BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Totally agree! 😵
EDITED by GP403.... Yeah, I'm all for peppering the posts with GIFs, and I do have the "ratings" turned off for the plugin, basically, but we do need to keep things basically family friendly. There's a few others I've seen lately that I've cringed at and if I can find them again I'll be editing those as well. Don't want to sound like a jerk, but... yeah. Doesn't bother me, personally, but when I get multiple complaints about posts like that, then, well....
Last edited by a moderator:
Admittedly, I am a hack. Even when I do nice stuff it looks like total butchery in comparison to this stuff.
The new shop installation is amazing, well thought out and implemented, very nice work!
Time for this week’s update.
I’ll start off with the quick and easy stuff first, then move onto the heavy fabrication.
The rear inner AstroRoof brace had some corrosion damage in the right rear corner. Pretty simple fix, determine the size of the patch needed, and cut it out of some fresh stuff.
Note how I kept the part of the patch that’s eventually going to be cut out. This helped me to get everything spaced and aligned correctly, in case the location of the notch is critical to anything.
The patch in place, with my template in view. I got to use an old trick I had almost forgotten about, if you look closely you can see a thin magnet poking out from the underside. This is an old fridge magnet, they work great for holding small pieces of sheet metal in place. Strong enough to hold the piece in place, but not strong enough to pull your weld puddle when you strike the arc.
All finished up:
Ok, with that done, the front and rear braces need nothing else until it’s time to reattach them to the outer pan. They’re set aside for now.
Speaking of the outer pan, a thorough evaluation led me to the fact that what was left there to work with simply wasn’t gonna cut it. In these next three pictures you can see the chunks of outer flange missing, as well as the heavy pitting from the rust that had taken hold:
So what does one do when a part is unobtainium and he has more time and tools than cash? You man up and create what you need from scratch. That’s hot rodding baby.
Starting with a flat piece of sheet metal roughly 2” wide by 24” long (that’s as long a piece my metal brake will take) I marked out the center line...
... and put a 90 degree bend in it. I wasn’t satisfied with the sharpness of the bend, so I put it in the vise and crisped it up a bit with the body hammer.
End result:
Now that I had a starting point, I had to shape it to the correct curvature. This particular part has to curve in two different directions, from front to back as viewed from above, but also up in the middle and down on the outer edges when viewed from the front.
In this early pic, I’ve got the rough shape mostly formed, it’s a little wavy still, but it’s very close. The shaping was done with my Eastwood shrinker/stretcher, shrinking along the horizontal plane provided the curvature front to back, and stretching along the vertical plane provided the curvature top and bottom.
After a lot of trial fitting and small adjustments, I got the curvatures pretty near spot on:
With the shape finally established, I marked out the old flange for cutting...
...and once that was done, the new piece was trial fit. Note the Sharpie marks around the heavily pitted area, that was going to be cut out and replaced as well. No sense leaving that there if I was this far into it anyways.
Time to get serious about fitting it. The horizontal part was trimmed to match my cut line on the pan, then the pan was flipped over and the patch was held in place with more magnets:
You can see the pitted area I finally cut out under this magnet:
First row of tacks to hold everything in alignment. I left a small “shelf” underneath where the vertical patch would have to go in, this’ll help hold the patch in place when it’s time to burn it in.
Starting to look pretty good:
Vertical patch being fit, more holding power via a cut down fridge magnet. Put those RockAuto magnets to good use for something other than holding up your kids pictures guys!
The backside of the vertical patch, after it’s all been burned in and smoothed out:
Go time on the remaining 20 or so inches:
Continued >>>
I’ll start off with the quick and easy stuff first, then move onto the heavy fabrication.
The rear inner AstroRoof brace had some corrosion damage in the right rear corner. Pretty simple fix, determine the size of the patch needed, and cut it out of some fresh stuff.
Note how I kept the part of the patch that’s eventually going to be cut out. This helped me to get everything spaced and aligned correctly, in case the location of the notch is critical to anything.
The patch in place, with my template in view. I got to use an old trick I had almost forgotten about, if you look closely you can see a thin magnet poking out from the underside. This is an old fridge magnet, they work great for holding small pieces of sheet metal in place. Strong enough to hold the piece in place, but not strong enough to pull your weld puddle when you strike the arc.
All finished up:
Ok, with that done, the front and rear braces need nothing else until it’s time to reattach them to the outer pan. They’re set aside for now.
Speaking of the outer pan, a thorough evaluation led me to the fact that what was left there to work with simply wasn’t gonna cut it. In these next three pictures you can see the chunks of outer flange missing, as well as the heavy pitting from the rust that had taken hold:
So what does one do when a part is unobtainium and he has more time and tools than cash? You man up and create what you need from scratch. That’s hot rodding baby.
Starting with a flat piece of sheet metal roughly 2” wide by 24” long (that’s as long a piece my metal brake will take) I marked out the center line...
... and put a 90 degree bend in it. I wasn’t satisfied with the sharpness of the bend, so I put it in the vise and crisped it up a bit with the body hammer.
End result:
Now that I had a starting point, I had to shape it to the correct curvature. This particular part has to curve in two different directions, from front to back as viewed from above, but also up in the middle and down on the outer edges when viewed from the front.
In this early pic, I’ve got the rough shape mostly formed, it’s a little wavy still, but it’s very close. The shaping was done with my Eastwood shrinker/stretcher, shrinking along the horizontal plane provided the curvature front to back, and stretching along the vertical plane provided the curvature top and bottom.
After a lot of trial fitting and small adjustments, I got the curvatures pretty near spot on:
With the shape finally established, I marked out the old flange for cutting...
