BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)

[Canon_Mutant]

Just curious, body shop schooling, training, apprenticeship, or just naturally gifted?

Though [as I said before] I never did learn how to do this, I was a pretty good welder in my pup years. Nearly 60, this auto-immune nonsense has my hands shaking too badly now. Oh, I was still able to weld the cracked frame on my sprayer a while back but I'm talking about intricate work like this.

In my next life . . . I am all over this though . . .

 

[Rktpwrd]

Okay... back to business!

Tonight I picked up where I left off last night. I had added additional material to the edges of the driver's side rear roof area. Due to running out of time, I wasn't able to finish the process.

Starting with the grinder, I knocked down the bulk of the welds, and switched back to the body file. After filing the remainder down and cleaning up/rounding over the edges, this was the result:

A quick test fit of the back window moulding revealed that I may have taken just a smidge too much out of the very corner:

It's still a very good fit tho, certainly better than what passed for acceptable from the factory. Especially when you compare it to the front windshield moulding to "A" pillar: 😱

I will have to wait until I have the back window cut out (for further rust repairs), and clean out the urethane. There's a lot of excess around the window, and it's currently interfering with where the hardtop mouldings need to sit.
I'll even go to the extent of drilling the holes and mounting the clips and chrome trim in a dry fit before I call it good. Simply because depending on what angle the trim sits at, it can make the gap appear to be larger or smaller.
That will be the time to finalize the fit.

With the back section pretty much done for now, I ground out the remaining brass braze from the area just behind the driver's side quarter window:

From there, I essentially duplicated the process as on the back. Just adding material in small tacks and beads of welds to build up the edge:

It's ugly at first...

...but it does clean up well after it's ground down.
Again, the idea here is to have a solid metal edge, not one made up with filler. The filler will go in between the edges I've created, and that's only where it should go.
The only difference between this edge and the back one is that there is no moulding that sits next to it, so it doesn't have to be as perfect, or precise.
With that being said, just grinding the welds flush to the adjacent surfaces was sufficient.

Here's the end result:

And the overall view, from the side. I now have the ends bookended with solid metal, ready for filler in the middle.

Now to repeat the same process on the passenger's side! But that's for another night.

Thanks for checking back everyone.

D.

 

[Rktpwrd]

Just curious, body shop schooling, training, apprenticeship, or just naturally gifted?

Though [as I said before] I never did learn how to do this, I was a pretty good welder in my pup years. Nearly 60, this auto-immune nonsense has my hands shaking too badly now. Oh, I was still able to weld the cracked frame on my sprayer a while back but I'm talking about intricate work like this.

In my next life . . . I am all over this though . . .

Canon, I guess you could say "a little of column "A", a little of column "B".

I do have formal automotive body refinishing and collision training, and I did apprentice in it.
As well as lots of hands on as the shop monkey way back in my younger years before the GM dealership granted me the apprenticeship.
Mostly tho, it's just experience. Lots n lots of trial and error, and experience. I'm never afraid to experiment and test the limits of my skills and imagination, and I almost always come away each time having learned something new.
As far as naturally gifted... I'm pretty sure that remains to be seen!
Lol

My grandfather on my mothers side was an industrial welder, and he too has the same affliction. His hands haven't been steady enough to run a bead for many years now. Granted, he's nearly 90 now, so I would call that a reasonable excuse!

Thank you for the compliments, and for chiming in on here. Glad to have you!

D.

 

[O. D. Showtime]

Awesome work as usual Donovan...she's going to look great!

 

[Z48LT1]

Donovan,

Ouch. Your comparison of the window/windshield openings with their respective chrome trims is almost frightening, although not all that surprising, considering production line tolerances etc. Will your intention be to make the windshield opening match the trim or make the trim match the opening?

Your attention to detail continues to slack my jaw, as did your work on the Juggernaut. Remaking that frame front to rear was an amazing effort that stands alone. I'm reasonably sure building a frame from scratch would have been less work.

