Left Longitudinal Complete

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!

Posted by pbrown at April 16, 2004 03:05 PM