I sure as Hell won't!
BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
I sure as Hell won't!
Thanks Shawn.
Yes it’s things like this that people don’t realize that sometimes have to be re-engineered to accommodate other changes that get made. All they see is the finished product and go “hey, that’s really cool” and don’t give it a second thought as to what went into it much beyond that.
There’s always a cause and effect to any modification that’s made, and usually the more extreme the modification, the more drastic the effect on factory parts.
Yes, by dressing I under mean grinding smooth Tony. To answer your question, it’s for nothing more than pure esthetics, plain and simple. It has nothing to do with anything structural, I just want it to look nice and like it might’ve come that way when it’s done.
Plus it’s good for my OCD.
😅
No apologies needed Eric, it’s something I’ve been pondering myself. After further reflection today, I think the course of action is going to be weld and dress all the edges first, then mix up some epoxy primer and pour it in through the body mount hole. Turn it around and around to get it in all the corners and nooks and crannies, then pour the excess out. Run the body mount bolt into the threads before it sets up so it doesn’t clog up the threads, then set it aside to let it cure.
That way all the welding is done ahead of time, none of the epoxy gets burnt off and compromised, and all the bare metal areas will be protected. I considered your suggestion of using cavity wax, but my fear is that it won’t hold up very well long term.
Plus there’s no real way to guarantee 100% coverage inside with the applicator straw.
Thanks for bringing this up, it’s a genuine concern and something that I was already thinking about.
Donovan, I really don't know what to say, that hasn't already been said, other than I really missed your updates when you were finished up with Olds Cool. Its great to see you working on the Juggernaut, and I'm happy to get my "fix" of information and photos, that your updates supply for me. Keep up the great work.
I only brought it up because it's a battle I'm always facing. I've used just about every method and form of auto body snake oil out there and I always feel like I didn't get enough of whatever in wherever. I'm not as careful or OCD on late model wrecks as on my own stuff. On them it's repair to manufacturer specs as per all Datta and block it out of my minded lol I've got questions for myself on things I'll be doing to my 87 soon but I'll probably decide on the fly.
As promised, the edges of the new body mount box are welded up and ground smooth now. Today I mixed up some epoxy primer I had left over from the work on Olds Cool, poured it inside, and worked it around to coat the insides.
It’s white, but that doesn’t really matter, it’s just there for corrosion resistance and protection. It’ll never be seen so the color is irrelevant. I drilled a small 1/8” hole in one of the corners to drain the excess epoxy out. This procedure seems to have worked out pretty well.
Once I drained the excess out, I used it to coat the insides of the new floor crossmember. It’s not the prettiest because I applied it with a brush, but again looks aren’t important here. Protection is.
I realized I hadn’t exactly posted any pictures of the outside of the crossmember now that it’s finished, this part will be seen underneath the car so I made sure it at least looks presentable.
By the way, from here on out I’ll be referring to the new crossmember as “the flying W”.
For obvious reasons. Lol
Now to sit and wait for the epoxy to cure.
It’s white, but that doesn’t really matter, it’s just there for corrosion resistance and protection. It’ll never be seen so the color is irrelevant. I drilled a small 1/8” hole in one of the corners to drain the excess epoxy out. This procedure seems to have worked out pretty well.
Once I drained the excess out, I used it to coat the insides of the new floor crossmember. It’s not the prettiest because I applied it with a brush, but again looks aren’t important here. Protection is.
I realized I hadn’t exactly posted any pictures of the outside of the crossmember now that it’s finished, this part will be seen underneath the car so I made sure it at least looks presentable.
By the way, from here on out I’ll be referring to the new crossmember as “the flying W”.
For obvious reasons. Lol
Now to sit and wait for the epoxy to cure.
Had a kick-@ss day in The Skunkworks today, Mike was over for my turn on the car. I had him bring his welder over with him so we could both rock and roll at the same time, doubling our productivity.
I started by welding up the Cleco holes behind the driver’s side pass-through piece, while I was doing that, he closed up a couple of small holes on both sides that will be below the new floor line.
After I got the Cleco holes filled in, I next got the driver’s side pass-through fitted and tack welded in on the outside.