I can't help thinking your efforts should be applied to a much more precious candidate. Frankly I'm not sure anything short of GNX s/n 0001 would warrant the level of attention you're paying to this random Calais.

I'm just glad I'm among the audience watching your work.

Bravo, and keep on keeping on!

Cheers - Gary

 

[Rktpwrd]

Awesome work as usual Donovan...she's going to look great!

Thanks Kevin!
Progress is going a little (ok, A LOT) slower than I'd like, but I guess I have to be patient. After all, I've only got a couple hours each night after work to get things done on it.
It is coming along tho, slowly but surely.
I'm just happy to be finally able to address the roof and rust issues on it. It's been bugging me for some time now.

Thanks for checking back in on the progress!
🙂

Donovan,

Ouch. Your comparison of the window/windshield openings with their respective chrome trims is almost frightening, although not all that surprising, considering production line tolerances etc. Will your intention be to make the windshield opening match the trim or make the trim match the opening?

Your attention to detail continues to slack my jaw, as did your work on the Juggernaut. Remaking that frame front to rear was an amazing effort that stands alone. I'm reasonably sure building a frame from scratch would have been less work.

I can't help thinking your efforts should be applied to a much more precious candidate. Frankly I'm not sure anything short of GNX s/n 0001 would warrant the level of attention you're paying to this random Calais.

I'm just glad I'm among the audience watching your work.

Bravo, and keep on keeping on!

Cheers - Gary

Hi Gary.

Yes, it's a bit surprising when you compare what I'm doing to ensure the back window mouldings match the body, to what the factory considered as acceptable.
You're absolutely right tho, due to production line tolerances, and the fact that they were just another mass produced passenger car, I guess that's to be expected.

I will be making the body (opening) match the trim. There's not really too much one can do to rework the trim to make it match the opening. The body I can have control over, the trim not as much. At the end of the day however, I'll just have to find the best compromise and do whatever I can to make the parts fit and work together as best as possible.

Thanks very much for the kind words on The Juggernaut. That car is my true passion.
Nothing but my finest work, parts, imagination etc goes into that one.

The frame does get a lot of attention and comments, I'm very pleased with how it turned out. I need to get the last of the structure put back into the body, and then I can pull the body back off one last time to complete the fuel line plumbing. Once that's done, the frame will get completely disassembled, and shipped out for powdercoat. After that, final assembly!

Thanks so much for the incredible feedback and support. I'm extremely flattered. When I joined the forum, I just wanted to be a part of a like minded community. I never expected the amazing praise and compliments from the members such as yourself in return.

Yes, it may only be a random Calais, but what the hell. It needed saving, it's mine, and I have the ability. So why not? Besides, I'd probably be too scared to work on or cut up something as rare and valuable as a GNX. It'd be a travesty!
So in that respect, modifying a nothing Cutlass lets me sleep well at night.
🙂

Thanks again for the awesome comments and support sir. It truly is greatly appreciated.

Donovan

 

[Rktpwrd]

I didn't have a lot of time to spend on the car tonight, so I just undertook one small area.

You may or may not have noticed a pattern in which I'm addressing the areas I'm working on.
I'm starting from the top and working my way down, one side at a time. Doesn't matter if it's related to converting the car to hardtop, or the rust repair. The emphasis currently has been on the driver's side, so I continued on there.

Going through my stockpile of scrap sheetmetal, I found a small piece in a nice heavy gauge, and cut a 2" strip off it.
The 2" strip got cut in half again, and I bent both pieces 90 degrees in the metal brake. The second piece (not shown) will be used on the passenger's side.

After trimming it down a bit on the band saw, I test fit one of the pieces in the opening between the two drip rails. The magnet is attached to the underside of the drip rails, holding the piece in place:

I placed a couple tack welds on the faces of the outer edges, then removed the magnet and burned in inside the rail where it meets the roof:

Here's a peek inside the rail at my welds. The first couple tacks were a bit cold, so I upped the juice and the rest burned in nicely.

