BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”

Streetbu said:

No one can ever say you took the easy way out. You do whatever needs to be done, for the job to be done perfectly, every time. Bravo sir!

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Thank you Shawn, I truly appreciate the compliment.

69hurstolds said:

Assembly line work: I can guarantee you that the assembly line workers did whatever it was concerning their jobs so often that they became blind to whatever went on. 99% chance they wouldn't remember specific cars as far as seam sealers. They had no investement in the product except to meet the minimum standards so as not to get yelled at by the supervisor or worse, lose their job. They just wanted to pay their bills and feed their families. And seam sealer covered up with paint and floor carpet surely wasn't a technically specific production anyway. The sealer guns used eventually became automated, and they still have a few drawbacks. Anyway, the point is, as with any production, unless something wacky happened, like a hose blew and filled the trunk with sealer goo, usually nobody will ever remember the specifics about a particular job, especially after the 13,000th time of doing it. They built these cars for the masses who will NEVER do what's being done here, and never care. Would it have been nice if they actually gave two craps when doing their jobs in the first place? Yes. Did they? Likely--- not. Did they think that ANYONE 45+ years later was going to want to revisit their handiwork or care about trunk gaps? Not in a million years.

That's why most of us are here. Because we do give a crap. And we don't mind revisiting those line workers' results nearly 50 years later and trying to fix them. The kind of nice thing about the sloppy standard window that was as wide as a soccer net is that you can bring in the tolerances and do it yourself and make it much better without even trying hard. Additionally, most of the assembly line standards were so loose, you don't even have to be perfect in doing it and you still win. So you don't have to be a masochist, perfectionist, or even a skilled machinist to do a good job as compared to the factory. But it's still nice to see as close to perfect as you can get. But also, some standards were so sloppy that if you did place something exactly right, you'd be accused of it not looking like the factory did it. Can't win. Decals and appliques come to mind.

I feel a bit guilty in pointing out the uneven lines on that filler piece now. But I'm sure you'd have figured out that things were fubar pretty shortly afterwards anyway. 🙂

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Everything you outlined above is absolutely true, and I do actually fully understand that. I guess it’s just me venting my frustrations about something I felt could’ve potentially been done much MUCH better.

Don’t feel guilty, I always appreciate constructive criticism. As you said, I would’ve found that something hinky was up eventually anyways, and indeed I did.

Texas82GP said:

Donovan, when you need to remove more of that undercoating, try 3M adhesive remover, especially if you already have it on hand. I think it will cut that undercoating......

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZIM9XPI?tag=gbody-20

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Thanks Jared, I will be sure to check that out. I think once the inside of the tail panel is done and it comes time to strip the rest of the trunk I’ll be seriously looking at having it dry ice blasted. I know of and have a couple of my customers that do it and I think it’ll be just the ticket.
The results look amazing, and it doesn’t damage anything.

Time for this week’s update.

I kinda fell into the “well, I’m into it this far so I might as well…” syndrome, so I did a little more body filler work on the inside of the rear panel. I had some rust that was found underneath the undercoating behind the passenger’s side taillight, so I mechanically removed it as best as I could and then treated the remaining deeper pits with rust converter.

This unfortunately left some pretty aggressive grinder marks in the metal, so I decided it would be silly to make the rest beautiful and leave those marks there. So a little more was done behind both taillights, and on the flange above the tank filler neck hump which is a high visibility location.













Once that was done and I was satisfied with it, I next turned my attention to the seam between the rear panel and the trunk floor. I cleaned it thoroughly with wax and grease remover after scuffing it with red ScotchBrite, then masked off roughly 3/8” either side of it:











With the seam prepped and ready to go, I mixed up a small amount of grey epoxy primer and brushed it into the seam:







After letting it cure overnight, I scuffed the epoxy and thoroughly cleaned it again in preparation for the actual seam sealer. Working slowly and methodically doing small sections at a time, I laid in the sealer and smoothed it out nicely with a bathroom caulking tool. The 3M heavy bodied seam sealer I use sets up pretty quickly, so after reaching the end of the seam I was able to start back at the other end and unmask it right away.

My version of a sealed seam:











After letting the seam sealer set up overnight, I then sanded the edges of the epoxy primer and seam sealer with 80 grit to feather it in to the surrounding metal so it’ll appear nearly seamless (pardon the pun 😅) afterwards.

So this now concludes most of the work to the backside of the tail panel. Next up is to mask, epoxy prime and high build prime it, but I’m holding off on that for a little bit. I will do it very soon, but would like to move the back end of the car away from the air compressor first so it doesn’t suck in all the overspray. That is going to entail turning the car around, for which I’m going to need some help.

In the meantime, I decided to tackle the bodywork on the outside of the passenger side quarter extension I built and welded on. This might seem unnecessary at this point, but there actually is method to my madness. That being that I have to make sure that the metal work on the outside is good before I (eventually) paint the inside. If I found that I needed to do any hammer and dolly work to the extension (and I did), it would ruin the painted surface on the inside.







The filler work ties into the existing quarter panel here, but this was only necessary to get the shapes correct. Everything forward of the lower recess will eventually be cut off to accept the new quarter panel but for now the filler work is a means to an end on the extensions.

The filler work inside the lower recesses was done months earlier when I was preparing for narrowing and tucking the back bumper and before I found the issue with the crooked tail panel.

I still have just a couple little pinholes to address as seen as black spots in the pictures, but that’s less than an hour’s work to fix up.







This is a deceptively difficult area to work, there’s an awful lot going on in a lot of different areas on a lot of different planes in a very small spot. It’s taken me nearly a week to get this small area just right, but I’m very pleased with the outcome now.

Mike has been doing some pretty trick stuff to the metal filler panel between the back window and the trunk this winter, but I’m out of room for pictures in this post so those’ll have to wait for the next one.

Next I’ll be repeating this body filler work to the driver’s side quarter extension, and then working my way inwards towards the middle of the rear panel. Oh, and priming the inside of the rear panel in there somewhere too.

Stay tuned.