...and once that was done, the new piece was trial fit. Note the Sharpie marks around the heavily pitted area, that was going to be cut out and replaced as well. No sense leaving that there if I was this far into it anyways.
Time to get serious about fitting it. The horizontal part was trimmed to match my cut line on the pan, then the pan was flipped over and the patch was held in place with more magnets:
You can see the pitted area I finally cut out under this magnet:
First row of tacks to hold everything in alignment. I left a small “shelf” underneath where the vertical patch would have to go in, this’ll help hold the patch in place when it’s time to burn it in.
Starting to look pretty good:
Vertical patch being fit, more holding power via a cut down fridge magnet. Put those RockAuto magnets to good use for something other than holding up your kids pictures guys!
The backside of the vertical patch, after it’s all been burned in and smoothed out:
Go time on the remaining 20 or so inches:
Continued >>>
Working on getting more of it completed. Starting to look like something.
The topside, now that all the welding has been completed on the inside:
Looking inside the flange from the outside, at least I’ve got good penetration. Downside is, all these will have to be ground down and made smooth so as not to interfere with the weatherstrip seal that has to go inside this channel.
Inside shots of the finished pan, welding done and smoothed out. My metal finishing is also getting better.
Remember all those weld penetrations inside the channel?
Time to get those addressed. A very steady hand and a boatload of patience is what was needed here. Only thing that would fit was the edge of the cutoff wheel in a die grinder.
Time for a test fit on the car. Because this pan is designed to fit up from the inside and I had no way to hold it in place temporarily to check the fitment, I had to just set it on the outside of the roof.
Back still looks good...
...but the front is a different story. Sometimes guys, you can do everything right and still have things go sideways on you.
It’s all in how you deal with the adversity. I didn’t panic, even for a second because I had a couple of indicators as I was working that this might be happening.
I grabbed a couple of 2x4’s and created a clamping fixture to try and get everything to stretch out and return to its proper shape:
After a couple days clamped like this, it had actually come back a long ways. I still had about a quarter inch of unwanted gap between the curvatures, but I had a feeling that with it clamped again and a little heat put to it, it would come back the rest of the ways.
To that end, I clamped it again...
...and ground, yes ground down the excess material from the vertical flange. Doing it this way instead of cutting it put a small amount of heat into the piece, and when it cooled it should have relaxed and retained the correct shape.
Grinding down the flange:
And all done now, the flange at the correct height:
Time for another test fit to see if my hunch was correct, success!!!
Cross that one off the “to do” list.
Next was to weld up all the spots where the OE spot welds were. I don’t want to have trouble with my plug welds blowing through the parent material when it comes time to reattach the inner braces.
The finished underside:
I left the penetration part of the welds in place on the topside for now. It’s going to be nice to have this additional material on the underside for the spot welds to work against. I’ll grind them smooth after the braces have been reattached.
That’s all for now, it was quite a week of heavy fabrication. I’ve got a brand new AstroRoof weatherstrip seal on the way, so once the pan is completed it’s restoration, I can get that in place and hopefully be able to reinstall the whole assembly.
Thanks for checking in on the weekly updates guys, it’s much appreciated.
D.
The topside, now that all the welding has been completed on the inside:
Looking inside the flange from the outside, at least I’ve got good penetration. Downside is, all these will have to be ground down and made smooth so as not to interfere with the weatherstrip seal that has to go inside this channel.
Inside shots of the finished pan, welding done and smoothed out. My metal finishing is also getting better.
Remember all those weld penetrations inside the channel?
Time to get those addressed. A very steady hand and a boatload of patience is what was needed here. Only thing that would fit was the edge of the cutoff wheel in a die grinder.
Time for a test fit on the car. Because this pan is designed to fit up from the inside and I had no way to hold it in place temporarily to check the fitment, I had to just set it on the outside of the roof.
Back still looks good...
...but the front is a different story. Sometimes guys, you can do everything right and still have things go sideways on you.
It’s all in how you deal with the adversity. I didn’t panic, even for a second because I had a couple of indicators as I was working that this might be happening.
I grabbed a couple of 2x4’s and created a clamping fixture to try and get everything to stretch out and return to its proper shape:
After a couple days clamped like this, it had actually come back a long ways. I still had about a quarter inch of unwanted gap between the curvatures, but I had a feeling that with it clamped again and a little heat put to it, it would come back the rest of the ways.
To that end, I clamped it again...
...and ground, yes ground down the excess material from the vertical flange. Doing it this way instead of cutting it put a small amount of heat into the piece, and when it cooled it should have relaxed and retained the correct shape.
Grinding down the flange:
And all done now, the flange at the correct height:
Time for another test fit to see if my hunch was correct, success!!!
Cross that one off the “to do” list.
Next was to weld up all the spots where the OE spot welds were. I don’t want to have trouble with my plug welds blowing through the parent material when it comes time to reattach the inner braces.
The finished underside:
I left the penetration part of the welds in place on the topside for now. It’s going to be nice to have this additional material on the underside for the spot welds to work against. I’ll grind them smooth after the braces have been reattached.
That’s all for now, it was quite a week of heavy fabrication. I’ve got a brand new AstroRoof weatherstrip seal on the way, so once the pan is completed it’s restoration, I can get that in place and hopefully be able to reinstall the whole assembly.
Thanks for checking in on the weekly updates guys, it’s much appreciated.
D.
Last edited:
Guys, I had a small hiccup compiling the second part of the update. It posted before I was done, so please go back and reread to get the rest of it now that I’ve corrected it.
Thanks all,
D.
Thanks all,
D.
Last edited:
Amazing work as usual!
Amazing work. Like Geology. I just finished re-watching Shawshank Redemption. It's all about time. And pressure. Another example of the $15 hammer and the $15000 knowing where and how to apply it.
Similar threads
