April 2004 Archives

A quick note, it is unfortunate I don't have time for more.

I ran across this article on the Web: Expanded Welding - Auto body tips. If you have been MIG welding like me for awhile, but have no formal training, you have probably intuitively figured out many of the things in this article. Even so, it is nice to read it someplace and have some of your "suspicions" confirmed about how things work, and how to do certain actions properly. Check it out.

We are all moved out of our old house, and renovations have started. Demolition of the garage is scheduled for next week. I've moved about half my gear to the rental space, and the car itself is hopefully moving on Thursday. I'll be sure to get some pictures.

I received Jim Kellog's book, Porsche 356: Guide to Do-it-Yourself Restoration, in the mail today. A couple of comments, I guess. Overall, I like the book. It has a nice "conversational style" like most of the material surrounding 356s. Picture quality is usually quite good. However, I found it way too short. Way too short. While I recognize walking the fine line between "too much" detail and too many assumptions may be difficult, I think that the latter is the case in the book. I don't expect to be taught how to weld, but comprehensive descriptions of some basic common repairs for the 356 are lacking, including the battery box area and longitudinals. I mean, they are touched on, but even past Registry articles by Ron Roland are referred to as definitive. Good thing I have read them! I think perhaps Jim and Ron should get together for the 2nd edition, because Ron so often mentioned writing a book in his articles, but never seems to have done so.

There are some good tips for the re-assembly process, new stuff I haven't read before, and I know that it will be valuable during that phase. However, even here the book seems sparse.
All in all, I'm glad I have the book. It just needs to be about 4-5 times as long. 73 pages just isn't enough. Perhaps the biggest thing the book has done so far is convince me to get a plasma cutter. I've been contemplating it for months, but they are expensive, and I wasn't really sure if it would be as useful as my fertile imagination pretended. Jim sure does make it sound essential! I found a small 110 volt model with a built-in compressor on eBay for less than $500. Actually, Harbor Freight sells a similar model under a different name, and this isn't cheap import crap. It is made in the USA by Thermadyne, and by all accounts I have come across it is a quality product. I can't wait to use it, I think doing the rear-seat and firewall repairs will be much easier with it.

On a completely different note, no twins yet...

The left side longitudinal is complete. Mostly... it is still missing the lower part of the front closing panel, and the jack point. Easy stuff, right?! OK, well mostly easy compared to what some of the rest of this project has been. My complete photo gallery for this stage of the project is also available, but on the left is a picture of the finished product.

If I look back over my digital pictures, all the way back to the point in time when I first bought the car, I see that the outer longitudinal was one of my chief concerns. There was lots of rust. Visible rust. Gaping holes, actually. I see that one of my photo captions was "Left longitudinal. Gulp." I think the accompanying picture pretty much describes what I was seeing.

So, knowing what was ahead of me, I started removing the left outer longitudinal. I used pretty much all the air tools now in my arsenal: reciprocating saw, nibbler, chisel, cut-off wheel. Even with all of these implements removing the outer longitudinal thoroughly took several hours. As I've said many times in the past, everything takes much longer than you might think, if you are trying to do it well.

After the inside of the longitudinal was exposed in all its glory, I was not surprised to see that I had more frame repair work to do near the rear, where I had already done quite a bit of patching. It is clear that water collected and sat in this part of the car to very detrimental effects on both sides. The "drain holes" that are included in this part of the structure seem to be next to useless.

So, before worrying about the outer longitudinal piece itself, much work was needed on the guts inside.

I set about repairing the rest of the damage around where the heater tube enters the longitudinal. Pictures are available in a separate gallery here. Suffice to say, these repairs were a pain in the ass, because all the little bits had to be made by hand, and they were awkward to weld into position because of their location. Luckily, none of this is visible now that the longitudinal is all closed up!

After repairing the frame/heater tube, I removed the cardboard heater tube. Unfortunately, it broke a bit in the process. I repaired it with duct tape-- that's what the tape is for, after all! Then out came the inner longitudinal support pieces, because they were rusty beyond saving, and I had "replacements" anyway.

Actually, I say replacements with a grain of salt, because these pieces needed a ton of work to actually accomodate the heater tube on the 356C body. The original supports have a little circular "lip" attached to them that the cardboard heater tube clamps around to hold it securely in place. These were nowhere to be seen on the reproduction parts. I had to make little rings of sheetmetal that fit inside the cardboard heater tube, and then weld them onto the support plates. Ugly, doesn't look original, but it accomplishes the same goal and again, you aren't (hopefully) ever going to see this work again.

As I was working on these support plates, it became clear to me that the rocker panel was going to have to come off now if I was going to get everything back together easily, in the fashion that I wanted. "No problem," I thought, "I'm going to replace the rockers anyway. I have nice reproductions right here."

