And it's Show Time.............................
This is the new outer rocker panel that will end up being burned in when all the rest of the work is done. The sectioned out piece of the B pillar is just clamped in place as a place marker to check for accuracy of location. The panel actually sort of self-locates itself.
And a quick look inside the cavity behind the B pillar kind of explains the "self locating" aspect. The back end of the rocker physically butts up tight against the inner wheel house. In the factory installation, the wheel house would have been drilled or punched with holes that would line up with the tabs found on the end of the rocker panel. I don't personally plan on being that chummy with how the factory did it.
And the front end of things. The exposed sheet metal you see is the transition area from the passenger floor board to the passenger toe board. When the new floor panel went in, how many years ago was that now???, i was using my 225 Lincoln set up for flux core because all the work was being done outside which made gas an expensive waste to try to use. And yeah, the quality of the welds did suffer; the control over the heat and speed with the flux core just wasn't there and finding uninjured sheet metal that would take the heat long enough to make the fusion needed became a battle of frustration. Now with all the outer side exposed, I can go back and revisit the site to correct some of the nastier compromises and finish what couldn't be got at way back then.
Detail shots for the work needed to graft the toe board and floor board back to their attaching panel that is actually part of the body mount. The factory used as many as three or four layers of metal to form the pocket which holds the threaded diamond plate into which the body mount bolt is screwed. This is a midway shot as I still had to extend the repair back from the sill and re-attach it to the original shelf. The drop or bend you see in the shot is the shoulder to which the inner rocker panel will attach at this end of the opening.
This shot skips ahead a few steps but shows the finished work on the toe board side wall as well as the inner section of the A pillar box that has been welded in and then primered. This piece had not been included when the pillar was first rebuilt as I had had no donor from which to harvest it at the time. I had had to make do with what was there and move on. This time I went back and returned that piece back to where it belonged. Having the donor A pillar section really helped as I could take it apart and harvest the pieces that I needed.
While it can still be seen, this is the frame rail, post descaling, rust removal, sanding and chipping, and multiple coats of Rust Mort. The repeated applicaton of the Mort proved to be necessary as it made a great revealer of missed or marginal areas when it dried. The little "blossoms" small dark blotches, irritated me so they got further attention from an air driven wire wheel, then the 60 gr on the 4.5, and even some tight corner love from the micro belt sander. It will never be pretty but then that was never the goal. What I wanted and got was a smooth surface that would take paint, shed moisture, and not be pockmarked with nurds and crusticles that could trap crud.
This is a full up test install of both the inner and outer rocker panels with both the front and rear pillar transitions clamped into place as well. Minus all the clamps this will be pretty close to what the pre paint product will look like. It was also an opportunity for me to set the proper relationship between the inner and outer rocker panels as the outer, being a stamping, is pretty much bent and shaped the way it needs to be while the inner is still a blank of sorts meaning that it still has to be adjusted and trimmed to fit the way I want it to.
A detail shot for how the lower section of the A pillar sits down on the outer rocker panel and transfers weight and stress down and back into the structure. Not so visible but there is the end cap that is part of this component and which covers the end of the outer panel to deter the intrusion of road crap and other crud and corruption. For those who would opine, "but with the front fender in place you never see it!" it is not about seeing and being seen, it is about the S*** that gets flung up and back by the front wheel and ends up going splat against that surface. Having the rocker panel closed off keeps that crud from penetrating into the rocker and eating it away from the inside out.
If you have never been introduced before, I'd like you to meet the inner rocker panel, only this time in anti-rust primer. At a few inches over 5 feet long, it matches the length of the outer rocker panel and lands, front and back, directly behind the outer panel to cap it off completely from the inside. This shot was taken before it received its color coat as it was easier to shoot the top coat with it off the vehicle. It is also before I clipped it for width; in its final current version it is narrower so that it can be grafted onto the short shoulder that is what remains of the original inner panel. To get that attachment point it was necessary to cut away the old panel which wasn't much of a chore; it was that far gone and just about half past dead as it was. Most of work attached to this project is just getting to the point where you can attach new metal and be comfortable about it. Southern cars tend not to be this nasty as road salt is an alien life form south of the line. Up here in the land of the Frozen Chosen, the stuff gets flung around like rice and confetti at a wedding and without relentless attention can turn a car into a rusticle in as little as five years. This care did do its share of time in the salt puddles before it came into my hands so the battle to eradicate the cancer has been vicious and ongoing for many years.
More Pictures??? Yeah, maybe, perhaps, later...................................
😴
Nick
