by Preston Brown
Friday I made the trip out to Don Mill's shop in Liberty for about 5 hours to continue working on the remaining bodywork. When I got there Don wanted to discuss the situation with the replacement portion of the right side lockpost. He had welded in a section of the reproduction post after cutting off the original directly beneath the striker plate area. The reproduction piece didn't look like it was fitting very well -- it tapered down more rapidly than it should. By holding up the rocker panel (still not installed) where it should go, we could see that the lockpost wasn't coming nearly close enough to the rocker to make a good fit. There was a very large gap, almost an inch. Something was wrong.
I opined that we needed to make sure we modeled everything after the original, good left side lockpost, and not rely on the reproduction part for dimensions. We cut off the replacement piece that had been painstakingly added, and proceeded to fit the passenger side rocker first. After removing the long flange along the sill area, and cutting off the overlap seam areas front and back, we clamped it into place to make a good fit with the door. Then, I took measurements on the passenger side for the location of critical areas of the lockpost: The bottom reinforcing stamped circle, the width of the lockpost at various heights, etc. We then determined where the replacement portion on the right side should fit. Some additional fabricating is required on the inside edge, where the rubber door seal will fit, because the reproduction part didn't have a big enough flange in this area. Also, we needed to add about a 1" section of fabricated metal between the original, top portion of the lockpost and the replacement section to make it all fit correctly. However, that done, it was looking pretty good. The fender side isn't that pretty, there are some ugly welds in there because of all the patches, but it will get smoothed over after some grinding, seam sealer, and undercoat. I'll take pictures of the whole thing next week, I forgot my camera.
After that little adventure, I proceeded towards finishing the left/driver's side rocker, filling in pinholes in the front and rear seams, and grinding a little on the plug welds I made in the sill area. Satisfied that with a skim coat of all-metal everything will be looking good, I moved my attention to the nose. The foglight brackets were extremely rusty on my replacement clip; one had perforation. I ordered a set of replacement brackets from Stoddard's last week. As luck would have it, because this is a relatively small simple piece, the replacement brackets are a perfect stamping. Grinding / removing the old brackets wasn't much fun though. I had to be careful to only remove the bracket material and not dig into the nose metal itself. About an hour later both old brackets were removed and I had wire brushed the area behind them, which was rusty...this area is a notorious mud trap. When I put the replacements back on, I'll fit the air space between the nose and the bracket with seam sealer to prevent grit and moisture from lodging in there and causing any more troubles in the future.
I brought the nose back to my house, and I plan on dropping it off with Dee for him to work on doing a bit more metal finishing for a couple of hours. As it is, the nose is in decent but not perfect shape. I would like it to be a bit better if possible, as that will mean less filler and a better overall appearance. If he has time to get to it this week, that means I would hope to be welding the nose onto the car about a week from now.
That's it for bodywork for last week, since we only worked a single day. On another note, the pistons and cylinders I ordered for the C engine came. I have seen these big bore pistons, from "AA Performance / AA Automotive Products" in San Francisco, CA go for anywhere between $400 and $600. I would estimate that the wholesale cost is between $325 and $350, so they are pretty cheap. From what I can tell, they are probably made in China. They come in a light blue box with a white and black checkerboard racing stripe on one half of the top. The cylinders are well made looking, with precision machining marks, and the exteriors painted semigloss black. The pistons don't look as nice, the domes are bumpy from the sand cast, and they have had little if any additional machining done to them. However, everything I've heard has said that this set of big bore pistons is relatively well balanced and has proved to have a good deal of longevity, so I think they are a good deal.
I now have all the parts required to finish assembling the "C" motor. Depending of course on how events unfold, I think I can have the basic bodywork (less finish filler work, etc) and the motor both finished by the end of April or the very beginning of May. That would be fortuitous, because by then my house renovation will be nearing completion and school will be winding down. I can't wait to be back in my own house! My new garage space is going to be a real treat after what I've been dealing with for the past year.
Posted by pbrown at April 10, 2005 9:15 PM