Mike made use of this time to cut down the stock passenger side seatbelt box and test fit it in temporarily:
He argued that it would be a good idea to not permanently close this in with welded sheetmetal just in case I’d ever need access inside there again, and after some thought I decided he was right. This is a good compromise, it still fills in the gap, utilizes some of the factory parts, and still allows access behind there in case I ever need it. I’ll create a floor for the box and flange it so it attaches to the outside top of the inner wall to add strength to it. It’ll be completely useless other than to fill in the gap, but that’s besides the point, it’ll never be seen anyways.
Once I had the outside of the driver’s side pass-through fully fit and tack welded in, I gave him the go-ahead to give’r shjt on getting the inside wall welded to the pipe part of the pass-through. He did very well right up until a neighborhood wide power outage shut us down for the rest of the day.
But while he was getting that welded together, I switched sides and went to work on the outside of the passenger side pass-through insert. Apparently I’ve learned an awful lot and come a long ways since I first grafted this in several years ago, it fit in the opening, but that’s about it. It was ROUGH to say the least. I got the bottom and both sides fully welded solid, but the top is going to take quite a bit of work to get right.
I had to make and weld in a small patch on the upper left hand side to fix some paper-thin sheetmetal and some weird stuff going on with it, but it turned out ok. Since I’m right here in the area anyways, I cut out the seam between the rocker panel and the lower quarter and made a “seam delete” piece to go in there. I ran outta steam before I could tack it in (11 hour day in the shop today), so I’ll tackle that first thing tomorrow.
It’s a long weekend for us here tomorrow and the weather outside is craptastic anyways, so I’m anticipating getting quite a bit more done. Mike mentioned that he might be able to log in a couple hours with me tomorrow too so that’d be a huge plus if he does.
We’re rollin’ now gents!
I started by welding up the Cleco holes behind the driver’s side pass-through piece, while I was doing that, he closed up a couple of small holes on both sides that will be below the new floor line.
After I got the Cleco holes filled in, I next got the driver’s side pass-through fitted and tack welded in on the outside.
Mike made use of this time to cut down the stock passenger side seatbelt box and test fit it in temporarily:
He argued that it would be a good idea to not permanently close this in with welded sheetmetal just in case I’d ever need access inside there again, and after some thought I decided he was right. This is a good compromise, it still fills in the gap, utilizes some of the factory parts, and still allows access behind there in case I ever need it. I’ll create a floor for the box and flange it so it attaches to the outside top of the inner wall to add strength to it. It’ll be completely useless other than to fill in the gap, but that’s besides the point, it’ll never be seen anyways.
Once I had the outside of the driver’s side pass-through fully fit and tack welded in, I gave him the go-ahead to give’r shjt on getting the inside wall welded to the pipe part of the pass-through. He did very well right up until a neighborhood wide power outage shut us down for the rest of the day.
But while he was getting that welded together, I switched sides and went to work on the outside of the passenger side pass-through insert. Apparently I’ve learned an awful lot and come a long ways since I first grafted this in several years ago, it fit in the opening, but that’s about it. It was ROUGH to say the least. I got the bottom and both sides fully welded solid, but the top is going to take quite a bit of work to get right.
I had to make and weld in a small patch on the upper left hand side to fix some paper-thin sheetmetal and some weird stuff going on with it, but it turned out ok. Since I’m right here in the area anyways, I cut out the seam between the rocker panel and the lower quarter and made a “seam delete” piece to go in there. I ran outta steam before I could tack it in (11 hour day in the shop today), so I’ll tackle that first thing tomorrow.
It’s a long weekend for us here tomorrow and the weather outside is craptastic anyways, so I’m anticipating getting quite a bit more done. Mike mentioned that he might be able to log in a couple hours with me tomorrow too so that’d be a huge plus if he does.
We’re rollin’ now gents!
Well, no Mike today, apparently he’d rather binge watch Ozark with his ol lady than come play with burning metal. No worries, I got after it late this morning and made shizz happen on my own anyways.