"Not so fast!" thought my more cautious part. "You can actually see that part of the car. Don't screw things up."

So I carefully removed the left rocker panel, leaving plenty of "overlap" on the fenders for the new rocker, so putting it on will be easier.

After the rocker was off, it was much easier to finish "cleaning up" the inside of the longitudinal. I wire-brushed a good amount of the remaining rust off and applied Eastwood's OxySolv rust treatment/converter. After that had done it's work (and lets hope that it does INDEED work), I top-coated everything except the edges I intended to weld on with Rust Encapsulator. If this rusts now the only thing that could have stopped it was full replacement with galvanized metal. I took my time and I think everything should be good.

I then cut off the lower portion of the front closing panel, which will be replaced (I haven't quite gotten that done yet...). Same went for the rear. More clean-up for metal that was now easier to access. Flatten bent flanges with hammer and dolly where spot welds had been split. You know the routine by now, if you have been following along.

Now it was time to start fitting up the outer longitudinal panel. I did this before I had the longitudinal support plates welded in, but you could have done that step now, I suppose. The replacement outer longitudinal needed the most work in the area underneath the door hinge, and at the rear at the bottom where it meets the frame. Lots of careful trimming and shaping, clamping in place, and re-checking. Don't rush things if you are doing this part of your car. For that matter, don't rush fitting any piece of replacement metal. You won't like the end results nearly as much, even if it "works."

After this was complete, the rest was pretty easy. The longitudinal support plates were positioned and tacked in. The heater tube was fitted and clamped. More Rust Encapsulator for good measure/good luck. Finally, the outer longitudinal was fitted and clamped into place with about 10 clamps. You'll need at least that many to get it fitted correctly and tightly. I think I used all of mine.

The longitudinal was welded on with plug welds up through the top flange to attach it to the sill area, and again up through the lower edge of the longitudinal to attach it to the inner longitudinal "lip" that I had previously finished re-constructing. Actually, an alternative would have been to "weld down" through the door sill area and inner longitudinal, punching holes in those pieces instead of the outer longitudinal. Because of how I had my rotisserie positioned, my way was easier for me. Either way, you're going to have to grind down the plug welds when you are done to make them look flat(ter), so it doesn't really matter. When you are plug welding this piece, as in all pieces, start at the center of an edge and proceed towards the outside, alternating to either side. I did the top seam first and then the bottom, as recommended by Ron Roland.

At last! The outer longitudinal was on.
Not all the work was done of course, but this was a major step and produced a very positive feeling of accomplishment.

I finished the work by fixing up/welding in the new rear closing panel. This was a very basic repair and I won't go over the details here, take a look at the picture gallery if you want, but I was moving pretty quickly and didn't take a million pictures. It was straight-forward. When that was done, all welds were ground down to look good, and I coated all external weld seams and areas where grinding had occured with 1K rattle can primer. The galvanizing should protect the rest of the metal until "real" primer is applied.

So except for the lower edge of the front closing panel, that wraps up the left side of the car that I plan on doing. The rocker is for a body guy. Even with the improvements in my welding, I don't feel like getting into that. My time is growing even shorter and more valuable...my wife is due to deliver twins very shortly, and the car still has to move out of the garage for the house renovation. I'm not sure when my next entry will be, but stay tuned!

As alluded to in previous entries, I am preparing to do a major renovation on my house, where all work on the 356 project has taken place until this point. Part of the work will be a new three car attached garage, with workshop. Because of that, and extensive changes to the rest of the house, we have moved out of the house for the next year into a rental house, and the 356 will be moving to temporary work quarters shortly.

What a nightmare moving is! I forgot what a pain in the butt it can be. We have accumulated so much stuff since moving into our house four years ago, and fitting it all into our smaller rental house was impossible. We are storing quite a bit of things that we want but can do without for a year. Moving out was a good time to go through everything and determine what could be given away, sold, trashed, etc. though. It is amazing how much "junk" accumulates if you aren't careful or truly honest with yourself about whether or not something is useful.

Work on the 356 has been continuous in the past three weeks, but sporadic. I have finished off the left side longitudinal, and rear closing panel. The front closing panel should follow shortly, probably Thursday or Friday. I will follow that up with a complete journal entry describing the process. I just wanted to enter something now to make a note of what has been going on.

The car itself obviously has to move. I am still planning on moving it to Millersport Porsche in Hillsborough, NC to finish the metal work that I am doing. After that, the plan is to get it to Frank Gibson to do the nose, rockers, and paint. However, I'm having worries about Frank's schedule. While I know he is top notch, he is very busy, and there is this 911 that has been sitting in his shop due for somewhat simple (from my now "well-experienced" point of view) work for well over 6 months. That's too long. I have some leads on an alternative auto-body shop in Cary, NC that I have to investigate. Stay tuned...