Well we pick up our story already in progress but I hope that by forcing myself to post some pictures I will be motivated to keep going.

I bought the car may years ago and have yet to truely enjoy it. I have started to restore it several times and always get distracted but this weekend the baby (and his mother) is out of town and we have a three day weekend so lets see how far I can get.

Here is where we are starting this morning.

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Is that the only bad area?

Unfortunately no. The floors will have to be fixed as well as some other more minor rust repair

Post as many picts as you can....I like to see the action.

Dave

OK I took a step backward. I removed the dogleg panel that I already put in so I could better access the outside wheel well.

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I am going to sandblast the inside of the areas I can get to but what should I spray/paint onto the bare metal before I weld it back up? I have some weld thru primer but something tlls me this is not the answer. Should I run out and try to find some ospho or something else?

Gonna try POR15. Off to AA and Home Depot for some other supplies.

I'm not sure I'd try and weld through POR 15, but I am a big fan. For the places you can't get to after welding I'd use a weld through primer, weld up the steel, clean the outside VERY well and hit it with POR 15

If you need any inspiration take a look at my thread. In the US you guys have a larger choice of starter cars etc, anyway I am sentimentally attached to my car and cannot wait to get started putting it back together. Today the floors got welded we are back on target. I wish you all the best with your resto just keep going it will be worth it in the end.


Roman

Very inspiring!! I'll have to read it much more throughly this evening.

Well, My supplies run is over. George gave me some POR15 so between that and the weld-thru (and some more cut-off wheels) I should be able to make some more progress.

Back to work,

We are all amateurs till at some point we decided to jump in and take on the task and learn from it Will be a great experience - best of luck to you! This forum has a lot of helpful people on here!

So here is a pic of the car a few years ago before I got the bright idea to fix the rust. The pic is from the Georgia Tech Auto Show.

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And this is how far I got today.

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The plan is to sandblast a little more tomorrow, then clean up all the media and paint as much as I can with POR15 and while that drys I'll try to size the replacement panel.

Don't!
I'm afraid, POR15 does not work as advertised ...


I have had better luck with Metal Ready or Ospho and then a good primer over that once it's dry.
Andy

Just out of curiousity what went wrong? My search indicates that POR has problems for future paint application and in abusive environments (wheel wells, etc.) But tht it might be Ok inside the longs

Inside the longs, I use zinc paint to act as a sacrificial anode to prevent rust, and then top the paint with cavity wax (aka Cosmoline). Cavity wax never really hardens other than on the exterior surface, is waterproof, and contains rust inhibitors.

Whre can you find that stuff? Do you go to an auto paint store or pepboys or online?

Thanks,

How much pitting is too much pitting. Obviously more needs to go on the left but if I take more off the top I am into the outer suspention attachment bracket

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Thanks,

If you come across spot welds (in appearance) that are gold in color when you grind them is that a braze? or was the last owner using some othe welding metal?

Can you weld to it or should I cut it out?

I didn't get as far as I wanted today but when the mosquitos attack you have to go in,

I start the day with this

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and finished it up with this. It isn't all the way cut out and I have not started welding yet but I'm pretty proud of it so far.

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If it is truely a spot weld and is gold ( brazed ) it is not factory. Post a pic so we can see exactly what you are talking about. As steel gets hot it will turn goldish before it gets blue. Perhaps you just got the spot hot when grinding or drilling

If it's brass you can't weld to it. Remove it. Photos are always good.

You can see the gold in this picture just above the hole

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Someone brazed in a battery tray at some point. Cut out above it to get clean metal.

Scotty B, Thanks for the help! Those spots have been bugging me since I uncovered them almost a year ago. I'll cut them out in the morning.

I only got a small amount of time to work on the car this weekend but I just about have the inner wheel well cut out. It just needs a little more trimming.

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I am back at it this weekend. I received the jack point replacement piece from Restoration Design. Does anyone know what is on the inside of the panel. It looks like a paint of aome sort but it is silver and rough. It is not on the exposed side. My guess is weld through primer or etching primer. Here is the part mocked up. I plan to weld it tomorrow hopefully.

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Beyond that I made a sleeve for the joint betweent the mid long and the rear long. I really don't like how every replacemet panel come together in a 6" area at the most strained point on the car so hopfully this will help with that. First a few pictures of the pattern and pattern transfer.

