With your attention for detail, my bet is on you welding it in.
You havent backed down from a challenge on the car yet.
BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
With your attention for detail, my bet is on you welding it in.
You havent backed down from a challenge on the car yet.
Great work as always, Donovan, you’re most certainly going to have to leave the trunk open at the road course, drive and drag or just a simple cruise in to show off the work done on that tail panel!
Put my vote in for bolt on, I have no doubt it’ll be seamless to all but the most curious eyes and like you said, easy to paint everything and just install it with a handful of bolts. 👍
Put my vote in for bolt on, I have no doubt it’ll be seamless to all but the most curious eyes and like you said, easy to paint everything and just install it with a handful of bolts. 👍
Would a gasket work to fill the slight gap & would it cause a sitting water issue for the bolt on route?
While that may be true, I’m not necessarily up for making more work for myself than necessary either. (Which I seem to be good at too)
Lol
If I do go the welding route it’ll entail a LOT of perimeter welding which won’t be easy on sheetmetal. All factors to consider at this point.
Vote registered Mike, thank you. The downside of the better this project turns out is that as you said, it’ll likely go unnoticed until it’s pointed out to everyone but the most discerning and observant. That double edged sword again.
That’s a great option, and one that’s not entirely off the table. I don’t think it’ll cause an issue depending on the gasket material used. (I wouldn’t use something like foam for example, for obvious reasons). Another huge upside to using a gasket in between is that it’ll help take up the gap left by the heads of the nutserts too. I have already been contemplating ways to dimple the nutsert locations so that the heads don’t make a larger gap.
Great food for thought.
I respect the absolutely amazing tenacity and dedication, sir. It's inspirational and the whole process is informative as well as fun to follow.
I think welding the panel on would be the smoothest and most seamless of course, though potentially causing paint issues or other future obstacles makes me lean more towards a bolt-on style. Yours would attach the same as factory but noticably fit and look much better, whereas the welded version would probably only be described as "smoothed" or even "Frenched" by the uninformed. Either way will look great, but one gives the impression of being made of handblown glass and the other a special edition from GM.
I think welding the panel on would be the smoothest and most seamless of course, though potentially causing paint issues or other future obstacles makes me lean more towards a bolt-on style. Yours would attach the same as factory but noticably fit and look much better, whereas the welded version would probably only be described as "smoothed" or even "Frenched" by the uninformed. Either way will look great, but one gives the impression of being made of handblown glass and the other a special edition from GM.
Perseverance and tenacity are definitely two assets on this project, but fortunately they are also two of my stronger suits. Many would argue stubborn even. Regardless, when I set my mind to something there’s no stopping me, I’m like a pitbull with a bone.
I get discouraged occasionally same as anyone else as you all saw with the tail panel, but I never stop working towards that end goal until it meets my vision. I’m glad you find the posts inspirational and informative as well as enjoyable. That’s my goal when I write them. As long as you and others feel the same way I’ll keep posting them.
As far as the bolt-on vs weld on debate, I honestly keep flip flopping back and forth between the two. One day I’m convinced that I’m going bolt-on and the next I’m absolutely going to weld it on. Honestly, it’s probably a moot point, either one will look better than original. I just have to make up my mind and go for it.
Thanks for replying Jonny, I appreciate the feedback.
In other news, I struck a deal with a customer of mine today to have him let me use his oversized sandblasting cabinet. I’ve inquired around about the size of the local sandblasting cabinets available for rent by the hour, and it seems everyone only has standard 2’ or 3’ wide cabinets. This piece is close to 4’ long, so that’s completely out of the question. It just won’t fit in a standard cabinet. This fabricated panel is so intricate and convoluted on the backside that hand sanding or scuffing is not feasible. There’s many areas that are inaccessible by hand now, but sand or media blasting would prep and profile the surface for epoxy perfectly.
So, after fixing up my customer’s refrigerated dryer today, I caught a glimpse of his double wide blasting cabinet. He’s in the aviation industry so it would make sense that he’d have a larger than normal cabinet for blasting propellers and tail rotors etc. He and his guys have no problem letting me use the cabinet, I just have to give him a day’s notice.
Problem solved. I’ll probably book a day off work possibly next week and blast it in the morning and shoot the backside in epoxy that afternoon.
Win-win.
Now to get it finished up before then…
JMO, bolt on will allow for better paint coverage than a welded panel. Peace of mind related to backside/underside. A thin gasket to prevent chafing. And (heaven forbid) easier to repair in case of the unthinkable happening.
YMMV
Top notch, as always!
YMMV
Top notch, as always!
