BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)

[JAMCAR223]

Thanks guys, I think.
Lol

I’m obviously not trying to make anyone feel like a hack, just trying to convey the amount of time and dedication to the end result these kinds of things require.
That’s why I wasn’t too worried about explaining the repair procedure, as I highly doubt anyone else is gonna attempt it. No one is likely as insane as me to do this nonsense, and if they are, my hat’s off to them. It’s a ton of work.

Thanks for the compliments.

I'm going to attempt this process pretty soon, so I was just reading up on this post, and bookmarked it. I guess I'm jumping on the "Insane boat" Now lets just hope the meds on this boat give me the patience needed to achieve the results you see here.

 

[Rktpwrd]

I'm going to attempt this process pretty soon, so I was just reading up on this post, and bookmarked it. I guess I'm jumping on the "Insane boat" Now lets just hope the meds on this boat give me the patience needed to achieve the results you see here.

Good luck James!
If there’s anything I can do to help, just gimme a shout. I’d be happy to assist if I can.

 

[Tony1968]

Thanks Donovan! For some reason I didn't get notifications that you had answered my questions about the brushing of epoxy. So much learning going on here!

 

[Supercharged111]

This thread makes me shudder at what lurks in my (dad's) car for rot. It came from WI. Luckily it's a hard top. No rust you can see from the outside, but that's not where it starts now is it? Seeing how this is more of a DD and much less of a pinnacle build than the Jug, when do you figure you'll have it done?

 

[69hurstolds]

... Seeing how this is more of a DD and much less of a pinnacle build than the Jug, when do you figure you'll have it done?

Done? Did you use the word "DONE"???

 

[Supercharged111]

Done? Did you use the word "DONE"???

Touche sir. How about this? Done enough to drive and get back on the Jug.

 

[pagrunt]

Done? Did you use the word "DONE"???

What is this "done" word mean? As owners of a A/G body we don't know the words meaning but it might be good to learn it.

 

[Rktpwrd]

Couple of last minute pre-Christmas teaser pics. Big write-up on it coming Boxing Day.

Merry Christmas everyone!

 

[Rktpwrd]

Alright boils and ghouls, we’re back. Hope everyone had a good Christmas and got everything you wanted. This is going to be a pretty long update with a ton of pictures, so my apologies for any long load times on this page if you’ve experienced them.
But you’re here and reading this now, so you’re all set.

At the end of the last update, I had the inner structure of the driver’s door repaired with the patched pieces all welded in, and it turned out beautifully:

This still left the outer skin and hemmed flange to be addressed, so that’s what this is gonna be all about and how I did it.

I rooted through my sheetmetal stash until I found an adequate sized piece of 20 gauge, then trimmed it to the maximum length my sheetmetal brake would allow and marked it out:

Once it was marked out, I trimmed off the excess I wouldn’t need:

I know it looks like an odd shape, but you’ll see the reason for that in a minute.

Test fit of where it’s gonna go...

...then I punched some spot weld holes in the section that’s to become the hem:

With the prep ahead of time done, it was time to put it in the brake and get it bent up. My brake is only a 24”er, so the maximum I could fit in it was about 24 3/4”.

This still put me a little shy of the total length I needed, but only by just over an inch. I can deal with that later. One nice thing about my brake is that it will bend over 90 degrees, in my case bending it as far as possible got me to 120 degrees. Perfect for what I needed to do. Here’s the piece with the bend in it afterwards:

Ok, the reason for the strange shape to the patch. After I flipped the door over on the stand, you can see I had one real crappy section on the outer skin:

Since I had to make a patch to tie in the lower outer skin anyways, it was the perfect opportunity to kill 2 birds with 1 stone and eliminate this bad section. The reason most of the patch is so narrow with the exception of the rusty replacement section is because I wanted to keep the welding as close to the edge as possible. This keeps the distortion to a minimum because the metal is very strong the closer to an edge you can get.

Here’s a look at the patch overlaid on the door:

Once I had this done, I simply made some reference marks to ensure it went back in the exact same spot, then traced around the patch:

Time to get cutting. To keep from cutting into the inner structure I had just replaced underneath, I slid a sacrificial piece of sheetmetal in between the layers. You can see it vise gripped in place under my hand in this pic:

All cut out now:

You may have noticed the long ugly scar in the outer skin just above the repair, this was sustained sometime in the 10 years I had it in storage. It obviously needs to be fixed, but I need the structural integrity of the skin to be restored first, so this will have to wait until later.

With the hole cut in the outer skin now, I ground back all the old paint and gravel guard coating, and test fit it with a couple magnets. It was looking pretty good:

Keep in mind this was a flat piece of metal that I put into the brake, but the door of course is curved. So naturally the longest part (the rust patch) stuck out straight at first:

This would require forming the curvature into the patch, but how to do it so it’s the same as the door? This is the solution I came up with for that dilemma. Using reference marks, I used a contour gauge on both sides of the patch on the door. The contour gauge was long enough that I was able to get the contours of both sides in one go. One on one side, and the other on the other side of the gauge:

Then I simply slowly and carefully formed the patch to match. It doesn’t get much closer than this!!

Time to burn it in right? Not exactly. There’s no sense in going to all this effort just to leave the insides of the pieces unprotected all over again. So the outer skin was masked off along the edges, along with the inner structure and around the spot weld holes I created earlier. Any material in these areas will contaminate the welding that needs to be done here, and cause many more problems that we obviously don’t want.

Even though I had treated the inner structure repair with rust converter, I don’t feel this is gonna be adequate in preventing future corrosion in this area. The best protection for bare metal is epoxy primer, so some was mixed up and brushed on by hand to all the areas:

Continued >>>

 

[Rktpwrd]

Epoxy on the inside of the inner structure:

Difficult to see in this pic, but the other side of the inner structure got a liberal coating as well:

Once the epoxy had cured, I went back and unmasked the sections I had covered. These are where the spot welding will be done once the rest of the hem is fully folded over.

Now it was finally time to start burning it in. I used a long 6’ aluminum straight edge to make sure the patch was flush and straight with the rest of the bottom of the door, then began tacking it in along the long narrow sections:

Once I had those areas securely locked in and had no fear of anything shifting on me, I then worked my way around the outsides of the larger area and got it tacked into place as well:

Working slowly and methodically, I started fully welding it in, one section at a time

After a couple hours, I had the outside fully welded and dressed out. Beautiful!!

At this point, the work on the outside of the door is done for now, so it was time to flip the door back around on the stand. Here’s a look at the inside edge that’s to become the rest of the hem. Notice how it’s still standing up because of the 120 degree bend:

My hemmed flange section was a little
wide to match up with the rest of the existing hem, so a cut line was marked and highlighted with masking tape...

... then cut with the cutoff wheel:

From here, it was old school bodyman stuff, just hammer and dolly the hem down flat just like re-skinning a door.

Remember those spot weld holes I punched way back in the beginning? Now was the time to finish those up...

...along with welding up the seam between the original and new hems:

And done! Looks like and is done in the same manner as the original, you’d be hard pressed to even know there was a repair here.

So there ya have it gents, one door bottom fully repaired. I still have the last inch to add to the very front of the door, but that’s so minor I’m not even gonna bother with documenting it.

Once I have that done and outta the way, then it’l be onto repairing that long deep crease in the outer skin. There’ll be lots of welding pins in it along with slide hammer and hammer and dolly work.
Until then,

D.