BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)

Ok, now onto the current state of affairs.

In case you've somehow missed it, I recently decided to bite the bullet and tear the vinyl top off the car. It's been an eyesore and a source of personal contention since day one for me. With the restoration of the wheels complete, I decided I couldn't tolerate that horrible excuse for a Landau roof one minute longer, and decided to do away with it finally.

I won't go into much detail on it here, but I did document the process with quite a few photos in this thread I created for it:

https://gbodyforum.com/threads/why-...-is-it-too-late-to-get-my-tetanus-shot.63908/

In case you don't want to get sidetracked checking out that thread, or perhaps you just want the quick and dirty on the end result, here are a couple pics once the scab had been ripped off:











Yup, cancer, and on a fairly significant scale too.

After taking the night to consider my options, and the potential ways to repair the damage, I believe I've already formulated a pretty good strategy to get it fixed up.
The more time I waste looking at it, the more it'll piss me off, and the more time I'll miss out on being able to enjoy the car this season.

So with that being said, I've wasted no time in diving head first. In order to avoid getting too far behind the eight ball, I'm going to try and update this thread nightly, or at the very least weekly. Otherwise it becomes quite a bit harder to update the thread, and leads to the updates being very long.

I'm already 3 days behind in what I've done, but I should be able to cover that here quite quickly. Starting......

Now. Go!

Ok, I ripped the vinyl off on Sunday. Formulated an attack plan Sunday night.
Monday night, I wasn't quite prepared to start dismantling and cataloging the interior to remove the headliner, so decided to tackle stripping the old glue, paint and primer from the affected areas.

My preferred method of doing this is pretty old school: Rather than deal with caustic paint stripper and the associated fumes, I prefer to use 80 grit discs on my DA sander. It's time consuming, tedious, and monotonous as all hell, but extremely effective.

I prefer to "sneak up" on it, and define the edges of the damaged areas, rather than grinding willy nilly and possibly thinning out the metal further.

At the end of Monday night, this is what I had accomplished:





Got both sail panels stripped to bare metal, and about a quarter of the passenger's side roof from the vinyl roof moulding back.

Tuesday night, I got back behind the sander, and got the remainder of that section of roof stripped to bare metal as well, and also got the driver's side roof seam cleaned out of the seam sealer they fill it with:







Continued >>>

So that gets us up to date, to tonight's progress.

Tonight, I stripped the remaining paint and primer from the rusted top roof moulding area forward to the backside of the AstroRoof opening.



I also got the passenger's side roof seam cleaned out. The car is being converted to hardtop, like I did with The Juggernaut many moons ago. I've already accumulated all the necessary trim pieces to facilitate this.



In addition to that, I tapped in the remnants of pop rivets I drilled out along the back edge where there was a trim piece attached for giving the vinyl a finished edge. One they were tapped in, I was able to strip the paint from the rear edge. If you look closely, you can see the holes where the rivets were.



I was really hoping to not have to remove the back window for the necessary repairs, but this guy is a rust hole right through. It's tough to see in the photo, but it will definitely require the window to come out to repair properly:



One more pic, this is one of the areas and extent of damage on the driver's side, a bit easier to see now that the paint has been removed:



The other spot on the driver's side is this, it's where the body line on these cars disappears under the chrome quarter window moulding. This one is going to be tricky to try and recreate in a patch.



As I mentioned earlier, I'm converting this to hardtop. I think, no, I KNOW it'll look much cleaner, and suit the direction I want to go with the car.

With that being said, if anyone wants any or all of this vinyl roof crap, they can have it.
FOC. (Free of charge)
Just pay the shipping and it's yours. Because this is NOT EVER going back on!



So anyways, that's it for now guys.
Another update with tomorrow night's progress, well, tomorrow night!

