by Preston Brown
While I didn't do a whole lot this past week or so on the car, I have made some accomplishments. The door panels, which were the only remaining interior parts, have been removed. Not difficult. This gave me a great view of the stuff that had been sprayed inside the door to act as a rust/corrosion deterrent. I'm still not sure what it is. Where it is applied kind of thinly (i.e. up high in the door) it is pretty hard to scrape. However, w
here it is more thick, at the bottom of the door, it has the consistency of very thick syrup or slightly melted caramel. And it's cold here right now, so clearly when it is 80 degrees or more outside, it gets much thinner and runs out of the drain hole(s) in the, door, depositing itself on the rocker panel of the car and generally making a mess. I am going to have to remove this gunk and replace it with something better, but I haven't tried anything to do that yet. I'm not sure solvent will get rid of it. Experimentation will tell.
I also took a stab for a few hours at removing the window frame and glass. Easier said than done. Actually it isn't too hard to unbolt the window frame from the door, but removing the window and window regulator mechanism is difficult. I wasn't able to do it, even following the shop manual to the letter. So, I won't be able to get all that chrome off and glass out for painting. We'll just have to mask very carefully when the time comes. Or, perhaps someone can offer me a tip?
I took an introductory "lesson" of MIG welding with Brian Plaster of The Metal Shop in Carrboro on the advice of my friend Alex Maiolo. I was a bit hesitant to start up my MIG before the lesson, thinking I would do something wrong or screw something up, so I didn't. Brian showed me some basics and did some passes doing some butt welds on angle iron, and had me give it a go. Man, it feels pretty cool! He was actually surprised when I finished my first two weld beads and they "looked pretty good!" He felt I was probably a natural at it. So angle iron isn't that hard, but sheet metal may be a bit more difficult. I'm going to get some scrap 20 gauge this week and practice, practice, practice. I did go home after the lesson and load flux-core wire into my welder and practice on thicker scrap for a couple of hours, continuing to get the hang of things.
I ground a bit on the rear quarter panel area where the paint was badly cracking with a 3M paint stripping disc, and lo and behold, found a bunch of body filler beneath it. However, under the bondo, there is sound metal. So I'm not entirely sure what the filler is doing there. Perhaps there is some accident damage and it is smoothing things out. I haven't ground away enough metal to know. I've pretty much decided to have as much of the car stripped as feasibly possible without sandblasting before painting, just to make sure I get good paint adhesion. I will borrow a sandblaster and media blast out the areas of rust that are visible in the door sealing channels that I can't get to with my grinder.
I have done some preliminary grinding on the interior and OxySolv
application. It does work. I'll have to finish doing that and then topcoat with Rust Encapsulator from Eastwood. There are some areas of heavy pitting where I will not be able to replace sheet metal, so I want to make sure if the OxySolv doesn't eat/convert all the rust, I have an oxygen barrier on top to prevent further corrosion. I have found that the front inside area of the passenger door has some bad perforation. Not a huge area, but large enough. I will have to fabricate patch panels for this area and MIG weld them in. Damn.
I've had good luck getting some new/used parts off the net (shipping included):
Again, not always terrific savings over buying things from Stoddard or Tweeks, but in some cases significant.
Last, I ordered Harry Pellow's (AKA "The Maestro") 356/912 engine teardown, overhaul, and rebuild video tapes. These things are a riot. Production quality is lacking, but the information is there. I know that when time comes to do the engine rebuild they will definitely be useful material.