Wagon Progress

MP&C · Jan 7, 2015

Sneak preview of the powder coating, here's one of the inner fenders...

Kyle working on more media blasting, we should have another batch for powder coating this weekend....

With the passenger door removed and out of the way, I worked on the radius-ing and repairing of the lead gap seam. First to check the radius of the completed driver's side with the Gatormeet radius gauge...

Radius patch is bent using roll former dies in the Diacro press brake and checked to the radius gauge...

The patch is trimmed for the fit to the A-pillar, and a horizontal tail is left to have something to hold on to while tacking in place. A score is added using the cutoff wheel so the excess can be snapped off after tacking...

Welded and dressed..

Roof skin patch trimmed and fitted...

Welded...

Welds dressed and radius checked...

MP&C · Jan 11, 2015

More progress on the wagon today. Kyle had finished the media blasting on the hood brace, so we had a few areas to address. As the hood ornament no longer exists, we didn't need the mounting holes going through the brace.

A piece of brass flat bar is radius-ed to make an anvil..

High spot is heated and tapped down with the hammer.. Then pick the next high spot and repeat....

Slot is welded closed, welds dressed, area media blasted once again...

Kyle working on prepping the passenger door for primer... Sorry for the blurry picture, gonna have to fire the photographer!

The hood ornament hole in the cross brace was also welded closed and dressed...

Next on the list were the stress cracks on the ends of the hood brace.

Some 16 gauge CRS was used to make some stiffeners inside the corners...

test fit..

Plug welded in place and the flanges wrapped around... cracks repaired...

Test fit to the hood...

metalman · Jan 12, 2015

I always tell people that painting is the easy part.

MP&C · Jan 13, 2015

So true. People will walk in the shop and see the paint booth...."Oh, you do painting?" .....well, it's mostly rust repair

MP&C · Jan 14, 2015

Tonight Kyle was putting the finishing touches on prepping the passenger door for paint. Lots of nooks and crannies. We ended up moving the drill press so we could open the media blast cabinet door wide enough to put the door inside. It was a snug fit, but made easier work of cleaning the door on the ends... The rest will be done by hand...

After adding the radius to the doors, it only made sense that the lift gate needed the same modification. Sorry to bore you with more of the same, just wait until we get to wet sanding

Test fit the radius...

Scoring the second cut location, and tacking in place..

Snapped of the excess....

Checking the radius, and welded in and dressed...

They're calling for a heat wave this weekend (in high 40's on Sunday), so we should get some more primer sprayed....

MP&C · Jan 18, 2015

Kyle finishing up the prep on the door this morning, found another use for the GatorMeet radius square, here used as a sanding block to get into the tight crevices...

Front fenders were both prepped with DA and 80 grit..

SPI Epoxy is mixed to allow for induction...

As the body parts had been soda blasted, it was cleaned with a hot soapy water (dish detergent) and a grey Scotchbrite, followed by a towel drying session.

Then this was followed up with preclean...

The door handle backing plates had not yet been installed on the back side of the door skins, so a coat of epoxy was sprayed on both, and then bolted together to allow to cure..

A good shot of the door paint fixture in action...

Two coats applied...

Bob Hollinshead · Jan 18, 2015

Looks good, feels good getting the primer on after all that metal work I bet!

MP&C · Jan 19, 2015

Yes, glad to finally get some bare metal covered up! Still a ways to go...

rustover · Jan 19, 2015

Looks great! Doesn't look like it will need a lot of blocking by those side shots of the fenders. What's the next step for these parts?

MP&C · Jan 19, 2015

There are some dings that were missed and the gloss of the epoxy makes them easy to find. We'll work on some of those defects and get the parts bolted back on the car so they can be blocked across the gaps.. then lather, rinse, and repeat

This evening while we had painted parts still lounging in the booth, we took some time to clean up and put tools away..... hey, there's that welding table!

And found a new location for the ewheel.. Still gives plenty of room for access to the parts bins and gets it out of the way elsewhere in the shop..

After that we worked to fix some pin holes along the passenger quarter's weld.. using a light from the back side to show the pin holes...

....and this one was a pit from the back side, more of the dreaded dirt thrown from the rear tire causing rust....

MP&C · Jan 21, 2015

Tonight we finished up radius-ing the liftgate opening...

Next, we moved on to de-leading and shaving the last pinch weld seam at the back of the car. We've eliminated all of these to get rid of all the dirt/rust traps that we can...

Removing the excess....

