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

9 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

after hours frame repair....

This is what ive been working on for the last few days after work. I have a few small areas of outer frame rail that need a little attention. Here are a few pics of those areas.








Here are some of those areas after the bad metal was removed. The inner metal seems to be in real good shape.

Then i used some thin cardboard and made some templates for the patches i need. Once they seemed to fit the openings they were transfered to my donor rail and i began to cut.

After the patches were all cut they were fitted to each area on the frame rail that needs repair. Here are a few shots of the templates i made and the patches. These will probably be welded in place this weekend.



Thanks for checking in on my project. Rob

4-16-2011

I didnt feel like working under the car today so for starters i finished chopping up the donor car to give me a little more work space.



Next up was my steering gear, it was stripped primed and painted.





Then i began to strip the paint off of the rear diff. Once it was all stripped and the springs and hardware removed it was epoxy primed and then topcoated with Imron.







I also glass beaded the spring hardware and stripped both leaf springs and primed and painted those as well. The springs are new Hotchkis leafs that were installed in my donor a while back. They needed a facelift the paint that came on the springs looked like hell.









On Sunday back to work under the car. Im hoping to finish welding in the repair to the frame rail ends, epoxy and topcoat the rear underside from the front spring pearches back. Thanks for checking out my work.

4-17-2011

Sundays work...

Well I guess it was wishfull thinking about getting the rear underside on the car primed and painted today. But i did manage to get both rails finished with the welding and grinding. It sure took longer than i expected to get these patches welded and ground. Its probably just as well they were having a party at the house behind me so painting wouldnt have went over to well.
Here are a few pics of some of the repairs.

4-24-2011

A little progress on the camaro...

Sat morning i got an early start and couldnt make to much noise to early. So i decided to finish coating the rest of my hardware. I didnt realize how much more i had to do, this took a good part of the day



Now it was under the car for me (fun stuff) First i needed to weld the bottom seems of my floor pan install, Then grind, this also took longer than it should do to working over head. heres the welds after being ground down.





And just to clean things up a bit i smoothed out my seem with a little body filler.





And the rest of the day, i spent stripping the rest of the underside of the car and scuffing the bottoms of the new panels that were installed and already had epoxy on them. Pics are hard to show this work but heres a few.





Well the bottom is ready for some primer, so i masked off the dash and firewall to protect it from over spray. And being the car isnt going on a rotissere, i removed the brace i had welded in from one A- pillar to the other at the beginning of this project. I ran out of time to do any painting, maybe after work during the week.
I want to have it in prime before any flash rust starts. Sanding the underside is a job you only want to do one time LOL.



And here one without the brace....

Thats the progress made this weekend thanks for stoppin bye. Rob

4-25-2011

Painting on your back...

With what felt like weeks instaed of days laying under the car stripping and getting it ready for prime. I didnt want to take any chances of rust forming on all of the bare steel on the underside of the car. There was some rain in the forecast and there was no way i wanted to do all of that work for a second time because of rust starting. So after work i climbed under the car and wiped down the complete underside with wax and grease remover while i was waiting for the mixed epoxy's induction time. I climbed under the car starting at the rear trying to spray from all angles to get the primer into all of those nooks and crannies. As hard as it was painting laying on my back, when i was done spraying i went back under the car to make sure i didnt miss anything, All was good couldnt find any missed areas. Im glad that the bottom is all sealed up now. Next a little bit of seam sealer underneath, a quick scuff of the primer and onto the topcoat. That will be up next on my to-do list. Stay tuned....