Bolt-on vs. weld. Unless you're welding on the taillamps too, I vote for bolt-on, with whatever sealing method you choose to keep water out of the trunk. The factory spec, other than just being cheap, was to make sure any water that got into the trunk lid gaps flowed out through the highly-engineered and specially-sloped channels (gutters) and out the back, through the gaps of the taillight housings and filler panel, then to the ground to prevent any sitting water. This works for grocery-getters that have to park in open apartment parking spaces 24-7, but for this car, either can work since I'm guessing it will rarely get wet. I could see it either way.
But, again, access and repairability should the unthinkable occurs, as Ribbedroof mentioned, that's another question to always consider. Will the panel be accessible underneath for proper painting after welding it in? To me, even with the clecos holding it on, the fit looks so good at this point, that a bolt-on wouldn't look out of place. As far as any gasket, that's a total option, but don't discount "closed-cell foam" material, especially silicone foam or EPDM foam that's thin, easily compressible, and virtually weather-proof. Think brake booster to firewall gasket. Thin, compressible down to almost paper thin, and will be impervious to water intrusion. And if done right, not even visible. It really just depends on how you wish it to look once completed. Note, the 4 stanchions on the taillight housings where it bolts to the panel has a round foam compressible gaskets with the rest of the area open for drainage. You could even just put gaskets at the fastener areas to seal crap out of the trunk holes, but then road dirt may tend to fill in the empty areas and might be harder to clean. Just thinking out loud. Plenty of options, but get the panel finished off to where you want it first, then worry about attachment opportunity. God knows, you don't want open-cell foam anything if possible. Only open-cell foam areas that come to mind are the heater hose bib seals and A/C and heater plenum duct seals. And those usually dry out and crumble away, and never water-proof.
Whichever way you decide, if anyone can pull this off, I'm sure you can.
But, again, access and repairability should the unthinkable occurs, as Ribbedroof mentioned, that's another question to always consider. Will the panel be accessible underneath for proper painting after welding it in? To me, even with the clecos holding it on, the fit looks so good at this point, that a bolt-on wouldn't look out of place. As far as any gasket, that's a total option, but don't discount "closed-cell foam" material, especially silicone foam or EPDM foam that's thin, easily compressible, and virtually weather-proof. Think brake booster to firewall gasket. Thin, compressible down to almost paper thin, and will be impervious to water intrusion. And if done right, not even visible. It really just depends on how you wish it to look once completed. Note, the 4 stanchions on the taillight housings where it bolts to the panel has a round foam compressible gaskets with the rest of the area open for drainage. You could even just put gaskets at the fastener areas to seal crap out of the trunk holes, but then road dirt may tend to fill in the empty areas and might be harder to clean. Just thinking out loud. Plenty of options, but get the panel finished off to where you want it first, then worry about attachment opportunity. God knows, you don't want open-cell foam anything if possible. Only open-cell foam areas that come to mind are the heater hose bib seals and A/C and heater plenum duct seals. And those usually dry out and crumble away, and never water-proof.
Whichever way you decide, if anyone can pull this off, I'm sure you can.
Lots of headway and progress has been made since the last update along with some new parts acquisitions. So let’s delve into it shall we?
Working on the fabricated filler panel, the ends that tuck up underneath the taillight bezels currently fit beautifully, nice and tight:
To keep them that way, I needed to gusset the ends to the flanges. I whipped up two of these little pieces after creating a cardboard template of the end shapes:
Here’s the driver’s side held in place with magnets for welding:
To ensure the shape, angle and spacing didn’t change, it required tacking them in place on the car.
Once I had both sides to this point, I was able to remove the piece from the car and fully weld it out on the bench.
Metal finished…
I also got the last two curved corner pieces made and welded in as well finally:
Time to tackle the top bump piece next. This…
…is going to go.
Note the longer corresponding lower bump…
…we are going to make the top bump match in both length, angle and height. I love incorporating symmetry in things like this whenever I can.
After cutting out the old material and making a couple of new new pieces, it started getting tacked in.
I chose to make a new front facing piece, A) because it seemed to be easier, and B) because I had somehow lost most of the “peak”. It had become too flat and would’ve required surgery to correct anyways.
A look at starting to weld up the underside where the license plate light is, you can see it wasn’t much, but just enough to lose the definition of the peak.
After I had this addressed, I turned my attention to that license plate light hole again. It doesn’t really show up in this picture, but the hole wasn’t exactly uniform and straight.
Framing the opening with masking tape highlighted the issue much better:
After correction:
It’s (as always with me), all about the details.
