BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)

[Rktpwrd]

Looks like that should do it, if the old brittle tabs were (for the most part) holding then this repair should more than work, you would probably bust the extension before you pulled the tab off

I’m inclined to agree with you.
From the testing I’ve seen and provided my surface prep was adequate, the bond should actually be stronger than the surrounding areas. Being that the surrounding areas are just plastic, it shouldn’t be too hard to achieve that.
Thanks for the input!

I can visualize the finished product, and if it's anything near how I "see" it, that car is going to be stunning!

I’m gonna give Scott a “wink” here.
😉
He’ll know what that means and why because he may or may not have insider information as to what the final paint scheme is going to look like. He also may or may not have had a hand in helping to design said paint scheme with yours truly...
“I can neither confirm nor deny that at this point in time. No further questions, no comment. Thank you.”
😀

Sorry Donovan! I didn't see this until now. I've been on my car a lot more the last month or so and most of the time I spend on here lately has been to keep up with my thread. Awesome work as always. Considering I've seen entire roof skins attached with that panel bonding adhesive, I think your repair will be a very good one, as long as the adhesive sticks to the filler panel and the metal tab. Since I know you followed the tech sheet to the letter and have experience with this particular product, my guess is it is going to stick well.

No worries Jared. I don’t expect everyone to reply all the time to every update I do. When I asked for your guys’ input it was partially as a bump so the post didn’t get lost. Yesterday was quite busy here with lots of activity.

I completely understand, now is your time to really go hard and accomplish as much as you can on your car before it gets too hot there to work on it. I’m also very familiar with the amount of time and dedication it takes to keep a busy build thread up to date. You’re doing a great job on both.
Thanks for taking the time to follow my thread and comment on it. I really appreciate it.
🙂

I never hope for things to go wrong, but every time it does, you give us an excellent fix that adds to everyone's overall knowledge base.

Here's hoping to no more issues this year! 😉

Hutch

Thank you Hutch. I’ll drink to that, I’d be quite alright without having any more issues from here on out!
Thanks also for the compliment on my “fix”. When things go sideways ya gotta adapt and overcome or succumb to failure right? I’m just glad this particular fix was pretty easy. It could’ve been a lot worse.

When I saw it broke my mind started thinking about a solution.....mine was almost the same as yours. Great work!

Thank you! Apparently great minds think alike! You got me just a bit curious tho, when you say your solution was “almost” the same as mine, what were you thinking of? I’m always interested in hearing alternatives and different ideas.

I just saw it too and I was going to just vote "simply elegant". None of this "elegance in its simplicity" crap. Completely disagree with that!

Seriously, as long as the bond is good, it ain't goin' nowhere . . .

Thank you Garth. Appreciate the comments.
I trimmed the excess adhesive and attached the bracket tonight. It seems really strong, so I don’t think I’ll have any issues with it.
🙂

 

[Rktpwrd]

So brief update - success!

With the bonding adhesive fully cured, I was able to start working with the second extension tonight.
I started with removing all of the old paint and overspray I could from the inside and got the bracket riveted onto my new tab:

The outside was sanded down to bare plastic as well. There was quite a bit of product there, two previous paint jobs as well as where someone tried to (poorly) repair the cracked and stressed area above the upper mounting stud with regular body filler.
I’m just happy to have all that horrible brown paint gone:

Here’s the underside of the taillight with the extension bracket installed. Now you can finally see where it goes and what it’s purpose is.

With the extension bolted in place and shimmed out to where it needed to be, it was time to apply some kitty hair. It was REALLY thick in this pic and way more than I needed, but I wanted to be sure I had enough material added where I wanted it. Easily 95% of this got sanded off.

I didn’t have to trim anything from above the taillight on this one, but I found that the line parallel to the side of the light wasn’t straight. The gap got narrower in the middle and didn’t look right. So I marked that for trimming while it was in place.

And here’s the result of tonight’s efforts. Not quite done yet, I’m going to remove a bit more from the edge by the trunk lid and round over the edges, but it’s really close. I also still have to fill and block the outer face and get the body line to match the one on the trunk lid a bit better, but that should be pretty easy.

Overall I’m much happier with the fit and finish of this extension over the original one. I guess everything happens for a reason!

Thanks for checking back guys.
Till next time.

D.

 

[Northernregal]

Looks good man. Little bit of material removed and a big difference. Top line looks nice too!

 

[1evilregal]

I was 99% sure that the bond would work, and was waiting on the mounting before I commented...

all in all, that's going to be the nicest cutty anywhere!

 

[Slowpoke]

Amazing as usual! Wish I had just 1/10th of your patience that you have with all the detail work you accomplish.

 

[O. D. Showtime]

Looks great Donovan!

 

[Wraith]

My thoughts were to make the bracket go the long way up the housing to have more purchase but that's probably overkill. I like overkill.

 

[Rktpwrd]

Thanks for all the comments guys!

More good news tonight, the passenger’s side quarter extension is done.
Finally.
It wouldn’t have been so bad but a lot of time was spent on the first one only to discard it after finding the fit terrible and then breaking the first bracket tab.

Anyways here’s a look at how it fits now and the alignments to the adjacent panels.

The alignment to the trunk lid edge:

There’s a little bit of an optical illusion there. It appears a tiny bit narrower at the very bottom corner, but the gap is actually the same all the way through. I think it will look better once everything is a uniform color again.

The alignment to the side of the taillight bezel:

The inside edge:
Note the nice tight fit now where the extension butts up to the quarter, and the excess plastic removed from the bottom as compared to the untouched driver’s side:

Looks much cleaner and better now in my opinion.

Side profile:

And an overall view.

In case any of you are wondering why I’m working on the extensions at this point when there’s still other areas that need finishing, it’s because these need to be body worked when they’re attached to the car.
As if they were part of the quarter panel itself. That, and I need to have all the work done to them prior to priming and painting the inside edges. The inside edges won’t be accessible when the outside of the body gets sprayed, so they need to get done first.

Just for comparison’s sake, here’s the before and after, I think it was well worth the additional time and effort.

Before:

After:

That’s all for now everyone. I think I’ll resume finishing the rest of this quarter panel next before attempting this same corrective procedure to the driver’s extension.
Thanks for following along!

D.

 

[Northernregal]

The before and after pics really show how much it does for the cars lines.

Your threads are fantastic for tips and tricks to have a sharp looking ride. Keep doing what you do, so us non body guys can pick up a few tricks!

 

[liquidh8]

Looking great Donovan!