BUILD THREAD Project Olds Cool (Recognition!!)

[old80cs]

Sorry to hear about your friend, glad the doctors got him settled and recovering, I wish him the best.

The fillers look great! I'm paying attention, will be doing the same down the road to my CS.

 

[Northernregal]

Been thinking about the olds for a while D. Unfortunate news about your friend but if you need a hand, my life is 4 days away from being free so I can swing down and help you out/ learn from the man! Got a really good q-jet book you might enjoy reading too.

Great work by the way!

 

[Rktpwrd]

Happy Easter weekend everyone!

It’s been a busy one here on the forum by the looks of things, as everyone is starting to gear up for getting their rides ready for spring.

I’ve been knuckling down as well, my big push for this go-round was to get the rear wheel wells finish repaired and knocked off the to-do list.
Here’s how that went over the last week or so:

All the repairs and welding had already been addressed in the driver’s side wheel well, so it was all about concentrating on the passenger’s side. I began by using the Clean n Strip wheel on the areas most heavily oxidized and rusted so that I could get a better idea of what I had left to work with. Once that was done, I followed that up with some serious spot sandblasting.

It was time consuming and tedious, but it was definitely the ticket for getting it down to clean bare metal:

As you can see, just like the other side I had a couple spots that were rusted through and needed repairing. I knew that was going to be the case going in, but I had to have clean metal to work with first. The spot blaster was definitely the right tool for that job, but damn if it didn’t make a hell of a mess!

Once I got the disaster on my floor cleaned up, it was on to stripping the rest of the inner and outer wells. I felt like a G body ostrich, with my head buried in a wheel well!
Here it is once the last of the old paint and primer and surface rust was removed....

.... and a couple closeup shots of the areas that needed to be patched:

This was by far the worst of them all, located at the very back of the pinch weld. With the car being a one wheel wonder, this area likely bore the brunt of all the debris that got kicked up by the tire over the years. Note the factory seam sealer in between the first and second layers of sheet metal. This probably didn’t help things either.

One by one, I started cutting out all the old damaged stuff and started welding in fresh steel.

This concludes the metal working portion, and a bunch of pics already, so....

Continued >>>

 

[Rktpwrd]

I finished up the last of the metal work Thursday evening, which set me up nicely to spend the long weekend getting the rest of it done.
Friday was going to be all about cleaning, masking, and shooting some epoxy. I started off by making a quick trip to the store for some supplies...

...then came home and got down to my most dreaded task in the world- masking.

Two nice wet coats of epoxy later, I had a good foundation for the remaining steps. I left everything masked up and after letting it cure overnight, Saturday afternoon I scuffed both wells thoroughly with red Scotchbrite. Next was to apply some 3M heavy bodied seam sealer to the joints between the inner and outer halves with a plastic body filler spreader:

It wasn’t pretty at this stage, but it didn’t have to be. The following stage would take care of that and provide the protection I was looking for. Once the seam sealer was given the necessary time to cure, I hit the wells with wax and grease remover, followed by a coat each of Bulldog adhesion promoter. Then it was time for the rewarding part!

I applied several coats (probably 5 or 6, I lost count) of bed liner coating. I used all 4 cans that I bought, so roughly 2 cans per wheel well. That should give you an idea of the mil thickness I applied it to.
Here’s the payoff pics once I was done:

I’m super pleased with this product, it was easy to apply and appears to be tough as nails which is exactly what I wanted. It took a few coats to perfect the finish and technique, but all it cost me was some time and a blister on my spray nozzle finger.
Lol

To finish things off, late last night I went out and unbolted the exhaust hangers to buy me a bit of room, and started wire brushing the frame to knock the loose crap off. Then it was straight into hitting the frame with a couple coats of semi-gloss black POR15. I didn’t just do the visible portions of the frame in the wheel openings, rather I coated as much as I could reach right from behind the front wheels all the way to the back bumper.
There’ll be a few areas to touch up in the future no doubt, but it’s nice to know that the majority of it has been painted now. (I already did the front half when I did the engine and transmission swap).

The POR15 was still wet and curing in these pics, so hopefully it will dull down a bit more and won’t be as glossy. Anyways, pics:

Overall I’m extremely pleased with how they turned out. It’s nice having the peace of mind that these areas have been addressed, and that they’ll be protected again well into the foreseeable future. Hopefully for another 38 years just as the original undercoat did.

