Top of Fender Done

The fender repair is done; I finished it on Monday. I did have to do some extra work on the edge of the patch where it follows the contour of the hood to insure a good fit, but I'm pretty happy with the overall results. A bit wavy, it will definitely need some filler, but it doesn't look like it will need tons. More to the point, the repair is nice and solid, and shouldn't cause any additional rust problems in the future!

After completing the fender repair, I started to look around a bit more underneath the car, realizing just how dirty the fenders still were. Before, when all the nasty cruddy bits of the car were still in place, i.e. battery box, floor pan, rockers, etc. it wasn't as noticeable. Now, with lots of new shiny metal, it was. The sand blasting just hadn't done a very good job of cleaning out the undersides of the wheel wells, because there was a lot of the greasy-type undercoating in there, and the sand just imbedded into the undercoat or bounced right off. It was dirty, messy, and needed more cleaning.

I had used a small wire brush in addition to my scrapers and screwdrivers before the media blasting to do this nasty job, and now, to finish it, I looked for the big guns. Dee has an air powered tool called the "Crud Buster" or something similar to that, by Snap-On. It is just the ticket for this nasty job. I still wouldn't wish the task on anyone though! Too messy.

I set to work with the Crud Buster, scraping out each fender in turn. The dirt, grease, and undercoat material flew everywhere! I kept blowing myself off with the air hose, but I still got covered in crap. About half way through it I turned the camera around and took a picture of myself for fun. Oh yes, what a glorious job this was.

The tool wasn't able to get the undercoat right at the very top of the fender, so I removed what I could, used a chisel on some of the rest, and I'm going to leave what remains. I am pretty sure it is doing a very good job sealing up that portion of the car, and you have to draw the line at some point when you are working all alone and trying to stick to some sort of schedule. I mean, I could spend another couple of months making the undercarriage spotless if I wanted to. I'll settle for "very good."

After finishing with the tool, I used lacquer thinner to wipe down each surface and get the majority of the remaining greasy stuff off. I'll have to do this again for sure before priming, because there is a lot of it and primer can't stick to greasy surfaces. I didn't remove the undercoating from the nose panel at all, because that all will be coming off to graft on the replacement nose. I've pretty much settled on going with the panel from Trevor's Hammerworks, but I haven't ordered anything yet. Plenty of other stuff to do.

I did a bit more undercoat removal yesterday, and then I tackled filling small holes. There were quite a few areas of thin or perforated metal in various places all over the car, including:

• Drain holes at bottom of rear quarter window area
• "Lip" at the bottom of the rear quarter panels where they wrap around the back of the car
• Bottom of the right side hole in the car where the rear bumper mounts
• Top of the rear cutouts for the exhaust where the body support bracket is welded on
• Several thin/perforated spots on rear side panels/inner wheel wells, where water was trapped between upholstery and metal after getting in through rear quarter windows

There were other minor spots too. I filled them all, and finish ground them. Some places I just used the simple bridging techniques with the MIG; in others I needed to back up the hole with a copper spoon because they were too large. Two other things I filled in where the upper reflector holes, above the taillights. I'm going to convert to the European reflector mounts beneath the bumper. The American ones, while maybe "safer," look really poor to my eye.

Realizing that I am also getting to the point that I have to get the suspension back together so the car has something to sit on, I once again pondered the front trailing arm that had the metal shock bushing frozen onto it's stud. This was the bushing for mounting the bottom of the shock, and it wouldn't budge. As long ago as last year I spent hours working on it, heating it up with a propane torch, using vice grips to try and twist it off, trying to split it with a Dremel. Nothing worked, and the bushing was still on there, solidly.

Not anymore! I took the arm off the torsion bar and brough it over to Dee. He directed the Acetylene torch at it, getting it hot enough to glow nice and orange. I stuck the arm in the vice and clamped down the vice grips. A few hard taps with the hammer and I could see the bushing rotating at last! Only a couple more minutes of work, and it was off, with no visible damage (other than some blackening and surface rust) on the mounting stud. A part saved, how fortunate.

On a related note, I sent the front spindles off to have the new kingpins installed last week to Tim Berardelli at Tim Berardelli Racing in Alexandria, VA. He has a 356-only shop, and I know he will do a perfect job. There aren't too many shops left that have the equipment and experience necessary to do this job properly.

Today I didn't have a lot of time, but I did get over to the paint store (United Autoparts in Durham) and get my PPG primer. I got two quarts of DP40LF, DP402 activator/hardener, and a gallon of DX330 solvent/cleaner. Not cheap stuff! The paint and hardener alone was almost $100. I will use it to put a coat of primer on the floorpan area and battery box, and then I will shoot undercoating (probably Wurth Stone Guard). I hope to get to this sometime next week. Chances are, I will do the priming outside the shop, because I don't think Chuck wants me doing that inside, even if I use a drop-cloth. We'll see.

I spent a remaining two hours today cleaning up my tools around the car, and generally straightening the workspace. It has been awhile since I did this task and it was getting hard to walk...I also assembled the parts washer I bought about six months ago, and dumped in the aqueous solution. I quickly realized I will need about 5 more gallons, because the liquid level in the washer is not high enough for the pump intake to pick it up. Oh well, using that toy will have to wait for another day.

A short list of things that need to be completed before I prime and undercoat (more for my own benefit rather than for any readers):

• Weld in pedal support bracket


• Weld in pedal board supports


• Weld in seat mounts


• Install (rivet) tow hook


• Weld in jack receivers

Shouldn't take more than a day or two.

Posted by pbrown at July 28, 2004 07:38 PM