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

9 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

I think i see light at the end of the tunnel with this rust replacement...

I started out today welding the seams on my rear deck hinge panel in the window channel area on both sides. When i fit this panel a few of my gaps were bigger than i liked so i cut a few strips of metal so less heat would be needed to weld them together.

I also worked on on the last piece of trunk weather strip channel i was missing. First i cleaned up the area and cut a repair piece out of my donor and trimmed to fit. Once in position it was welded and ground.

Just bought this bit for ripping sheet metal with my air hammer. I tried it out on the donor and i was very surprised how clean of a cut it made, very little if any distortion to the surounding metal. This will come in handy on my quaters.

Continued

Started tacking the package tray to my hinge panel, I felt like i was playing connect the dots LOL. i just kept spot welding until i had one continuous weld across the panel. After the welding followed lots of grinding i still have a few spots to reweld on Sunday, But for a thin piece of tin it turned out pretty good.

I had a friend stop by and he was nice enough to give me a hand to hang my drivers side door. By now it was starting to get dark so i closed up shop for the day. Thanks for checking out my work..... Rob

9-12-2010

A little more headway....

I started out the day stripping my rear deck lid latch bracket and getting it welded into the car. And to my surprise my son came out and offered to help with the car after ten months of working on it. So i gave him the heat gun and a scraper to remove the black rustproofing from the bottom of the rear seat back. He also vaccumed out the interior of all of the dust and grinding fragments.

While i stripped the rear window channel, and the topside of the drivers side quater panel, getting it ready for some epoxy.

I also sanded the roof for a second time to remove all of the small rust stains from all of the grinding that i have been doing lately. I ground the underside of the weld on the package tray getting it ready for a little primer. And let the primer fly.... LOL I reshot areas on the trunk pan basically reshot the whole back end of the car and the roof.

Heres a few pics of the weld seams on the topsides of the quaters where i welded in the rear deck lid hinge panel. Its hard to see it was getting dark out but they shouldnt need much filler at all to smooth out.

Next up on the to do list will be outer wheel houses and quater skins. Getting real close to finishing the metal work on the shell now, its been ten months since this project has been started. Thanks for stopping bye to check out my work. Rob

9-16-2010

Thursdays second wind....

After work today i had camaro fever and needed to do something to the car  I dug my deck lid out of storage and began to stip the paint from the top side. It took a little longer than expected and the day light was coming to and end.

So once the top side was finished i wanted to test fit it on the car with the new hinge panel that i just installed. I just screwed the bolts in finger tight and didnt adjust anything. I just wanted to make sure everything lined up pretty good. The deck lid will have to come back off to strip the inside of paint and to prime both sides before getting bolted up tight. I treated the bare metal with a rust treatment so it will not flash rust on me before the weekend.Heres a few pics of the deck lid on the car, little by little its starting to resemble a car agian 

9-18-2010

More rust gone.....

I began marking my initial cut line to remove the drivers side quater skin. Once i had it marked i began to cut. I was just trying to remove the bulk of the metal and will have to trim a little more when fitting the skin. The new bit i bought for my air hammer made short work of the cutting. Heres a few pics of that work.

Once the quater was removed i began to remove the outer wheel house, first cutting just outside the seam where it meets the inner skirt. After the skirt was out i began removing the inside edge of the outer wheel house where it was welded to the inner, and continued removing all edges of the quater that needed to be taken off. While i was in there i figured i might as well remove all of the undercoating from the inner skirt. I used a heat gun and scraper then went over it with a wire wheel.

Just wanting to see how everything was going to fit i positioned the the new skirt, and quater skin on the car. Doesnt look to bad for repop parts, i think i can make it work. However out of two rear deck lids niether is in good enough shape to use. They both have rust in the seam under the spoiler. So i guess when i have the funds i will have to locate a rust free decklid  It looks as if the water was leaking in around the bolt holes for the spoiler on both of them.