It was right about this time that the long awaited pallet shipment from New York finally arrived at my work. 64nailhead Jim and I have been working together on trying to get this to me since at least October of last year. It took a while for a couple of clueless hacks like us to figure out cross-border shipping, but we did finally get it.
Behold, automotive unobtainium materialized!
Always love seeing this big blue square logo…
Much appreciation to Jim for his phenomenal crating skills to protect it in shipping. It arrived intact and undamaged.
Back in The Skunkworks after it was uncrated and unboxed, an all original, OEM NOS GM stamping, 45 year old NEW right side quarter panel for 78-80 Cutlasses.
Can you say rare??
I said undamaged earlier, but that’s not entirely true. It does have a little bit of damage, there’s a slight crease along the back edge, but it was already there when I had Jim get it for me.
As said, it’s fairly minor and certainly something that I can fix.
Continued >>>
Working on the fabricated filler panel, the ends that tuck up underneath the taillight bezels currently fit beautifully, nice and tight:
To keep them that way, I needed to gusset the ends to the flanges. I whipped up two of these little pieces after creating a cardboard template of the end shapes:
Here’s the driver’s side held in place with magnets for welding:
To ensure the shape, angle and spacing didn’t change, it required tacking them in place on the car.
Once I had both sides to this point, I was able to remove the piece from the car and fully weld it out on the bench.
Metal finished…
I also got the last two curved corner pieces made and welded in as well finally:
Time to tackle the top bump piece next. This…
…is going to go.
Note the longer corresponding lower bump…
…we are going to make the top bump match in both length, angle and height. I love incorporating symmetry in things like this whenever I can.
After cutting out the old material and making a couple of new new pieces, it started getting tacked in.
I chose to make a new front facing piece, A) because it seemed to be easier, and B) because I had somehow lost most of the “peak”. It had become too flat and would’ve required surgery to correct anyways.
A look at starting to weld up the underside where the license plate light is, you can see it wasn’t much, but just enough to lose the definition of the peak.
After I had this addressed, I turned my attention to that license plate light hole again. It doesn’t really show up in this picture, but the hole wasn’t exactly uniform and straight.
Framing the opening with masking tape highlighted the issue much better:
After correction:
It’s (as always with me), all about the details.
It was right about this time that the long awaited pallet shipment from New York finally arrived at my work. 64nailhead Jim and I have been working together on trying to get this to me since at least October of last year. It took a while for a couple of clueless hacks like us to figure out cross-border shipping, but we did finally get it.
Behold, automotive unobtainium materialized!
Always love seeing this big blue square logo…
Much appreciation to Jim for his phenomenal crating skills to protect it in shipping. It arrived intact and undamaged.
Back in The Skunkworks after it was uncrated and unboxed, an all original, OEM NOS GM stamping, 45 year old NEW right side quarter panel for 78-80 Cutlasses.
Can you say rare??
I said undamaged earlier, but that’s not entirely true. It does have a little bit of damage, there’s a slight crease along the back edge, but it was already there when I had Jim get it for me.
As said, it’s fairly minor and certainly something that I can fix.
Continued >>>
Back on the fabricated piece, welding up the inside seams for the bump. Getting clean “pretty” welds on sheetmetal is very difficult, so I was pretty pleased with these:
I wouldn’t normally run this many tacks all in a row at once without quenching, but there is a lot of strength in this area so warping isn’t as much of a concern.
All said and done with the new top bump piece now:
I know the inside edge looks a little odd in those pictures, but it’ll all make sense in a minute. It’s dependent on this, another new acquisition: A NOS trunk weatherstrip seal.
This weatherstrip is different in construction from my original, best that 69hurstolds and I can determine is that is an accurate supersession part number redesign. The profiles are quite different from each other, the new one on the left, and my original on the right:
Here’s the two together, new seal installed (but not yet trimmed to length), and the mostly finished fabricated filler panel:
The fit to the taillight bezels is absolutely perfect. Perfectly flush with the bezels, the slightest of gaps between, and up tight underneath along the sides:
When it’s all said and done, I will trim the undersides of the bezels so that they’re also perfectly flush with my fabricated panel.
And that inner edge of the new top bump piece? It’s shaped that way so that the weatherstrip seal lip sits slightly underneath it:
This is probably the most perfect of all worlds, it’ll keep the panel from rubbing into the paint and ties into the weatherstripping nicely.
Which segueways into the weld vs bolt on question. I’ve definitely decided to go with keeping it as a separate bolt-on piece. The current fit and finish is just so nice that it really doesn’t require welding it on and making it one piece anymore. I know this might disappoint some people, but the extra effort and work required to make that happen just can’t be justified for virtually no visual difference.
