Aaron's 76 Type LT Project

11 minute(s) of a 383 minute read

I got the new piece cut and the door area primed for welding, which will take some time since I need to keep the door metal from warping.

The rough template taped in place to outline the inner edge where the metal piece will fit against



I taped a little wood dowel to a pencil so I could trace the edge onto my template. The template was intentionally larger than necessary for this reason



Here's the result of tracing the edge. Once I cut the new template I will have a nice, true line to transfer onto my sheet metal



Here's the new metal piece I will weld in place and eventually grind down to get the door gap correct. I put two small relief cuts so the metal would contour to the crease in the door.



The door stripped down to bare metal. Of course I uncovered some rust/pitting. I decided to cut it out since I will have the metal piece as a backer.



The rust is not too bad but I won't take any chances.



The door primed in 3M weldable primer ready for the metal piece to go in, which I will do ASAP

7-20-2014

So you recall the bottom-rear corner of my pass side door had some rust rot, so I cut out the affected area to replace



I cut two pieces to weld together since this area has two pieces of metal on top of one another. I used my pneumatic hole punch to create some welding holes. I coated the mating surfaces with weldable primer.



Two brought together to become one



The welds ground down. Don't mind the mis-matched shapes, the two pieces were both oversized and the edges were ground down



This worked out well since it gave me a bottom edge to weld against as I closed up the door gap



Just like new!

The other tall order of the weekend was closing up the door to 1/4 gap.  

Here you can see what I have to do. The patch on the bottom is close to the gap I want. The gap gradually tapered to the correct dimension as you got to the middle crease of the door.



Here is a shot after adding some metal with the MIG welder. This whole process took a while since I had to take my time welding on new material



Fast forward to today and the edge looks WAY better. I have some clean up welds to do but this is really close to the gap I want. I will have to add a small amount of filler to this area but that is expected

7-26-2014

In between working on the doors I installed the tulip panel and trunk lid, with the real goal of getting the spoiler installed so I can get the holes drilled. It felt good to put something on the car, even if just temporarily. The gaps look good, which was nice to see for a change.

I plan on using the technique of placing modeling clay where the studs are to mark the hole locations. This will allow me to get an accurate fit (in theory).

Thanks man. Pretty soon the rest of the sheet metal will be going on to get it all sized up. That should be loads of fun.

I removed the studs in the spoiler pieces and got the pieces fitted on the 1/4s and trunk lid. I have to get the holes drilled eventually so might as well cross it off the list.

Once the pieces were fit I marked the edges with a pencil. Then I will apply modeling clay under the stud locations and then drill the holes.

7-28-2014

I first read about it in a thread in the Body forum but have since seen others discuss doing it in their project threads.

The idea is pretty simple. You first mark the edge of your spoiler on your trunk lid and 1/4 panels. This will allow you to place the spoiler back in the correct location when you are pressing it into the clay. Next mark the general area of where the spoiler studs go. Then apply some clay in the stud locations.

You need to remove the studs from the spoiler, which can be done by locking two nuts together and then removing the stud.

This is what it looks like when you put the clay on the body. The clay sticks well to the body. Make sure the clay is thick enough to capture an imprint of the stud hole locations.



Then you will see something like this. I drilled small holes first and then removed the clay and slowly increased the hole size. I stopped at 1/8" and will increase the hole size as-needed

8-4-2014

I got some smaller items done this weekend, nothing Earth shattering. I got the trunk drop off sections epoxied where I welded to the 1/4 panel and covered with seam sealer. I also got the studs for the rear window trim clips drilled.  

I also began working on the dent at the rear of the pass door. I have to address this so I can make sure I pull the door out properly before I begin fitting the front sheet metal.

I applied some dry guide coat to show me the dent, which I could visibly see, but this helped me determine the full area. Basically it's the entire bottom half of the door about 6-9" from the back edge. Luckily the back edge looks unaffected, so I can use the back edge as a guide.



A view from above



I busted out the stud welder and was ready to pull the dent some and.....the sliding hammer puller wouldn't play nicely. I could not for the life of me get the puller tool onto the studs. So I am either doing something wrong (doubtful) or the stud puller is broken (likely). It's a Harbor Freight tool so my bet is on a defective stud puller tool.

8-12-2014

I got filler applied to the back sections of both doors in order to smooth out the surface alignment between the 1/4 panels and the doors. I need to snap more pics tonight but here are a few pics of what I worked on over the weekend. Getting these doors done will be huge as I can then move on to putting the front sheet metal on for alignment and then onto doing the shell bodywork and paint. I will get the filler on the doors shaped but will finalize everything with the doors off the car. I only needed to get the general shape done for alignment purposes.

The driver side door had a fairly good size dent in terms of area. I was able to pull it out a bit with the stud puller to minimize the depth and then feather the filler out over a larger area. As I suspected, the previous owner really gooped on the filler, which was unnecessary. The back edge of the door was at the same level as the area to the left of the dent.



You can see how far the door was pushed inward due to the filler being built up so much previously. I was able to move the door out quite a bit but still needed to add some filler along the back portion to smooth things out so it looked correct.



Here you can see the scope of the dent from above and then after applying filler and sanding

thanks for the kind words guys, I really want to turn this next corner so I can move on to the next major step of the project. I should have the back areas of both door done in the next few days after some more minor sanding and feathering. I am being OCD about these doors (and probably doing things that are a bit odd) since they have a lot of contours to deal with. If anything it's a great challenge for me. I should be able to tackle most any other dent I come across.

Here's the latest pics of the doors. I need to do a little more work but they are really close to having the back areas shaped properly.

I am probably going way overboard, but I added a skim coat of filler along the back area of both doors to get the outer surfaces flush with the 1/4 panel surfaces. I figured it was a good time to do it now with the doors still hung.