...you'll be doing it over 10 years later. Our '51 Pontiac wagon came with some sheet metal repair that I deemed "good enough" when I did the car 12 years ago. Patches over booth rear wheel openings, and the corners of the body below the the tailgate. They'd been done spot welded in, and looked pretty good. My original intent was to simply get the car running and flip it, but as I started working on it, I kind of fell in love with it, and ended up doing a much different kind of build, and we've kept it, using it for 10 years now. A couple of blisters on the paint over each rear wheel openings appeared a couple of years ago, not unlike what would have happened had the car been driven 10 years regularly from new. I didn't mind them, but my wife was bothered by them, so today I started doing what I should have done when I did it the first time The original fender had been cut away for the most part, but the patches overlaid the original skin by about an inch and a half, and the bottoms were rusting out where dirt had packed in between the inner fender and the patch, stayed damp, collecting salt and moisture, just as originals had surely done So, I cut out the entire mess, and will make a new wheel panel, that'll be butt welded to the old skin, no double panel, and we should be good for another decade. I might as well do the right side as well, because it's surely going to blister soon, although it isn't now. There are some paint blisters on both front door front lower corners as well, so I'll end up painting most of the car below the belt-line. There's always something.
I've gotta bad area on my 51 around the same area. Did you take any extra precautions while welding that close to the gas tank filler?
Don't take the filler cap off? This is a sealed cap, the tank is vented to a vapor recirculation canister from the donor Silverado pickup. So there isn't likely to be any gas fumes lurking about.
Making this panel was tougher than I thought, it took all day. It'll take some filler, I warped the shit out of it, but it's going to be much better than it was. I think I'll get some 1/4" rod and make a new set of skirts as long as I'm at it.
It happens! Shrinkage when welding is inevitable!If you can get a dolly behind it you can planish out the shrinkage on dolly!
I live in the rust belt. A 10 year fix on a rust repair means it was a very good fix, and would have been nothing to be ashamed of. All you need is a pin hole in a weld or in sheetmetal you didn't see and water gets in behind the filler and does its thing. The first thing you see is the dreaded bubble, and you know what that means. I've done the "bad" lap seam welding for years. I've seen the new metal rot out below the seam, and I've seen the metal above the previous repair rot out, but the lap weld seam is very seldom the cause of a needed redo. That said, when I do a lap seam, the open end is always facing down, and I don't have more then a 1/2" overlap. I get good welds, and can control the metal warp pretty well. Lap welding panels may not always the best choice, but I don't build high dollar restoration jobs, I repair rusty crap with the hopes of keeping them around for some years of enjoyment. If I need to re-patch something in 10 -12 years, I figure that was a pretty good effort, and like I said earlier, it probably was not the lap weld that was the cause of needing to redo it. Gene
Yeah, I'm not complaining about the rust. New, it'd have rusted just as badly, and sooner. We've driven it in snow, salted roads, rain, dirt roads. This area, between inner fender and outer skin, is a problem spot, no matter what. I used Chassis Coat (like POR15) on the inner panel this time, the wheel opening flange after sandblasting, and weld through primer on the backside of the outer panel. Another 10 years, and it'll be somebody else's problem. ;-)
Back after it this morning. The right side wasn't as rusty, I can save the wheel opening lip, but man, there was almost an inch of filler on the quarter! I'm guilty of adding a bit to level things out, which is not an excuse. I found a sheet metal screw through the patch, into the wheel house, why is a mystery, unless it was done when the patch was spot welded to the fender. They must have used a spot welder with a really, really deep throat, the patch is about 10" high, and really inaccessible because of the wheel house. I don't know how it was done...
POR15 on exposed (now, but hidden later), a paper pattern, transfer that to some 20 ga., weld in the new piece, and before you know it, you're done!
Thanks! We only drive wagon in the winter to tow roadsters to Detroit. We drive it almost daily from April til December actually.
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