Hope y’all enjoyed following my exploits, now I’m off to bolt the exhaust back up and get the wheels on. Then it can stay on the ground and off the damn jack stands for a while!

Thanks everyone,

D.

 

[Clutch]

Happy Easter weekend everyone!

It’s been a busy one here on the forum by the looks of things, as everyone is starting to gear up for getting their rides ready for spring.

I’ve been knuckling down as well, my big push for this go-round was to get the rear wheel wells finish repaired and knocked off the to-do list.
Here’s how that went over the last week or so:

All the repairs and welding had already been addressed in the driver’s side wheel well, so it was all about concentrating on the passenger’s side. I began by using the Clean n Strip wheel on the areas most heavily oxidized and rusted so that I could get a better idea of what I had left to work with. Once that was done, I followed that up with some serious spot sandblasting.

It was time consuming and tedious, but it was definitely the ticket for getting it down to clean bare metal:

View attachment 85856

View attachment 85857

View attachment 85858

View attachment 85859

View attachment 85860

As you can see, just like the other side I had a couple spots that were rusted through and needed repairing. I knew that was going to be the case going in, but I had to have clean metal to work with first. The spot blaster was definitely the right tool for that job, but damn if it didn’t make a hell of a mess!

View attachment 85861

Once I got the disaster on my floor cleaned up, it was on to stripping the rest of the inner and outer wells. I felt like a G body ostrich, with my head buried in a wheel well!
Here it is once the last of the old paint and primer and surface rust was removed....

View attachment 85862

View attachment 85863

View attachment 85864

.... and a couple closeup shots of the areas that needed to be patched:

View attachment 85865

View attachment 85866

This was by far the worst of them all, located at the very back of the pinch weld. With the car being a one wheel wonder, this area likely bore the brunt of all the debris that got kicked up by the tire over the years. Note the factory seam sealer in between the first and second layers of sheet metal. This probably didn’t help things either.

View attachment 85867

One by one, I started cutting out all the old damaged stuff and started welding in fresh steel.

View attachment 85868

View attachment 85869

View attachment 85870

View attachment 85871

View attachment 85872

This concludes the metal working portion, and a bunch of pics already, so....

Continued >>>

I hat welding in metal where there's sealer in between the panels. What's your trick for clean edge welds? I usually just clean in between the best I can weld and hope

 

[Clutch]

Happy Easter weekend everyone!

It’s been a busy one here on the forum by the looks of things, as everyone is starting to gear up for getting their rides ready for spring.

I’ve been knuckling down as well, my big push for this go-round was to get the rear wheel wells finish repaired and knocked off the to-do list.
Here’s how that went over the last week or so:

All the re

I finished up the last of the metal work Thursday evening, which set me up nicely to spend the long weekend getting the rest of it done.
Friday was going to be all about cleaning, masking, and shooting some epoxy. I started off by making a quick trip to the store for some supplies...

View attachment 85873

...then came home and got down to my most dreaded task in the world- masking.

View attachment 85874

Two nice wet coats of epoxy later, I had a good foundation for the remaining steps. I left everything masked up and after letting it cure overnight, Saturday afternoon I scuffed both wells thoroughly with red Scotchbrite. Next was to apply some 3M heavy bodied seam sealer to the joints between the inner and outer halves with a plastic body filler spreader:

View attachment 85875

View attachment 85876

View attachment 85877

View attachment 85878

It wasn’t pretty at this stage, but it didn’t have to be. The following stage would take care of that and provide the protection I was looking for. Once the seam sealer was given the necessary time to cure, I hit the wells with wax and grease remover, followed by a coat each of Bulldog adhesion promoter. Then it was time for the rewarding part!

I applied several coats (probably 5 or 6, I lost count) of bed liner coating. I used all 4 cans that I bought, so roughly 2 cans per wheel well. That should give you an idea of the mil thickness I applied it to.
Here’s the payoff pics once I was done:

View attachment 85879

View attachment 85880

View attachment 85881

View attachment 85882

View attachment 85883

View attachment 85884

I’m super pleased with this product, it was easy to apply and appears to be tough as nails which is exactly what I wanted. It took a few coats to perfect the finish and technique, but all it cost me was some time and a blister on my spray nozzle finger.
Lol

To finish things off, late last night I went out and unbolted the exhaust hangers to buy me a bit of room, and started wire brushing the frame to knock the loose crap off. Then it was straight into hitting the frame with a couple coats of semi-gloss black POR15. I didn’t just do the visible portions of the frame in the wheel openings, rather I coated as much as I could reach right from behind the front wheels all the way to the back bumper.
There’ll be a few areas to touch up in the future no doubt, but it’s nice to know that the majority of it has been painted now. (I already did the front half when I did the engine and transmission swap).