I will take your guys’ suggestions though and utilize a gasket between the two panels, I’ve already ordered a large sheet of 1/8” closed cell adhesive backed neoprene foam that I’m going to try and make a one piece gasket out of.
So now with the bulk of the fabrication work done, I’ve shifted focus to hardware for attaching it, grommets for the wiring pass-throughs, and the harness itself. Amazon deliveries have been arriving nearly every day now, neoprene foam, grommet assortments, deutsch connectors, and others.
Yesterday I picked up an assortment of the required hardware I’ll be utilizing, here’s what $11 of mixed hardware looks like:
The rubber sealing washers will be used on the 1/4” stainless steel button head cap screws from inside the trunk, they will be attaching the outer wings, and the two inner lower supports.
The much smaller 6-32 stainless machine screws will be used to attach the upper middle flanges either side of center, and with the two vertical flanges. You might notice the absence of nutserts in the equation, I have decided against using them in this instance. The slight increase in the gap they would create is counter productive to what I’m trying to achieve, plus with only an 1/8” of clearance to the trunk lid in the middle, it would make it a little too close for comfort.
Instead, I’ll be welding all the nuts to the flat washers pictured, and then welding the washers to the insides of the flanges. Doing it this way will help strengthen the attaching points.
Here’s the hardware condensed more to how it’ll go together.
Currently I’m now working on making the wiring hole penetrations, I’ll end up with 4 very small holes vs the two huge ones that the factory had. Stay tuned for that and more as things progress this weekend.
All for now,
D.
I wouldn’t normally run this many tacks all in a row at once without quenching, but there is a lot of strength in this area so warping isn’t as much of a concern.
All said and done with the new top bump piece now:
I know the inside edge looks a little odd in those pictures, but it’ll all make sense in a minute. It’s dependent on this, another new acquisition: A NOS trunk weatherstrip seal.
This weatherstrip is different in construction from my original, best that 69hurstolds and I can determine is that is an accurate supersession part number redesign. The profiles are quite different from each other, the new one on the left, and my original on the right:
Here’s the two together, new seal installed (but not yet trimmed to length), and the mostly finished fabricated filler panel:
The fit to the taillight bezels is absolutely perfect. Perfectly flush with the bezels, the slightest of gaps between, and up tight underneath along the sides:
When it’s all said and done, I will trim the undersides of the bezels so that they’re also perfectly flush with my fabricated panel.
And that inner edge of the new top bump piece? It’s shaped that way so that the weatherstrip seal lip sits slightly underneath it:
This is probably the most perfect of all worlds, it’ll keep the panel from rubbing into the paint and ties into the weatherstripping nicely.
Which segueways into the weld vs bolt on question. I’ve definitely decided to go with keeping it as a separate bolt-on piece. The current fit and finish is just so nice that it really doesn’t require welding it on and making it one piece anymore. I know this might disappoint some people, but the extra effort and work required to make that happen just can’t be justified for virtually no visual difference.
I will take your guys’ suggestions though and utilize a gasket between the two panels, I’ve already ordered a large sheet of 1/8” closed cell adhesive backed neoprene foam that I’m going to try and make a one piece gasket out of.
So now with the bulk of the fabrication work done, I’ve shifted focus to hardware for attaching it, grommets for the wiring pass-throughs, and the harness itself. Amazon deliveries have been arriving nearly every day now, neoprene foam, grommet assortments, deutsch connectors, and others.
Yesterday I picked up an assortment of the required hardware I’ll be utilizing, here’s what $11 of mixed hardware looks like:
The rubber sealing washers will be used on the 1/4” stainless steel button head cap screws from inside the trunk, they will be attaching the outer wings, and the two inner lower supports.
The much smaller 6-32 stainless machine screws will be used to attach the upper middle flanges either side of center, and with the two vertical flanges. You might notice the absence of nutserts in the equation, I have decided against using them in this instance. The slight increase in the gap they would create is counter productive to what I’m trying to achieve, plus with only an 1/8” of clearance to the trunk lid in the middle, it would make it a little too close for comfort.
Instead, I’ll be welding all the nuts to the flat washers pictured, and then welding the washers to the insides of the flanges. Doing it this way will help strengthen the attaching points.
Here’s the hardware condensed more to how it’ll go together.
Currently I’m now working on making the wiring hole penetrations, I’ll end up with 4 very small holes vs the two huge ones that the factory had. Stay tuned for that and more as things progress this weekend.
All for now,
D.
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