Thanks! Working on the inner part of the door's un-chopping today.. Tacked... Then I got on a roll, here's the welded and finished product... Much better fit..
Took delivery on the ballast material today for the door paint stand. Without this it didn't care for the one door added at a time, and wanted to do a nose dive. This should work well!
After seeing the door gap I went and looked at mine. Sure enough. I'm going to be a slacker though. I just have to make sure I don't park in the same state that you do. Your wagon is going to be beautiful. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using H.A.M.B. mobile app
Yeah, I think it was a widespread problem with these wagons.. Today Kyle worked on prepping the driver's door for epoxy primer... Meanwhile, with the passenger door unchopped, I turned my attention to the slots for mounting the stainless trim and drain holes.. The old door's "window sill" was aligned and clamped in place to mark the slots.. Then the slots are marked onto the new skin, and that location transposed down to the proper location.. This is what happens when you pull the carbide cutter out too far while joining the holes... Weatherstrip holes drilled, drain holes laid out... Kyle has the driver's door scuffed and ready to go, once the passenger door is finished we can spray some more epoxy..
Robert, I feel like I'm getting a free pass in one of the best custom/restoration/hotrod shops around every time you post. Thank you again for the effort to share your skills with such detail. If you covered it I can't find what product the inner door metal is sprayed with after metal work and before epoxy sealer. The color seams to indicate maybe a phosphate base etching primer, but I've never seen an etching primer that light colored. Is it a secret or could you give us all a hint? Maybe tinted, high build urethane?
The green paint is House of Kolor Epoxy, KP2CF. The old formulation used zinc chromate (yellow) in one part and the activator (robin egg blue?) in the second part, for the nice putrid green that you see. Given interference by certain agencies looking out for our best interests, or something, the chromates had to go. Hence the pn now has the CF suffix, for chromate free. They did keep the same colors when they removed the chromates, so it still has the same color. It is rather pricey, which is why I decided to try out the SPI. It takes quite a bit of Kerosene to keep the booth up to temps this time of year, which is why we built the door stand, we can prime both sides at once..
Thank you for the details Sir. Will you also apply any sort of protective coating to the insides of the doors and quarters? I've used 3M Rust Fighter in the past, but in the high desert it is hard to tell if it is needed or does any good. Weather in Maryland certainly provides a more "accelerated" test environment for those details.
The insides of the doors (inner panel and back side of skins) where epoxy primed prior to installing the new skins. The area where the skins touch the inner panel was also scuffed where we will mix up some epoxy and use a turkey baster out of the missus's kitchen to apply epoxy to this susceptible joint, to render it as waterproof as we can. The insides of the quarters will get sprayed with epoxy as well.. I'm going to attempt a wand sprayer inside the rockers..
Sneak preview of the powder coating, here's one of the inner fenders... Kyle working on more media blasting, we should have another batch for powder coating this weekend.... With the passenger door removed and out of the way, I worked on the radius-ing and repairing of the lead gap seam. First to check the radius of the completed driver's side with the Gatormeet radius gauge... Radius patch is bent using roll former dies in the Diacro press brake and checked to the radius gauge... The patch is trimmed for the fit to the A-pillar, and a horizontal tail is left to have something to hold on to while tacking in place. A score is added using the cutoff wheel so the excess can be snapped off after tacking... Welded and dressed.. Roof skin patch trimmed and fitted... Welded... Welds dressed and radius checked...
Thanks! More progress on the wagon today. Kyle had finished the media blasting on the hood brace, so we had a few areas to address. As the hood ornament no longer exists, we didn't need the mounting holes going through the brace. A piece of brass flat bar is radius-ed to make an anvil.. High spot is heated and tapped down with the hammer.. Then pick the next high spot and repeat.... Slot is welded closed, welds dressed, area media blasted once again... Kyle working on prepping the passenger door for primer... Sorry for the blurry picture, gonna have to fire the photographer! The hood ornament hole in the cross brace was also welded closed and dressed... Next on the list were the stress cracks on the ends of the hood brace. Some 16 gauge CRS was used to make some stiffeners inside the corners... test fit.. Plug welded in place and the flanges wrapped around... cracks repaired... Test fit to the hood...
Tonight Kyle was putting the finishing touches on prepping the passenger door for paint. Lots of nooks and crannies. We ended up moving the drill press so we could open the media blast cabinet door wide enough to put the door inside. It was a snug fit, but made easier work of cleaning the door on the ends... The rest will be done by hand... After adding the radius to the doors, it only made sense that the lift gate needed the same modification. Sorry to bore you with more of the same, just wait until we get to wet sanding Test fit the radius... Scoring the second cut location, and tacking in place.. Snapped of the excess.... Checking the radius, and welded in and dressed... They're calling for a heat wave this weekend (in high 40's on Sunday), so we should get some more primer sprayed....