The POR15 was still wet and curing in these pics, so hopefully it will dull down a bit more and won’t be as glossy. Anyways, pics:

View attachment 85885

View attachment 85886

View attachment 85887

View attachment 85888

Overall I’m extremely pleased with how they turned out. It’s nice having the peace of mind that these areas have been addressed, and that they’ll be protected again well into the foreseeable future. Hopefully for another 38 years just as the original undercoat did.

Hope y’all enjoyed following my exploits, now I’m off to bolt the exhaust back up and get the wheels on. Then it can stay on the ground and off the damn jack stands for a while!

Thanks everyone,

D.

Looks great D your making great headway I think you'll be driving it in no time

 

[Rktpwrd]

I hat welding in metal where there's sealer in between the panels. What's your trick for clean edge welds? I usually just clean in between the best I can weld and hope

It’s definitely not fun Eric. I really have no secrets to share with you and the others, it’s mostly just about perseverance and patience. You can pretty much count on your first, second, possibly third, and maybe even fourth attempt at getting a good tack to take hold failing on you. I find it usually blows a crater where you’re trying to put the tack.
But once you get that initial tack to take hold you’ve got a base you can work from. Just keep building off of that initial tack weld.

The biggest recommendation I can make is as you already know, to have the cleanest possible surface you can to begin with. Try and get the surrounding and underneath sheet metal as clean as you can, and thoroughly remove as much seam sealer as you can ahead of time.
You should be doing it anyways, but managing your heat closely will help too. If you get the area too hot with your welds, it will melt the seam sealer and it can run into the areas you’re trying to weld and contaminate them.
That’s just what I’ve found in my experience anyways.

Hope this was of some use to you.

Looks great D your making great headway I think you'll be driving it in no time

Thanks for the encouragement as well.
I’m striving pretty hard to have the car ready for the road by the time the mountains of snow here melt. And it looks like that’s gonna be a while yet.

 

[Rktpwrd]

Here’s a couple more quick photos, now that it’s buttoned up and back on its wheels again:

With the wheels on and it sitting so low to the ground, you can’t really see much of the wheel wells and frame anyways. But at least what you can see looks good and is not full of chipped undercoat and rust holes.
🙂

Next up starting tomorrow night, onto the trunk/back window filler panel!

 

[Canon_Mutant]

As usual, looks good. I almost cut my frame notches today. Was toward the end of what I was doing and decided to sleep on it.

I was considering bed liner on my wells to pretty them up a bit after I get done with the frame notch. Was anxious to know if that was good or stupid? I'm a gooder decider when more peoples are involved! 😕

You've probably already explained this 7 times [sorry] but, though I know those wheels likely require spacers, do they need that much? Just curious to where the outside of the tire sits and tire size relative to the fender seems like it could tuck a bit even with a large BS rim?

Unless that is precisely the look you are after then consider myself head slapped for even bringing it up . . .

 

[Clutch]

It’s definitely not fun Eric. I really have no secrets to share with you and the others, it’s mostly just about perseverance and patience. You can pretty much count on your first, second, possibly third, and maybe even fourth attempt at getting a good tack to take hold failing on you. I find it usually blows a crater where you’re trying to put the tack.
But once you get that initial tack to take hold you’ve got a base you can work from. Just keep building off of that initial tack weld.

The biggest recommendation I can make is as you already know, to have the cleanest possible surface you can to begin with. Try and get the surrounding and underneath sheet metal as clean as you can, and thoroughly remove as much seam sealer as you can ahead of time.
You should be doing it anyways, but managing your heat closely will help too. If you get the area too hot with your welds, it will melt the seam sealer and it can run into the areas you’re trying to weld and contaminate them.
That’s just what I’ve found in my experience anyways.

Hope this was of some use to you.



Thanks for the encouragement as well.
I’m striving pretty hard to have the car ready for the road by the time the mountains of snow here melt. And it looks like that’s gonna be a while yet.

Yea that's the same approach I take at home and at work it just never seams to be clean enough.
I think it's going to be a while longer for all of us. I woke up to another snow storm and it was over 50° yesterday