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

8 minute(s) of a 308 minute read

Cleaning up some small details...

I started out cleaning up the underside of my weld on the quater for the rear deck hinge panel now that the quater skin was off. Just smoothing it out alittle getting it ready for some epoxy primer.

Now i was able to weld the b-pillar supt to my new rocker while i had access.

Then i started to fit the piece i removed from my hinge panel. It is actually part of the inner rocker and ties into the bottom of the rear deck lid hinge panel. In the first pic the piece is missing. The rest of the pics are of the fitted piece welded into the car. Do to very limited access to the top of this repair it took much longer than i expected and was a royal PITA. Anyhow i did manage to get it all welded in. I still have some grinding to finish it up.I also found two small areas that need to be fixed on the trunk drop off. Once those are fixed i will clean and give a generous coat of epoxy prime to all the hidden metal under the quater. And then begin to inatall the outer skirt and quater skin. Thanks for checking out my work Rob 

9-25-2010

Saturdays Update...

I started by removing two rusty areas in the L/S trunk drop off. One piece i had to bend to fit thre other i removed from the donor. the donor piece was a slightly different but i was able to make it fit. Here are a few shots of that work.

Once the patches were cut and fit they were welded into place and ground.

Then i stripped all of the metal under the quater getting it ready for a bath of primer. Once stripped i also sanded the inside of the rear wheel house and the inside of the quater so they could be primed as well.

while the primer was drying i cleaned the paint gun and a picked up all of my tools. And when the primer was dry to the touch i reattached the skirt to the car with a few self tapping screws.

thanks for checking out my work. Rob

10-10-2010

On light duty

Having run out of epoxy primer, my gas bottle on my welder is just about out, and not having the funds at the moment to purchase these items, I took on a little side work last weekend to help fund my project. Thinking i was still 20 years old i lifted my boat to move it and hurt my back. It was starting to get better during the week and i over did it hurting it even worse. I couldnt go two weekends with no progress on my car so i had to find something to do. I covered this one other time in my thread but i will show all of the steps and chemicals needed to restore your original hardware that came off of your car. First pics are of some rusty hardware needing a little cleaning.

First step is to give the bolts a bath in muriatic acid, which is used in pools. I bought this gallon at a pool store for $5.00. Soak the bolts for approx 5 - 10minutes. Remove and rinse thoroughly. The acid will remove grease and rust but not paint. If no paint is left on your hardware they are ready to be zinc coated. Here are the same rusty bolts cleaned in the acid.

If paint is present pour a little paint remover in a suitable container and remove any paint left. Rinse well with water when finished. If any rust was under the paint a quick dip back in the acid will clean that up. Below is a pic of my trunk latch in some paint remover.

The Zinc Phosphate is mixed with water at a ratio of 4 ounces per gallon of water. It needs to be heated to 190 degrees in a non iron type pan or pot. the pan i used is steel but has a ceramic type coating over the steel. The Zinc will attach to any raw iron its introduced too, And you want the zinc to attach to your hardware not the pot. Just drop your clean nuts and bolts into the heated sollution let them soak for about 10-15 minutes. Remove from the pan and place on a paper towel and rinse them off with W-D40 and wipe clean with another paper towel. Your hardware is now ready to be put back on your car with many years of service before showing any signs of rust. The Zinc Phosphate concentrate costs around $35.00 per bottle. If you use the zinc it will turn your hardware dark grey when finished. You can also use Maganese Phosphate which costs a little more than the zinc and it will turn your hardware black. I used about a half a bottle and did all of the hardware from two cars and still have about half a bottle left. I also stripped one of my door latches and trunk latch and coated them as well. So with a little work you can save yourself a few bucks reatain your original harware which will last longer than the cold coated bolt sold in most of the aftermarket bolt kits. Not counting the paint remover which not much is needed final cost to do two sets was around $40.00 and one full day of labor.

Heres all of the recoated hardware bagged and ready when the time comes to put my 73 back together agian.