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And finally the final part. It needs a little more shaping and the weld look like crap but overall I am happy with it. I will need to prime it as best I can and spot it in.

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please tell me you have braced that car WELL ??!!!! You've removed alot of structural metal AND have added a fair amoutn of heat. That's more than enough to make it twist.

I have the front half supported one a frame and the trunk up on some screw jackstands that I made. I have been taking measurements and it now a little straighter than it started...I Hope

You really should stop and make a solid brace within the door frame. Won't take long, just make it go from the hinge mount(s) to the latch or the seat belt mount. You can just tack weld a piece of pipe in place if you don't want to spend a lot of time on it. You're playing with fire IMHO

[quote name='obscurity' date='Jul 4 2010, 12:08 PM' post='1339195']
--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(scotty b @ Jul 4 2010, 04:00 PM) </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
please tell me you have braced that car WELL ??!!!! You've removed alot of structural metal AND have added a fair amoutn of heat. That's more than enough to make it twist.
[/quote]

I Hope
[/quote]


My dad used to tell me

" you can hope in one hand and sh*t in the other, tell me which one gets filled first"

know whut I mean Vern ?

I have actually gotten mixed recommendations on this one from quite a few people. I share your concern, and I actually already built a brace from the hinge to the latch and had it in for a while but took it out because I couldn't tell if the body was flexing only if the distance between the hinge and the latch was constant. With the door in I can tell how the gap is working while I am welding.

I have thought about making a solid brace that connects to two points on each side and has some x bracing to keep it all straight.

Just a couple of quick thoughts as I sat out in my garage thinking about what needed to happen next...

When I began working on the project I was terrified to cut into the car despite the rust clearly cutting its own way out. Now after months of slowly moving forward I find myself almost gleefully willing to cut more metal off but terrified to start welding it back up. I think it is partially a fear of warping the car in the effort but also that if I weld it up now it makes it much harder to go back and fix anything I may have forgotten (or worse yet done wrong) Its times like these I would love to have some old time expert who swings by the house every once and a while for coffee and conversation who can tell me where I'm going to run into problems. I guess the task for the week is to steel myself against the idea of welding a substantial part of the long next weekend.

My thoughts are you have blown off the best info provided so far. If you don't brace the tub you will not be happy with the outcome. If someone told you it doesn't need bracing the've never done it with this much removed at one time. THERE IS NO WAY that tub can stay straight while it is being heated and cooled. Every time a bead is put in it will shrink some as it cools, the idea is to limit it as much as possible. If you think it is cut up now wait till you try to straighten it out. But it will be a great story so try your best and lets see how you end up. The door gap and the twist, think about it. A support under the middle of the long and the center tunnel will also help. How long has it been suspended between the outer supports? Try putting a 8ft 2x4 on two supports at the ends and let it stay there for a month and see what happens. Metal is only stronger but it still does the same thing only less.

I forgot, the time to build the brace was before you cut all the pieces out. Somehow you are going to need to do some real close measuring on the top gap and the door gap top and bottom, and the side to side diagonal before you start to make sure it doesn't change as you proceed. You can put a straight edge on the outside of the doors to see if either side is out from the fender or quarter on the outside.

Good luck and I hope it works out but you are in a pretty interesting spot at this point. You do seem to have some metal working skills though so maybe this will prove to everyone that has done it, it really doesn't need bracing if you are good enough.

I didn't mean to sound like I was not paying attention to scotty b's advice. I very much value the advice he has given me. He clearly knows what he is doing. Its obvious to me there is alot of force at work in this fix after reading Jeff Hail's account of breaking his turnbuckle in the process so the car could very easily move on me. I want to either make a brace that can not possibly move or I want to be sure I know when it moves so I can back up and take another route. It would be ideal if I could figure out a way to do both.

So far all my measurements have indicated that nothing has moved in a bad way. I was able to take a little twist out of the that seemed to already be there.

Like I said that was not my intent. In fact I just spent an hour in the garage trying to figure out how to both put in a brace and tell what is going on with the door gap.

Obviously I don't express myself terribly well with the internet.

This thread shows braces running from the upper seat belt attach point to the inner cowl. This method will allow you to keep the doors on and constantly check the gaps. I am copying this approach on my restoration. The only modification I may do is to weld 1X1 steel tubing to the inner cowl (instead of flat plate) to get a little more clearance when the door closes.

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...76791&st=20

Best of luck to you...I have very similar rust issues.

