2 weeks and 3 days post-op from right eye cataract surgery, and I can see things like never before. Everything went well and got the left eye scheduled for 2nd week in August. In the meantime, I am back on the project. This is the worst of the floorboard situation. Im sure it's due to it being the driver's side. I have enough pieces and parts of other cars to get this straightened out pretty quick, and will try my hand at bead rolling a new floor pan patch and see how it looks. Along with this, I will get the rocker taken care of. Last couple of days I have been placing the rubber body mounting pads in place, and putting in new body bolts. One I get everything in place, and get the floor pan and the door post brace put back together, I will tighten the bolts down and start working on the rockers on both sides. It looks to me like the 4 door car may have been in a crash at some point. The floorboard in the drivers side rear was buckled and pushed down/bunched up. You may be able to see it in the pics, right where the B pillar was. I was able to start getting that all straightened out after I cut all of the old rocker out. I will finish straightening that up when I fit the rocker. The long doors are a bit different around the beltline area, and that is going to take a bit of massaging to get right, but it shouldn't be too bad. I will post some pics of that soon.
Wooha, seeing all that makes me glad I retired. Oh wait a minuet, I retired so I can do more of this for myself on my own stuff. Okay, continue.
At least the rest of the floorboards are in really good shape! It's funny, when I went to look at the 4 door before buying it, the guy that was selling it pointed out the floorboard on the drivers side and said...."see! even the floorboards are in good shape!" I could see the patch someone had laid over the existing floorboard from a mile away....I just smiled and nodded....
LOL...I can sympathize. Last project I bought had a lot of those moments during the sales pitch. Just gotta be quiet and let 'em run themselves out.
They all rot in that area, I think its a combination of things. The drivers feet wet soaking the carpet, rain coming in thru the vent window, bad or leaky door seals and the most used door on the vehicle. Now that you can see better it makes work easier and less fatiguing, no more eye strain. Frank
Dug through the stash of old Chevys this morning and found a decent corner that I cut out. Hopefully I can get it apart without doing too much damage to it. The way the door post brace sandwiches the floorboard between the post and the rocker brace is a bit tricky to get apart so that the new floorboard can be sandwiched. I could cut the floorboard around it, but I want to get all the rot out that I can. Cutting the corner out gave me a great view of how the inner rocker ties off to the firewall/cowl. That had been one of the things that I was pondering about. Deconstructing is helpful like that sometimes!
It’s just like building a house, you start with the base board and square everything to it. Same way with a car everything is squared off the rocker and inner rocker. Thats the easiest way to square everything up. If you don’t you will be fighting alignment issues and adding to the edge of doors and everything else to get a good line. Some times you need to stand back 10 Ft. Or more to get a full picture of what you are building. Frank
Oh trust me....I'm doubled up on Safety/PPE/Eye Protection! Not even the Coronavirus can get to my eyes!
Moving around a bit while I am waiting on some supplies to come in for rust removal. I got the Passenger Side outer rocker trimmed and slipped into place. Looks pretty good I think. I took the door off to get it fit up. Need to put the door back on to check fitment at that bottom. I haven't tried fitting the inner rocker yet but it should lay in place against the floor braces with no problem. All the surrounding metal will be sanded down when it comes time to weld it all up. This is just the first pass in fitting things up.
Then I moved to the rear quarter and started slowly trimming the outside structure off the inner structure. I knew I was going to have to do some fab work in this area. I noticed it when I had the body on the rotisserie. I wanted to slowly peel the outer layers of the fender off the inner structure so I would have a good pattern to go by. It didn't take long to have everything peeled back, kinda like opening up a sardine can.
And the inner structure fab work that I will need to do. THis looks like a fairly simple piece to make. Famous last words!
Hand fabbing a new inner wheel house section looks like a good place to make a wood buck and do a little hammer forming for the rolled edge. A folded flange edge may cause trouble getting the body panel to lay in place right. Plus you need a flange to connect the body panel to. That's a tuck under for the inner. Much easier with a Buck to work on. The real bonus here is your wheel house is in good enough shape to carve the buck to fit inside of. A few times I've actually built a buck out of layers of lath and glued and pin nailed layers together creating the inside shape as you stack layers together.
Working on getting the door dialed in with the new rocker on the passenger side. It is helping that the two roofs aren't tied together yet, as there is quite a bit of flex in the firewall/cowl area. I blocked and shimmed and stretched and got a pretty good fit along the beltline between the door and the body. I then drilled and used clecos to hold the two roofs in a position that gave me good alignment on the beltline.
I got some citric acid delivered today, and I am going to see how it does removing rust from the door jamb. I am about ready to start getting it fit up. I need to get it in so I can fit the forward part of the new quarter panel.
I'm trying to get all the body to frame mounting points squared away....this is the worst one of them all. I harvested a corner from one of the other cars and soaked it in the citric acid bath, and it cleaned up really good. I started dissecting it slowly. The new floorboard has to be sandwiched between the bottom brace and the door support brace. I think the door support brace is in good enough condition to re-use. A little more trimming and tweaking on this piece and I will see how the new eye does with welding. I used the plasma cutter a couple of times last week, and there was a big difference from before.
More boring photos.....but it is getting better...I need to make some bracing from the hinge pocket down to the bottom plate that is bolted to the frame. This will tie everything together nicely. Once the new floorboard is in place, and the door support brace is welded in, should be hella strong....pictures are out of order but you get the idea...
It's 72 in the shop, and 100 degrees outside. It is very tedious but it is about over with. Damn, that is some thing sheet metal in those areas....I have had to put in several little filler pieces and build up weld and then sand it down to keep from blowing through.....chasing rust....fun fun. After I get this all set up for the floor pan, I am going to get some POR15 or something before I seal this whole mess up with the floorboards. Give everything a good coat....put the floorboard in, and call it done....
Working on getting the floorboard ready to put in. I have very little experience with bead rollers, but I have watched countless hours on the tool being used. I bought a cheap bead roller and motorized it a while back. I did a couple of test coupons to figure out how to flip the metal, flip and adjust the dies, and which direction would be easiest to run, and I made myself a map. I made the patch panel larger than necessary to account for the stretching and shrinking of the beads. I dont have an English Wheel to pre-stretch. I hope it works like I want it to.
The Jalopy Journal
