Bookmarking thread, great visual tutorial on some repairs I need to do.

Thank you! Yes, the long had indentations for drain holes already and the piece I added runs straight over them to leave a hole. I scalloped it a little at those points as well.

Just to finish up the last post, this is the sill tacked, welded and ground down.
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Not perfect, but glad to get it back on. I may go back and try to touch it up a little later. Sometimes I mess with it too much when I should leave it alone.

This brings me to a milestone... The passenger long is completely replaced. Still need to get the suspension pylons and install them and also the engine tray, but I'll be flipping her around to get the driver's long done.

Glad I followed Rick's advice and did not cut the fender. Wasn't sure it would work, but it did.

Pulled all the parts boxes out of the way and rolled her out of the garage. Swept the floor and flipped her around and back in.

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Shifting back into destructo-mode to remove the old long. Here's the before:
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Here's the carnage. Good view of all the previous repair work.
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Looks like the hole for the seatbelt boss was made with a .45:
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E-brake bosses:
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Saving the heater tube. A lot of this looks like it was brazed together:
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After the experience of the passenger side long, I cut this side with a hack saw because it has a very narrow kerf, and cut high up on the ends. I should be able to get this sill back on in one piece.
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Cut ends, forward and aft.
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That little bit of newspaper up there came from another mouse nest in the driver's side suspension console. Must be an ideal spot. Maybe this is where they put the mother-in-law. I guess that console is going to be filled with sunflower seeds, too.

LOL

man that is some serious surgery! nice work

Thank you. Dealing with the passenger side made me bold...

Temporarily switched from destructo-mode to fab mode to gin up the rear corner of the wheel well that extends back under the door post and between the halves of the long.

Cut a rectangle and bent the edge profile:
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Checking the profile against the outer long piece:
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Bending the contour around the inner long piece:
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Mise en place:
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That there is some fine work! I know how difficult getting that bend around the front of the inner is to accomplish.

Brilliant stuff here Matthew. I’ll certainly be borrowing your ideas on the heater tube hole in the long when I do my drivers side. Really like the templates you made.
Keep it coming!

I suppose this guy's best laid schemes went agley many years ago...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnEi0LrQ-WQ


Shop vac'd him out with a custom attachment:
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I posted a question in its own thread looking for opinions on whether any of the long can be saved. I'll not belabor it here, but with the help of a few others here, convinced myself to cut the whole thing out and replace with RD metal.

Looking into the upper driver's side long:
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Level of the rot. It almost looks like this car was sitting in water at one point. The common saw is "rots from the inside out", but this seems to be from the bottom up:
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Took of the engine mount to get access a little further up and also just wanted to see behind it. The mount on the left is the driver's side, the right is the pass side for comparison. Pass side is scrap, but I think the driver's side will clean up OK.
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That nest looks so well preserved I kept expecting to see a mouse head pop into view.

Looking forward to watching the long replacement.

Here's some borescope pics. Not the greatest quality, but if you want to see what you can get from a $20 borescope attached to a smartphone, here you go. First, the suspension consoles after a little cleanup work. Nowhere near as bad as the passenger side, but the streak of rust is a little concerning...
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This is inside the outer console looking at the bolt tubes, this is where the mouse nest used to be:
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And another. Large flaked-off rust visible here.
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This is inside the inner console, looking straight down into the grooves formed by the thick reinforcement pieces:
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I could probably convince myself that these are structurally sound, but in the end I think I want both sides to be at the same level of restoration, if that makes any sense.

Can't believe it's been so long since my last post. Busy fall and winter, got work on the car done incrementally. Time to catch y'all up... I guess I knew this at one point, but after cutting all the rust out of the driver's side long, I realized I was going to be fabbing more than I did on the other side. I suppose that's why I started this project in the first place.