Put the braces in and make sure the door closes easily and that it doesn't pull the jamb around as it latches. I would brace the door gap at the top and the bottom with the top gap equal on both sides. Make sure the door is perfect at it's front edge first. Loose hinges won't be very helpful either. Stop after short welds and either cool it or let it cool enough to put your hand on it.

After several "recomendations" I took a step back and rebuilt the brace I had earlier so it could be installed like Jeff Hail's brace with the door on the car. Thank You for everyones urging and Saigon71's directing me back to Jeff Hail's very inspiring build thread. Here are a couple of pictures of the main diagonal. As soon as I finish a little welding at the botton I can install a second brace to the bottom of the latch jamb. I have set it up so it will just bypass the passenger side door handle.

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I, too, have dug into the hell hole and related rustoration. My advice is use a beefier brace... when you start really welding on the structural stuff, you'll put a lot of stress on the brace.

How big do you recommend? It is a little unclear from the picture but the steel is a small channel so is much wider than it is tall. I thought about welding an angle or somthing to the bottom of it to reduce its slenderness ratio but I was thinking the second brace would help a lot. The second brace will have to take a much higher axial load than the first since it will be parallel to the long and just above it so it has no lever advantage. I was a little concerned that if I make the brace too stiff and the car shrinks that I will break though the fire wall before the brace bends. My thought was it might be better if the brace breaks just before the car does.

Here is my build blog:

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?act...f=2&t=83031

Look at post #17, which describes the braces that I built. They're sturdy and cheap, and still permit you to open/close the doors.

Strawman,

Your thread is impressive and I will look at ways to beef up my brace. In looking at your thread I noticed you are using a rotisserie before the hell hole is completed. Did you have any problems due to flexing when the car is off the ground and spanning that far when you started cutting out steel inthe hell hole?

Nope, everything seems lined up fine, based on the jigs I built before cutting in. Also, I didn't cut out too much metal at one time. If you'll look at my blog, I did the inner portion of the long (in the engine bay) first, and then the outer section. But I honestly won't know for sure until I get the car off the rotisserie and back on the ground in the coming weeks... and who's to say my car wasn't twisted before I started? Nonetheless, I tried to limit my exposure to chassis changes by bracing the car well.

Geoff

Not as much progress as I would like this weekend but I have start to prep the inner wheel well for final install and I have fitted the sleeve inside the long a little tighter so I can spot weld it in later after the ineer wheel well is in. I have also begun welding the jack sleeve to the inner wheel well. I don't think I can do it while it is in the car without cutting the outer wheel well partially off.

I would like to take a momment to pat the guy who invented clecos on the back. I picked up a pack from Eastwood and used them to hold the sleeve in place. They are truely a wonder tool.

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Finally got a chance to weld some more and so far the car has not warped at all but I have a ways to go (i.e. the inner long) Here are a few pictures. Of the inner wheel well.

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And a few more of upcoming challenges. This one is the drivers's side long. This one should be challenging since no makes the part.

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And this one is the center tunnel. Its not as bad as the picture looks but it is rusted through in places.

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Hey John,

If you think no one makes the jackplate and tube, go to Restoration Design in Canada. They are easy to google. I just bought 2. But, one has to have someone fabricate the round piece to hold the jacktube before you put the plate on over it and have it seam welded closed.

RD has the only correctly thick plate. I looked. And I think the Long you show may not be shot at all, but I can only see the jack tube area in the top pic.

I cut both my jack plates/tubes out in 2 evenings. My car is ready for welding. I abated the rust with Marine Clean and then Metal Ready and sprayed weld through Wurth's primer before the body shop gets it with the parts.

I have seen worse. I have owned worse. Guys here have brought back worse.

I would be more concerned about the tunnel. Your work is excellent, so you are way ahead of my skill level.

Good luck!

John

Spent a little more time last weekend and got the inner long (dogleg) welded into place. Needs a little more work and the welds need cleaning up but it is getting closer. I also have start opening up the drivers long. Does anyone have a method to look at the length of the long to check for interior rust without taking off the outer long. I hate to drill out all those perfectly good factory spot welds just to check for rust.

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Hey , by any chance did you buy this car from AA years ago? I think I have the sales pictures that AA sent me when I was looking for a new one. I think I still have them in a drawer also. Had to have been over 15 years ago I got the pics.
Keep up the good work.