Getting some gap filler.....

Flattening out the creases....

Tacked in place, and test fitting a tail light before trimming our gap filler....

....and we'll get the rest of the de-leading finished on Saturday...

MP&C · Jan 25, 2015

Sorry I'm a little late posting the progress from yesterday.. We were supposed to finish up the passenger rear quarter, but looks like some reproduction tail light bezels are on the way. So just to be on the safe side, we'll post pone that so any final fitment will be to those parts once they get here... In the meantime, we got the primed body parts re-assembled yesterday, here installing the doors.....

The SPI epoxy does a good job of providing it's own "guide coat". I blocked this with 180 grit...

Here's some of the low spots filled with some evercoat...

While I was block sanding, Kyle started modifying the hold down bracket for the battery. The post cutouts were on catty corner and didn't match todays battery posts. We had test fit the bracket on a 24F series Interstate today at Big Ed's Tires. Here's the filler piece....

Shown here is the new location...

Filler welded in place, and the new relief cut out...

One down, one to go...

Senile Old Fart · Jan 25, 2015

Awesome photo documentation and work

I used to "deburr" with the drill bit method. One day while doing some stainless tubing in a mechanical room I looked at the deburring tool I was using and thought, cut off a half inch of the plastic and presto a great sheet metal hole deburring tool.

rustover · Jan 25, 2015

It looks great! I dig the pictures with the front sheet metal on the car!

MP&C · Jan 28, 2015

SOF, that looks like a tool I'll need to pick up, thanks for the info!

Tonight's update. We took delivery on some nice used core support side panels from Jay Hammond's Chevy Parts. The others were quite mangled, so this will save quite a bit of time in making a set.

Kyle finishing up the battery hold down modification...

We also mocked up an MT24F battery...

The factory version of this battery location for an air conditioned car also calls for a "zee" bracket to the back side of the core support.

So with dimensions taken, a practice piece was cut out of poster board...

Laid out on some 16 GA CRS...

And got a bit more blocking done across the door gaps..

MP&C · Jan 31, 2015

Today Kyle cut out the battery tray's zee bracket, and I had told him we should tip the top lip first and then make the vertical bends...

As you can see, it turned out horribly, and sometimes I need a learning curve myself...

We had used a narrow bottom die to tip the top flange, and should have also used something different for the vertical bends.

So let's back up and punt, here bending the vertical bends FIRST and using a roll former die to keep any markings to a minimum. We did a partial bend here, then did a partial tip, and jumped back and forth a few times for a much better result:

Plug welded through the thinner battery hold down into the 16 ga metal of the zee bracket using a Letter A sized holes and enough heat for weld penetration to show on the back side...

Also did more fine tuning on the front end today..

Test fit of the "early" side emblem..

Bob Hollinshead · Jan 31, 2015

What do you think of the SPI epoxy?

MP&C · Feb 1, 2015

I like it! It sands much easier than the H/K, and is considerably less expensive.. Also like not having to use guide coat..

MP&C · Feb 2, 2015

We noticed the driver's side hood gap was a bit tight and then noticed a difference in the end plates on the core support. The driver's side appears bent straight, so some hammer action made them more consistent and helped out the gap issue..

After checking the hood brace to core support for any fitment issues, we noticed some cutouts that will allow the air around the radiator. This opening, although minimal, was re-formed with a couple of fancy chisels..

The excess metal ruffles were addressed easily with the kick shrinker...

The next opening was a bit more substantial, and would require some replacement metal. Here was our first attempt at a bead along the edge of the panel..

The dies would not permit quite enough length, so we used a vee die off the press brake and a 1/2" steel rod to make a radius die for the mag brake..

...and between that and a straight die in the press brake, the edge bead was formed...

...here transposing the crease locations...

To pre-stretch the areas for the diagonal vee beads, we loaded these in the bead roller....

This didn't appear to add enough stretch, so the linear stretch die was used in the Watervliet planishing hammer....

Vee was added using 3/4 wide female bead die and a narrow tipping die..

A bit of heat was added to make it a bit easier to transition the round and vee beads together...

....and this one we'll get formed up on Wednesday night and get both welded in place...

MP&C · Feb 4, 2015

I had a bit of a short night as I had to pick up the young'n from after school activities, so most of the progress this evening was Kyle's efforts.

Making the patch for the center relief, starting with adding the radius to the bottom edge... This uses a bottom vee die from the Diacro and a 1/2" rod to form the radius..