So after removing the engine support and suspension pylon, then peeling back the rusted layers, I figured I would build a buck and hammer form the "elbow" shape where the long comes out of the wheel well and turns horizontal...
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I thought I would impress everyone with a gif of me forming this part. The gif turned out good, but the part is no bueno.
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Here's the final - not usable. In the end, I just made the part as a straight channel section, then slitted it and bent as needed. Slits get welded shut. A couple transition pieces will be cut to fit and added for the final attachment to the horizontal part of the long.
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Made a buck to form the inner corrugated layer. This is going to be a weld-up of three pieces. Trying to strategize here so that the welds on the inner layer go one direction and the welds on the outer layer go the other direction. I.e. they are never parallel.
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So here's the inner piece. If you want inner piece, you have to make it yourself. Wisdom for our time.
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We'll come back to this, I'll be making the sides of it to fit - after the outer layer is all welded up.

You might remember from way back, I had a couple long blanks made up from 12 gauge, so they would have the combined thickness of the stock piece plus the stiffening kit in a single layer. So one additional task for the driver's side is to create the e-brake pocket.

Marking the position next to the original:
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Marked out the shape of the pocket and started cutting...
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Trimmed the cut piece down and then tacked it back on. Just trying to be efficient here. Layed masking tape over the gap to make a pattern.
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Made the patch piece from the pattern and bent it. Little fine tuning with the grinding wheel to match it up and bevel the edges to weld.
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Final pocket, dressed up a little.
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So here's the driver's side long, all kitted up. I made all of it except the obvious Restoration Design piece and the tubes. You can see my final version of the inner long on the right - after rejecting my hammer-form attempt.
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That should do for some Monday morning reading. Still have a couple posts before it's all caught up. I'll try to get to it in the next day or two.

Thanks for the update! I went through a similar exercise on that elbow piece and wound up doing the same. I think you made a better run at it though with that buck.



That sir, is impressive!

It's Hammer time! Way to go on making your own parts. Damn impressive.
You look like you're really enjoying yourself with all the fab work.
It's very motivational so please keep the pics coming!

I tried to make a patch for that piece so I can attest to how difficult it is to get it right. I gave up and bought the outer/inner. You are a better man than I sir!

-Andrew

Good grief, it's been a year since I posted on my build thread. Last post was the eve of my 49th birthday. What happened? My wife and I decided to try to expand her business a while back. Four years of effort came to fruition and we began building last winter. It required all of my attention and it was quite a roller coaster. New location was opened in September of 2019. Of course that ended up being another tidal wave of activity. Friends kept asking, hey now you're open, nice to sit back and rest finally, eh? Glrb. Got an augmented staff trained up, and well my wife is a force of nature, and slowly I started sneaking back into the garage. Just in time for a global pandemic. Spent this birthday quarantined on a cold concrete floor with a welding gun in one hand and a whiskey bottle in the other. Not half bad, really. Here come the pics...

So where the heck did we leave off? Prepping the driver's side long... Looks like I can salvage a heater tube, just need to patch the end of it.
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This is the new long with all the little bits welded in. Same drill as the passenger side, so I didn't take many pics, but to recap, made new brackets for the heater tube, made new spring clips for the heater tube (once again, my buddy with the forge helped my heat treat them to a springy consistency), welded it all in place. New seat belt boss is in there, too.
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Here it is with a coat of primer and weld-thru on the flanges.
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A little more blood and gore. The crime scene from the outer long is above, here's the inner. Had to dig into these layers, find out where the rust ends and fair metal begins.
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Worked in to where I was happy and tried to pick cut lines where I'b be OK welding. Not shown here is peeling back and extra couple inches of the inner layer so that the welds of the two layers would not be right over each other. There will be a decent pic of that later.
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Looking up into the long, no other surprises. We'll spray something up in there before we seal it up. Ospho, then some primer.
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Out with the old...
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This is a nasty looking long. I'll stand this up against anything in anyone's hall of shame. Good riddance.
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Agonized a bit over whether the old engine mount was still good or if I should fab this side. Cleaned it up good - some pitting in there - decided to run with it.
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Primer and weld-thru on the mount and also on the long.
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I tacked it in place and don't have any pics. I do hope I remember at some point it is only tacked... Also notice this last pic shows my fabbed piece in place and I don't have any pics of that going in. You get the idea, though.

Just brilliant work! Way to go Matthew.

