger sided moved and i wound up with a larger gap then i would like at the window channel on the drivers side. I will have to weld in a sliver of metal to tighten it up. Heres a few pics of the fitting process. This took a good part of the day, and this panel was in and out the car probably 25 times, trying to obtain good gaps for welding it back together.

This is where i called it a day, Its real close still needs a grind here or there but all in all im happy with the fit. All measurements taken before removing the rusty original are right on the money.

Thanks for checking out my work.... Rob

9-4-2010

Saturdays Update..

I didnt have time to strip & prime the hinge panel during the week so today i stripped and stripped and sandblasted, and stripped some more, just about all day to get this panel clean. It sure took longer than i expected, the paint was very intact and took some doing to get it removed.Anyhow there was a little surface rust under the paint on the underside of this panel so i treated it with a rust treatment and will prime it tommorrow. Here are a few pics of my stripped panel....

9-5-2010

Small update....

Not even sure if it is post worthy.... I only had a couple of hours car time today. So i prepped and epoxy primed the trunk hinge panel, So i can start welding it into the car tommorrow. I have a few runs in the prime trying to coat around the trunk hinges really well. I will sand out the runs once installed. I dont want to give the rust a fighting chance around these hinges agian. Thanks for stoppin bye Rob  

9-6-2010

Mondays work...

Once my hinge panel was fastened back into place i began to weld it in to its final resting place. I jumped around quite a bit while initially tacking this panel in the car not wanting it to move. Once enough tachs were down i started to remove all of the clamps. heres a few pics of the welding process.

The piece of wood seen in the pic was used to spread the panel to meet the existing metal, and the panel was then welded into place. The welds sucked in just a little along the quater seam but i think with another set of hands and a hammer and dolly i can strech the welds so they will need no more than a 1/16" skim of filler to smooth out. I ground down the quater seams after welding them complete just to see how everything looked so far. Heres how that seam turned out.

I still have more welding and grinding to do on this panel, but the rain came once agian and shut my work down for the day.