Wagon Progress

Today we worked on some rust prevention up inside the roof. This is between the roof skin and the perimeter structure just above the windows.


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The car was rolled on it's side and SPI epoxy poured into the area, acid brush was used to cover everything we could..


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Once the entire passenger side had been flooded around to the liftgate hinge, we rolled the car right side up again. It wasn't long that we had paint dripping on the top of the rocker panel.. It was running down inside the A Pillar and running out the bottom of the dogleg. This is a good indicator of exactly where the roof condensation runs to when it reaches the A Pillar, and why we had rust issues there.


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Here's a picture of when we opened the roof for rust repair, showing what the condensation did for us..


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So our primer is sealing the joint between the roof skin and the structure.. We found an opening above the windshield that would help us to flood the front seam....


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We opened up an acid brush to form a funnel, and poured SPI Epoxy in the area..


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A puddle out of the A Pillar dogleg shows we have good flow through the windshield...


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To insure everything was covered above the windshield header, we joined two acid brushes for an extended reach over the header, and bent to match the roof skin profile....


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Progress this weekend, We had originally left the factory jute insulation under the roof supports, thinking we could just butt up to it with the new stuff. After installing the Noico inside the doors, I guess my OCD wasn't about to leave the old stuff in the roof. So the bottom edge of the roof supports were scribed on the driver's side for relocation purposes, de-spot welded, and pulled downward enough to scrape off the old jute..


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The bare area is then scuffed with 80 grit and two coats of SPI epoxy primer applied.. After that sets up we applied the Noico sound deadening mat to the inside of the roof skin. Then the roof supports are aligned with our scribed marks and plug welded in place..


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Mike has been plugging along on the Drummers Lounge sign, the arrow is close to done, it still needs fastening hardware added for the access panels, and holes added for the lights..


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Had some visitors at the shop a few weeks ago, John Glenn and his father (from Anderson Auto Glass, Anderson SC) came up so we could use the truck floor dies to modify the ribs on a 2009 Ford replacement floor for use in a 1966 Ford they are restoring. The new floor has flat area provisions for a fifth wheel bracket and the original floor in a 1966 has full length ribs front to rear. We needed to modify the flat areas to provide these full length ribs. James McKenzie also stopped by to help in the activites.


QUOTE (John Glenn) I didn't go into much detail about this earlier, but the F250 bed floor had four flat areas for a fifth wheel hitch that looked really out of place for use in a '66 F100. I contacted Robert (MP&C) about having him make dies for his Lennox to reshape those spots into continuous ribs to look more like the original bed floor. I sent a sample so he could make dies a while back, and yesterday our schedules finally aligned so we could work on the bed floor.


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We started by gas welding plugs in the four holes that won't be used on the F100. I didn't want to weld those with a MIG at our shop since the weld would be more brittle and would probably crack during the reshaping process. Gas welds are much softer and more workable.


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The welds were smoothed down and the flat areas were pre-stretched in the english wheel with a bit of guesswork as to how much we should pre-stretch.


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Then into the Lennox to add the ribs. This was done gradually in multiple passes, adjusting the depth of the dies after each pass.


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Slightly reworking the dies to gain more rib height.


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Finished ribs. These are hard to photograph so I stripped an area with the two new ribs in the center of the outer original ribs to show the matching profile.


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James (duallyjams) dropped in to hang out for the day, it's always good seeing him! He was a big help and also shot vids of us working.

Time lapse:

 
Embarrassed to say... It has been years.... My day job has me travelling all over creation, which doesn't bode well for shop productivity. All the one-off pieces / fabrications don't help either.. ;)

Thanks for the comments!
 
I understand that.

My personal projects all seem to take forever to complete and aren't nearly to the level of your custom work. The '68 Coronet R/T was like 10 years. I had to build a garage first and then learn how to replace panels, do bodywork and paint with something other than enamel. LOL

A guy with a 1965 Buick Convertible needing serious work (see pics) offered to pay me to work on his car. I thought the money would help me buy parts for my R/T so I said yes. Needless to say it took a long time to do his car so mine sat. Then he brought me '67 Jeep, a John Deere Tractor, his sister's '90 Miata, his friend show up with a truck, another with a '55 Chevy Truck, etc. etc.

