Thanks for all the comments, compliments and praise guys. It really means a lot. I know you all have come to expect a lot from me and hold me in pretty high regard, so hopefully I don’t disappoint.
After lending NorthernRegal a hand on his car Saturday, I got reinvigorated to make some more progress on my junk. I’m still slugging it out on the door, and after today we’re finally starting to see some real headway.
I spent a fair amount of time this week stripping out old paint and seam sealer from the inside of the door, but didn’t really bother with taking pictures of it. One thing I was able to do though was access the backside of the rust patch I welded in earlier:
It wasn’t bad, but I wanted to knock down the raised welds so that I could protect the area with epoxy and not give corrosion a place to start.
Once I had that done, I flipped the door over on the stand and proceeded to start sanding all the old paint off the outside surface. This was in preparation for repairing the long nasty crease in the outer skin, but I had to see and know exactly what I was dealing with first.
I knew this door had been repainted sometime in it’s past too, but damn!! there was a ton of material on it. One thing that did make me happy that I never saw on any of the other panels, was the use of epoxy primer by whoever repainted it. This could attribute to some of its longevity this far.
As the years and layers of paint came off, I began to get a picture of why it was painted. Nothing too serious, but it’s always interesting to find what’s hidden underneath.
Things like this...
...as well as a couple others and many door dings and assorted parking lot rash.
Here’s a better look at the crease now that I got the paint off it:
I hadn’t forgotten, nor did I miss the mess that stripping old paint creates...
...and my floor and benches were freshly swept and cleaned before I started the process!!
After approximately 8 full hours over 2 days of sanding, I finally had the outer skin pretty much completely stripped. It was nice to not find any big surprises lurking underneath:
I mentioned that there was a ton of little door dings and other stuff that I found, so today I broke out the old UniSpotter and slide hammer and got down to work pulling them out.
There were also a bunch of spots that looked like the beginnings of rust pits, so anything that looked even remotely suspicious got ground out.
Next it was time to tackle the elephant in the room, the nasty crease:
I laid some rags in the vee of my stand, then stood the door up in it upside down so that I could access both sides of the door.
Another look at the crease, it was pretty deep and heavy.
I began by using an assortment of heavy dollies and slapping spoons inside the door to get the bulk of the dented portion worked back out, then welded a row of porcupine quills along the length of the crease after grinding the rust and old paint out to get a clean surface:
If you guys are going to be attempting a repair like this, always start in the area of the heaviest and deepest damage and work your way outwards. After methodically pulling it this way, it was feeling pretty good, so I removed every other stud so that I could get my fingers between the studs and get a feel for the panel across the repair:
I liked what the panel was telling me, so I went ahead and removed the rest of the studs. With all of them gone though, there was still a spot where it was low and needed more work. I marked it out in Sharpie to make it easier to visually reference.
A couple more studs, and more pulling got it to where it needed to be.
And voilá, the completed repair with the area ground and profiled. Guess I can still do collision work after all these years!
Continued >>>
After lending NorthernRegal a hand on his car Saturday, I got reinvigorated to make some more progress on my junk. I’m still slugging it out on the door, and after today we’re finally starting to see some real headway.
I spent a fair amount of time this week stripping out old paint and seam sealer from the inside of the door, but didn’t really bother with taking pictures of it. One thing I was able to do though was access the backside of the rust patch I welded in earlier:
It wasn’t bad, but I wanted to knock down the raised welds so that I could protect the area with epoxy and not give corrosion a place to start.
Once I had that done, I flipped the door over on the stand and proceeded to start sanding all the old paint off the outside surface. This was in preparation for repairing the long nasty crease in the outer skin, but I had to see and know exactly what I was dealing with first.
I knew this door had been repainted sometime in it’s past too, but damn!! there was a ton of material on it. One thing that did make me happy that I never saw on any of the other panels, was the use of epoxy primer by whoever repainted it. This could attribute to some of its longevity this far.
As the years and layers of paint came off, I began to get a picture of why it was painted. Nothing too serious, but it’s always interesting to find what’s hidden underneath.
Things like this...
...as well as a couple others and many door dings and assorted parking lot rash.
Here’s a better look at the crease now that I got the paint off it:
I hadn’t forgotten, nor did I miss the mess that stripping old paint creates...
...and my floor and benches were freshly swept and cleaned before I started the process!!
After approximately 8 full hours over 2 days of sanding, I finally had the outer skin pretty much completely stripped. It was nice to not find any big surprises lurking underneath:
I mentioned that there was a ton of little door dings and other stuff that I found, so today I broke out the old UniSpotter and slide hammer and got down to work pulling them out.
There were also a bunch of spots that looked like the beginnings of rust pits, so anything that looked even remotely suspicious got ground out.
Next it was time to tackle the elephant in the room, the nasty crease:
I laid some rags in the vee of my stand, then stood the door up in it upside down so that I could access both sides of the door.
Another look at the crease, it was pretty deep and heavy.
I began by using an assortment of heavy dollies and slapping spoons inside the door to get the bulk of the dented portion worked back out, then welded a row of porcupine quills along the length of the crease after grinding the rust and old paint out to get a clean surface:
If you guys are going to be attempting a repair like this, always start in the area of the heaviest and deepest damage and work your way outwards. After methodically pulling it this way, it was feeling pretty good, so I removed every other stud so that I could get my fingers between the studs and get a feel for the panel across the repair:
I liked what the panel was telling me, so I went ahead and removed the rest of the studs. With all of them gone though, there was still a spot where it was low and needed more work. I marked it out in Sharpie to make it easier to visually reference.
A couple more studs, and more pulling got it to where it needed to be.
And voilá, the completed repair with the area ground and profiled. Guess I can still do collision work after all these years!
Continued >>>
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