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Nice recreation...................

Man that looks good!

Good work!

Nice Work!

That looks really good!

Nice job, you make it look simple

Great job!

Good job....I like your car support, jack stands on top of a wood structure.

Dave

:worship:Nice, Very nice, indeed.

Thanks for noticing! If you feel any better about it, the jackstands are in their lowest positions. I also have straps clamping the car down to the wooden platform. The car was leveled using a laser and shimmed at the low corners. This is something I did so that I could easily get into the engine bay when I was redoing the hell hole and reinforcing both suspension consoles.

Everybody asks me how I'm gonna get the car back down.

Very nice work!

Will you inject any kind of rust protection in between all these various layers that you rebuilt or the inside of the box will stay as bare metal?

The inside of the long and the every space I had access to (including up inside the pillar) were Ospho'd and then primered or painted with Rustoleum rattle bomb. The only part that's still bare inside is the box I just installed (plus areas that burned off near the welds). There are two drain holes at the bottom in the factory location and I'm still considering the best way to get some stuff in there.

OK, this is similar to what I'm doing. I'm using epoxy primer, except that the areas where I know will get welded, I mask it of from the paint and then paint it with Weld through primer.

In hollow areas that not accessible, I was thinking of spraying the Eastwood stuff that comes in a can with a flexible wand.

How did you spay Ospho in the longs? Did you have any spray gun or wand? I was thinking of doing this via the oblong holes in the cabin.


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I didn't really have to do any spraying. The longs were both wide open. For the rear suspension console part of the frame, I made a long brush with a coat hanger and Ospho'd the inside of it. Moving forward, anything I built or repaired, I also Ospho'd and then coated as best I could. When you have the car cut apart, you can look inside the channels and you're seeing a lot of bare steel. I was extremely paranoid when I was doing the driver's side of the car and I was trying to get POR-15 everywhere--but then I inevitably had to weld to the other side of the treated steel which burned the stuff off. I suppose the best way is to wait until done and get the spray treatment everywhere you can...but this car lasted as a daily driver for 30+ years before I started on it. I'm not losing sleep about my new metal rusting through soon from the back side. When done this car will see way less bad weather and hopefully NO road salt.

Oh, and my oblong holes in the cabin are gone now. I have also installed an Engman stiffening kit as part of this build.

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No door braces?

Removed once the structural stuff was done. They were square tubing with turnbuckles for adjustment.

If you are welding without the doors in place or the doors braced, you are risking your door gaps. You won't know till you try to put the doors back on either.

Zach

Wow, great job recreating the sheetmetal and repairing the rust damage.

question - was the new sheetmetal custom fabricated, or available as a part that can be ordered online? If fabricated, how did you bend it? Sheetmetal brake?

Agreed. Not pictured in the last photo are the reinforcement bars which have been in place for much of the work. I made them from square tubing with turnbuckles for adjustments as needed. These ran from the upper seatbelt anchors to just behind the heater tubes on tops of the longs. The reason for this configuration was so that the doors could still be mounted/closed. I also kept the top latched in place. When I did the driver side repairs (which were nearly as bad as the passenger side), I kept installing and removing the door to check the gap. It shuts and latches great. Will need tweaked for gap at the front of the door but that issue existed before I started this project according to my original photos.

I had to remove the braces when I installed the longs portions of the Engman kit. That's partly why you see the wooden "strut" under the car below the firewall. That was a safeguard for sagging as well as a gage for any warpage. Yes, I know wood swells and shrinks but I think we're probably only talking about mm's if there's any change.

Hey, thanks a lot.

Unfortunately, a lot of these unique parts are not available so they have to be made.

There may be better ways to do this but I make a 3D template for the part I need. Then I flatten it out and trace it onto 18 gage steel stock. Then I just cut that out and begin the metal origami. There are no fancy tools involved. I have a bench vise, a trusty hammer, pliers, scraps of wood, clamps, etc that I use to shape the piece. For soft bends that need to match what's on the car, I find a pipe or tool laying around my garage that matches the radius and shape the metal around it. This metal is thin enough that you can do a lot of the shaping with your hands. And by the way, I'm NO pro. I just enjoy this kind of work and need the parts. There are actual experts on this board that do much better work than mine!

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Love skills

cool, I can do that! I'm no pro either, but got enuf skillz to hand form stuff like this

Nice job on the fabrication and tin bending. I had to do the same to repair rust along the lower firewall due to the rear window leaking.

I have found I really enjoy metal work and I'd rather do that on a Saturday than almost anything. That being said, if I didn't have a sentimental attachment to this car, I'd have been an IDIOT to start with a car this rusty. All things being equal I'd have been time and money ahead finding a straight, clean roller from TX or the west coast and swapping my good parts over. I'd be driving now.