Moving to the outer face, I buzzed the initial tack welds flush, then cleaned up inside the rail:

The outer edges of the original drip rails had a slight taper to them, and weren't a uniform height at the ends. I added a couple more tacks to the tops of the rails to build up the height slightly where they were low:

After grinding the face and the tops nearly flush, I switched to the body file, and proceeded with continuing making the height even all the way across.
Doing this, I was promptly rewarded with some Rookie Sweat for my troubles when the file slipped off the top of the rail.
D'oh!

I gradually got the top of the patch and the welds filed down to the same height all the way across. It turned out quite well.

A closeup of the area:
Can you tell where the new material is?
😉

That's all I had time for tonight. On the upside, this little bit completes the mods necessary to convert to hardtop, on the driver's side at least.

Tomorrow night, I will start duplicating the same things I did these last couple nights to the passenger's side. Tonight's progress isn't much, but it's still progress. That's how these things get completed tho, bit by bit, one area at a time.

Next week however, is looking really good. I'm taking a week off work for holidays, and hope to be able to dedicate much more time to this. Should be able to really make some good headway then.

Thanks once again for checking in everyone!
Till tomorrow, drive angry my friends...

D.

 

[Opie Knievel]

Rookie sweat. Lol. Never heard that one before.

 

[sportriderOK]

Holy cow, that is beautiful work!

 

[Rktpwrd]

After taking the weekend off to pursue other interests, I finally got a chance to get back on the car and start making some progress again today.

I actually wasn't going to post another update until I had duplicated all the same work I did to the driver's side roof corners to the passenger's side, but I feel I've got enough new pics, info and progress to warrant this update.

As mentioned, I started to duplicate the same work on the passenger's side that I have already completed on the driver's side. Starting with adding in the missing section of drip rail.

For whatever reason, the front and rear sections of existing drip rails didn't line up well with each other. It was like they were offset, with one higher than the other. There was no way I would be able to weld in the patch without doing a little work to the area first.
Thankfully, a little time spent with the hammer and dolly got things straightened out, and I was able to proceed.

The patch in place with the magnet, ready to start burning in:

You all already know the process required to complete the modification, so I'll just skip to the finished product.

Completed:

From there, I welded up and ground flush the two unneeded "B" pillar trim holes, same as the other side:

That took care of a couple of the smaller details. With the missing section of steel drip rail now in place, I wanted to test fit the chrome drip rail trim.

I dug the quarter window trim out of the trunk and put it back in place. A trip out to the shed got me the hardtop trim I've gradually been squirrelling away for this day.
Because hardtop Cutlasses in this year are few and far between around here, I've been forced to think outside the box a bit when it came to acquiring trim for the conversion.

I managed to score some Malibu drip rail trim from a friend when he abandoned his project, and got rid of all his G body stuff. The Malibu drip rail trim is longer than what I needed, so I knew I could use it on mine with a little trimming.

Just a few of the trim pieces I've been setting aside for this:

With the trim cut down, I installed it for the test fit. Holy crap, it's actually starting to look like a hardtop car!

I did have one small hurdle to overcome tho; I don't know if it shows well in the pic, but the rear most 2" - 3" of the trim took kind of a nose dive. It just looked like it was bent down slightly at the end:

After some VERY careful tweaking, I got the offending area straightened out. Looks much better now, especially in person:

Satisfied that area is taken care of for now, I shifted my attention to welding up and filing/finishing the corners in steel, same as the other side. I didn't take any pics of the front section by the back of the quarter window, but then again, you've all already seen it done.

Here's the rear area, just have to add a bit more material to the inside corner, and shape it to the trim:

Onto the next area for now:
I kinda goofed here, I'm usually so good about taking "before" pics, but I didn't this time.
There were a couple of small problem areas above the passenger's side window, they just looked like the paint was blistering a bit. Curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to strip off the paint and see exactly what was going on:

Continued >>>