Now my latest project, the '68 GTX is sitting in epoxy primer in the corner while I work on other people's stuff. The months are ticking by.
 

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Sign progress, Fine tuning of some of the parts....


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…..and for mounting it on the steel pole, this "shoe" is made of 14 gauge cold rolled and formed using the Go Kart slick.. The "sleeve" will slide over the pole and a set screw will hold it in place..


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All ready for a splash of paint...


The sound mat is installed inside the wagon...








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Time for a long overdue update. I've had too much travel for the day job since the first of the year. Case in point, we've had more than one Taco Tuesday at the Sand Bar in Cocoa Beach...

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Since completing the Drum Sign, Mike has been removing dings from the wagon's stainless trim. Here Vince and I test fit the side spears..

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We've done some stainless repair before using small hammers and handmade punches to match the rear side of the profile, but during the last metalshaping workshop I attended at Will Cronkrite's shop in SC, I picked up a stainless dent/ding removal fixture that he had made up.. The blue sleeve at the top works on the premise of a slide hammer, with the force applied controlled by the operator. The die at the bottom (punch) is removable to allow a wide variety of specialized punches to fit the application.

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This tool allows more controlled manipulation, especially to those of us that don't do this type of repair every day...

Here's one of the purpose built punches made for the trim...

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Here's some of our efforts in polishing out the trim after ding removal, filing, and about 6 steps of progressively finer grits of w/d and trizact….

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Reflection....

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We also were test fitting the dash trim that the owner had picked up. I know, billet is a bit played out, but let's see what works here...

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In fitting the corner pieces, the rear point of the trim does not match the unequal radius of the recess in the dash. Then when the middle (concave) radius is pushed into the recess, the rear "point" drops down out of the recess. So the underlying message here it the fit of these parts is piss poor at best.

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So we are not going to use these, but opting for something in a stainless trim.. final design TBD...

Lastly, all the travel I've had for the day job really interferes with long term efforts, paintwork in particular. So in the interest of keeping progress moving forward, we have farmed out the paintwork to Brandon and Richard Glymph at Absolute Rod and Custom Paint. So last weekend the body and various parts were delivered to their shop in Annapolis..

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So we should be doing assembly here in the near future!!
 
Had a request to show a video of how the trim tool works... The gentleman that made it for me advised the other day (as I had requests to see if more were available) that he is long since retired, and anyone is more than welcome to use the details shown to make their own.






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Had a request to show a video of how the trim tool works... The gentleman that made it for me advised the other day (as I had requests to see if more were available) that he is long since retired, and anyone is more than welcome to use the details shown to make their own.




The tool is neet Robert. I like that.

I don't want to be guilty of hijacking your thread but since the topic came up.....It always amazes me how I see guys on videos beating on a piece of stainless with their "trim hammer" on their "trim anvil." There may be guys who can peck around with a hammer and be accurate enough but I am not one of them.

For me, I have found that I can put down a couple of layers of masking tape and shape the end of a 1/4” dowel rod about two inches long. That way, I can place the dowel rod exactly where I want to strike and gently tap it with a light hammer. The masking tape under it on a good smooth surface will provide just a bit of resiliency so the stainless does not get planished and stretched. Once the low areas are picked up the piece can be filed and polished.

I would love to have your tool and can see how it adresses all the issues I mentioned above but thought this might help someone who like me does not have the luxury of the tool.

As always, good stuff Robert.

John



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Not many pictures to show on our wagon progress, the body has been blocked out and Brandon is getting some touch ups done to get ready for one final epoxy sprayout..

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Vince has been given the thankless task of media blasting some of the remaining bare steel components so we can get some painting done of piece parts on this end. The condenser mount was media blasted, epoxy used to seal the wired edge, and some Evercoat 416 added and sanded smooth to form a slight radius fillet to finish it off.. We should be priming this coming week..

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