Tacked the inner long in place and scratched my head over how to deal with this gap. I made a couple attempts to try to make these two meet nicely. One of my guiding principles in fabricating is to try to make a thing as one piece if I can with as little welding as possible. As this project draws out, I have another little voice asking me, do you ever want to drive this thing? Yes, I do.
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Here's working out the solution. I am posting pictures from months ago and now I find it does not itch my brain so much as it did at the time.
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Need to pattern up a sleeve to join the sections of the long. I actually fabricated the ribbed piece a few posts back (last year!! ) so this pattern just guides how to trim it and how to make the sides.
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Cut the pieces up, pushed them around a little and pre-drilled the rosettes.
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What you don't see is the constant test fitting and grinding edges to get them to fit nicely. Aside from it being much easier to drill the holes before it is welded up, I was also able to see how close the sleeve layers lay against the outer layer and mach sure it is line-to-line. This is final fit and tacking them together.
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Nice to weld this together sitting in the middle of the garage floor instead of hunkered up in the wheel well or something. Added a little corner in there with the last rib in the line, also a piece to cover the bulge of the engine mount.
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That is great looking work. Very. Nice. Fit. And I know what a pain it is to get things to that point! Again, great, great work.

Holy smokes.

I just found this thread from your signature. (Same year and motor as me, so I was intrigued.)
How I wish i had seen this before I started my long replacement. Goes to show if you really put the patience into this, it turns out beautifully.

Seriously top notch work.

Very inspirational and tons of great fab work and ideas.

Matthew,

Holy crap! Your fabrication skills are amazing. That home made sheet metal brake is clever, bookmarked.

Inspiring stuff, keep it up!

-Derek

Wow! That's a lot of really good work!

Sometimes it feels like everything is a jury-rig. Guess what this is going to be? Making it out of 12-gauge so I will not need to weld the stiffening kit over it. Was worried that my hammer-forming abilities would not be up to it, but the whole "bigger hammer" thing seems to be working.

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More updates coming - had a piece that was giving me trouble but I think I've worked through it. Stay tuned.

Photo assault to get the thread caught up a little. Driver's side outer long, if you're following along, fabbing the piece that no one makes aft of the door.
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Got to this point and wasn't really happy with the fit. Cut a blank for attempt number 2...
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Here's the final fit I was OK with. See the #3 written on there?
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On deck: The inner layer for this piece...

Beautiful fab skills.
Does the stump have auto shrink?

,my first rustaration was a fairly rare one year only 66 Beetle,used pieces of hardwood to form parts and could custom fit parts shape with any common woodworking tools ,new floors and repaired rotten tunnel came out nice.
But you have to look @ what mbseto has hand formed .... excellent work.

Your fab skills continue to impress. Such nice work. It's a shame nobody is making that part though. Seems about half of these serious rustorations need it.

I continue to be amazed at how nice some of these cars look at 20ft as shown on page 1 but how rotted they really are.

Mine was exactly the same.

Great fab work

@Superhawk996 - I was specifically looking for one where the welding would all be inside and not visible. I got that, and I got it in spades!

@djway , funny you should ask...

This is the inner layer, nested in the outer layer that I made above. You can see the angle isn't quite right. These pieces that angle both upward and inward - I tend to underestimate it in the layout. Of course I probably shouldn't rely on estimation at all... Anyway, a little shrinking might save it...

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Grabbed the tucking fork and put one good tuck in the bottom of the elbow. Threw it on the stump and hammered it out.

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Just about right - a better man might've chased out the wrinkles with a good planishing. This is buried so many layers deep in the long that I am not worried about it.

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These are the two layers side-by-side. Cut a little piece to make that inside corner.

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Always love seeing a shrinking stump.

These are so effective it’s stupid! Someday I hope to have an Oak Stump about 4 foot diameter with various radius bowls within it!

No room right now . . . Someday!

i have use a clam shell for make this part

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Cool. Ever since I saw my first Stump Shrink video I have really wanted one, and some hammers and some..........
Great work

If I'm not mistaken, that's a fine piece of ash you have there.

@bbrock exactly right and mum's the word!

Since the emerald ash borer appeared around here some years ago, people will pay you to haul it away. 2nd best type of firewood you can get.

Finished inner long:

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Here's the jack point. This is just fitment - I'm playing catchup here and I don't think I got pics of these primed on the insides for welding, but you know the drill. Rest assured, I am trying my best to protect this baby from the inside.

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