Started off by knocking out the rocker panel seam delete…
…then dove right in to fixing the ugly upper joint between the two panels. I had put a flange on the bottom edge of the quarter panel thinking that it would make it easier to locate the pass-through insert, and while it gave me something to Cleco to, it royally screwed with the straightness. It had flattened out the area, and to make matters worse, the top half of the insert was quite short and bent inwards at a bad angle.
So to correct this, I cut the upper tack welds and the flange completely out.
This left a sizeable gap between the two panels unfortunately:
I broke out the UniSpotter and the slide hammer with a large flat 90 degree hook on the end, and started straightening things out.
Once I got things aligned properly, I then began to weld the gap up. DISCLAIMER:
I definitely DO NOT recommend doing this the way I did, usually trying to weld up a gap this large between two panels of the same gauge will result in it pulling inwards and leaving a nasty valley between the two.
However.
I had a couple of things working in my favour, the insert is much heavier gauge steel than the quarter, and the proximity of the upper edge to the welded pipe meant that the area was very strong and wouldn’t move a whole lot.
So I started doing what I call “bridge tacks” (because they bridge the gap), and continued doing so until I had only a 1/4” or so between them. Once that was done, I knocked the tops of all the tacks down almost flush and started welding in the gaps working from the center out.
Again, definitely not usually recommended unless you know what you’re doing. Weld, cool, grind, repeat. Weld, cool, grind, repeat. Over and over, probably in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 times. After a couple hours sitting cross legged on the floor repeating this process over and over, I finally had it fully welded.
It had still pulled in a bit (I had anticipated that), so I stitched on another row of porcupine quills in the valley and pulled it out with the slide hammer. A little dressing with 40 grit on the big wheel 8” grinder, and voilà. One side completely done!
I think it looks killer, and that’s even without the trim bezel or the exhaust pipe back in there yet. This has been a long time coming, and I’m so glad to see it all coming together.
It was another good day.
D.
Started off by knocking out the rocker panel seam delete…
…then dove right in to fixing the ugly upper joint between the two panels. I had put a flange on the bottom edge of the quarter panel thinking that it would make it easier to locate the pass-through insert, and while it gave me something to Cleco to, it royally screwed with the straightness. It had flattened out the area, and to make matters worse, the top half of the insert was quite short and bent inwards at a bad angle.
So to correct this, I cut the upper tack welds and the flange completely out.
This left a sizeable gap between the two panels unfortunately:
I broke out the UniSpotter and the slide hammer with a large flat 90 degree hook on the end, and started straightening things out.
Once I got things aligned properly, I then began to weld the gap up. DISCLAIMER:
I definitely DO NOT recommend doing this the way I did, usually trying to weld up a gap this large between two panels of the same gauge will result in it pulling inwards and leaving a nasty valley between the two.
However.
I had a couple of things working in my favour, the insert is much heavier gauge steel than the quarter, and the proximity of the upper edge to the welded pipe meant that the area was very strong and wouldn’t move a whole lot.
So I started doing what I call “bridge tacks” (because they bridge the gap), and continued doing so until I had only a 1/4” or so between them. Once that was done, I knocked the tops of all the tacks down almost flush and started welding in the gaps working from the center out.
Again, definitely not usually recommended unless you know what you’re doing. Weld, cool, grind, repeat. Weld, cool, grind, repeat. Over and over, probably in the neighborhood of 40 or 50 times. After a couple hours sitting cross legged on the floor repeating this process over and over, I finally had it fully welded.
It had still pulled in a bit (I had anticipated that), so I stitched on another row of porcupine quills in the valley and pulled it out with the slide hammer. A little dressing with 40 grit on the big wheel 8” grinder, and voilà. One side completely done!
I think it looks killer, and that’s even without the trim bezel or the exhaust pipe back in there yet. This has been a long time coming, and I’m so glad to see it all coming together.
It was another good day.
D.
Bridging metal with a mig brings back horrible memories LoL good show of patience! You should get a metal for metal work lol looks awesome.
It almost makes me sad to know that you are going to lay some beautiful paint work over all this work. This car should be left in raw metal to truly appreciate all your time and labor!