Kyle finishing up the prep on the door this morning, found another use for the GatorMeet radius square, here used as a sanding block to get into the tight crevices... Front fenders were both prepped with DA and 80 grit.. SPI Epoxy is mixed to allow for induction... As the body parts had been soda blasted, it was cleaned with a hot soapy water (dish detergent) and a grey Scotchbrite, followed by a towel drying session. Then this was followed up with preclean... The door handle backing plates had not yet been installed on the back side of the door skins, so a coat of epoxy was sprayed on both, and then bolted together to allow to cure.. A good shot of the door paint fixture in action... Two coats applied...
Just read the whole thread, all I can say is WOW! Simply amazing work. The attention to detail is astounding!
Insane. But in a good way. You have a tremendous resivoir of focus to not let the details bog you down. Can't wait to see the finished version.
Thanks for the comments guys. It feels good to finally get some paint on the bare metal, although I know it's quite a ways to go. Dave, the color has gone from a blue metallic with platinum roof to Jade green with platinum roof. Met with the owner about a week ago and we discussed paint, among other things. Break lines are always a pain, and I think I have her convinced to do an all Jade green with lace on the roof. So we'll see. Need to start looking for lace I guess..
This evening while we had painted parts still lounging in the booth, we took some time to clean up and put tools away..... hey, there's that welding table! And found a new location for the ewheel.. Still gives plenty of room for access to the parts bins and gets it out of the way elsewhere in the shop.. After that we worked to fix some pin holes along the passenger quarter's weld.. using a light from the back side to show the pin holes... ....and this one was a pit from the back side, more of the dreaded dirt thrown from the rear tire causing rust....
Tonight we finished up radius-ing the liftgate opening... Next, we moved on to de-leading and shaving the last pinch weld seam at the back of the car. We've eliminated all of these to get rid of all the dirt/rust traps that we can... Removing the excess.... Getting some gap filler..... Flattening out the creases.... Tacked in place, and test fitting a tail light before trimming our gap filler.... ....and we'll get the rest of the de-leading finished on Saturday...
Have you removed all the lead in the entire car and repaired it this way ?? I have been on the debate for removing lead on my projects but this may have answered the debate after seeing whats underneath and what problems old lead can cause. Awesome work !!
Some of the "subtle" mods we had done included removing the pinch weld flanges and leaded seam above and below the tail lights to get rid of a dirt trap/rust generator... The pinch weld seam for the tail pan is also in the tires path, especially given the wider rear tires and mini-tubs it's now using. So we decided to get rid of these as well, and butt weld the panel in. The tailpan was trimmed as well, leaving a bit extra to insure we had enough metal to span the gap... Using the tipping tool and door skin hammer to flatten out the flange excess needed to fill the gap... Butt welding the vertical seams... Note the views from the back side show full penetration welds. Next, grinding the welds in prep for the next set of weld dots.. ....and finishing the vertical welds... So given the removal of these seams and fixing the ones at the top of the A pillars, yes, all of the leaded seams have been removed. Keep in mind, the primary reason the factory uses pinch weld seams or spot welds is for speed of assembly. Doesn't necessarily mean it's the best way. I worked on a 1951 Triumph Saloon, and where the quarters wrapped around at the rear window there were gas welded butt joints. Never saw any rust there at all, these pinch welded flanges are another story...
Keep in mind that most seams like those we removed left a slight gap for the lead to pool into, rather than just sit on top. So if removing those seams, one of the flanges needs to make up the gap difference, as shown above on the passenger quarter..
A bit late posting the progress from yesterday.. We were supposed to finish up the passenger rear quarter, but looks like some reproduction tail light bezels are on the way. So just to be on the safe side, we'll post pone that so any final fitment will be to those parts once they get here... In the meantime, we got the primed body parts re-assembled yesterday, here installing the doors..... The SPI epoxy does a good job of providing it's own "guide coat". I blocked this with 180 grit... Here's some of the low spots filled with some evercoat... While I was block sanding, Kyle started modifying the hold down bracket for the battery. The post cutouts were on catty corner and didn't match todays battery posts. We had test fit the bracket on a 24F series Interstate today at Big Ed's Tires. Here's the filler piece.... Shown here is the new location... Filler welded in place, and the new relief cut out... One down, one to go...
The Jalopy Journal