Donovan

SoFloG said:

In suspense waiting to see that c pillar trim come off..,

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As am I. I'm fully expecting to find more rust damage and nastiness under the moulding, perhaps severe.
When I converted The Juggernaut to hardtop several years ago, I found rust damage in that area as well. It required cutting it out, fabbing up a patch, and welding it in.

I'm expecting the same scenario here as well.

Texas82GP said:

It looks better already Donovan. I have to emphatically agree with your approach to cleaning it up with 80 grit DA. It's a great approach. Sneak up on it and give yourself a little more time to stratagize while accomplishing necessary prep at the same time. Very wise. That is one lucky car. It fell into the right hands. Now hopefully it will outlast us.

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Thanks Jared. I'm in full agreement, I think it looks 100% better already, just with all the old paint and crud removed. I knew it would based on doing this procedure on The 'Naut before.
Thanks for the encouragement. With a proper repair and treated well, there should be no reason it couldn't outlast us.

Texas82GP said:

I wonder if you could get a 'patch panel' cut out of another car (that is too far gone to be saved) for that tricky area behind the quarter window on the driver's side? Kevin, do you know where a donar candidate is sitting?

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That would be ideal, the trick would be to get Kevin to somehow cut out the pieces I'll need.
I do know that he has a line on a couple '78-'80 Cutlasses, but he hasn't actually got them yet. As far as I know, he has nothing currently. Also, I think they may be all vinyl top cars, so they may already have suffered the same rust damage as this one.
Hopefully he'll see this thread and chime in for us.

dr78442 said:

Good luck Donovan. You definitely have the patience and skill to make this repair. Glad you saved her most would given up.

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Thanks for the faith Mike. Hopefully I don't disappoint everyone!
Lol
In all honesty, I'm not too worried about it. Sure, it'll take some time and may be a PITA, but I'll get it done.
I can see why most people would pass it by, it's pretty daunting and intimidating at first!

85442/86buick said:

Damn Donovan , you make this appear so easy.
You have our attention , I will get the popcorn

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So far, it has been pretty easy Dave. But then, I haven't really got into the nitty gritty of it yet. It'll get more intense in the days to come, I'm sure. Easiest way to cope with a repair on this scale, is just a bit at a time. Little by little. Get enough small areas done, and pretty soon the whole thing is done.

Oh, and extra butter on mine please!

Ok, tonight's progress.

I didn't get a whole lot done tonight due to other obligations, but I did manage to get a little done.

With the areas surrounding the damage on the rooftop stripped to bare metal, I laid out some cut lines to follow. I started by tentatively cutting out small bits at a time until I was familiar with where the roof support was underneath.



I tried to allow for about a 1/4" of good clean sheetmetal past the affected areas. This worked out to the material removed being 4" wide by about 47" long.
Yep, almost 4 feet long. There was NOTHING salvageable in between.

I just went slow and took my time, and cut out small sections at a time with a 1/16" cutting wheel on my die grinder. I had to be especially careful with the cut nearest the front of the car, as this was directly above the roof support. In some places, the roof skin and roof support were nearly touching, with almost no gap in between.

With the entire affected area cut out:
No more horrible rust now!



As the small sections came out, I flipped them over and inspected them to get an idea if I had removed enough material or not. Basically to make sure I had cut back into good clean metal far enough.
Not perfect, but I think it'll do for this repair. I didn't want to remove too much unnecessarily either.



Some of the backsides up close:





Once the new patch is installed and permanent, I'll treat and convert any remaining rust on the underside to prevent it from returning. Then likely POR the hell out of it.

Afterwards, I spent a bit of time just cleaning up the edges and removing the adhesive "dots" the factory uses to bond the parts together and prevent rattles. A quick look with this done:



That's the extent of tonight's work. I'm tied up tomorrow night, and going to an out of town car show Saturday, but maybe if I have any energy left Saturday night I'll get back on it.

The next order of business will be to fabricate my patch, and start tearing out the interior. I've gone as far as I can without doing it yet. Now it's unavoidable.

'Till next time everyone.

Donovan