Slowest resto ever - Project AmsterFoose / Current subject: The roof

[Vinnie]

Alrighty, I started my last big panel replacement which is, the battery apron (which includes the tray). The area where the battery sits is pretty rotten with holes and everything that comes with that. Have a look:



More piccies below. One from underneath and one from a piece of reinforcement that strengthens the frame rail:



To get to the apron I removed all accessories and cooling system stuff, this leaves plenty of room to work (if your back is OK ;-) ):



I used a powerfile to sand away the spot welds. This is pretty straightforward just don't go nuts in areas where you want to save material like that piece along the top but also watch out for the reinforcement underneath the tray. That piece is spot welded onto the frame first and the apron is in turn spot welded on to that reinforcement. The reinforcement is not reproduced I believe so proceed with caution!

The result:



When it's loose you get to see the whole crunchy truth. To see how bad it is I gave it a bath in diluted phosphoric acid:



I ran out of time to finish it but it cleaned up pretty OK:



One thing (actually two things) puzzled me while removing the apron. Take a look at this photo of the side of the shock tower:

​

1 - That bolt the red arrow points at, is that fixed somehow or is it removable? I left it because it wasn't giving way when it met my friend hammer...

2- The green arrow points at a thick metal plate that sits between the tower and that other thing with the rubber block on it. There is another one on the other side. Why? What is it for?

Thanks! Till next time

 

[Sheriff41]

1 - That bolt the red arrow points at, is that fixed somehow or is it removable? I left it because it wasn't giving way when it met my friend hammer...

2- The green arrow points at a thick metal plate that sits between the tower and that other thing with the rubber block on it. There is another one on the other side. Why? What is it for?

To answer your questions, 1) the bottom bolts on the shock tower brace are fixed. The other four bolts are removeable. 2) The "other thing with the rubber block" is actually a structural shock tower brace. My guess is the extra plate is part of the engineering design, along with the shock tower brace, adding strength to the shock towers.

Keep us posted on your progress!

 

[Vinnie]

In the meantime I took the brace off and can confirm that those extra plates are metal and spotwelded onto the brace.

More soon(ish)

 

[Vinnie]

So.... underneath the top extra support is spotwelded onto the rail:



I thought I could create a new one from scratch. I was wrong. The frame rails is slightly curved. Trying to create that curve myself cost me 2 days and in the end I fixed up the old one (from which I had cut off a bit):



The fixed-up original is now supporting the new apron:



Also the battery support was re-used after a good cleaning and de-rusting in fosforic acid:



To be able to plugweld the support onto the frame first and then the apron to the support I was creative with the holes:



Guess I'll be welding the apron back in place soon!

 

[Vinnie]

Yeah baby! It's done! And this was the LAST (planned) panel replacement, a milestone for me!

Because I had forgotten to take measurements before I removed the panel I had to take a load of measurements to figure out the best position for my replacement:



In the end I had it positioned just fine:



My stacked-hole plug welding technique also proved to work quite well:



I won't show every one of the 60 plug welds I had to make but the result is a very well fitting and well positioned new battery tray apron:







This job concludes a three year proces of replacing large body panels: taillight panel, trunk corners, trunk drop-offs, quarters and wheel well edges, 2 half floors, corners of the lower cowl panel and finally the battery tray apron. In between there were some other odd jobs, the biggest one was building (from scratch) and adding the subframe connectors.

Now it's time to get all the holes I won't be using anymore filled up and maybe see if I can tuck the rear bumper. After that the car will need to be made ready for the dipper!

Stay tuned....

 

[Sheriff41]

Congratulations Vinnie! You've done some very nice work.

 

[James Bond]

That was a lot of work, well done by the way!

 

[jpaz]

Congratulations on getting the metal work done, looks great!

 

[Vinnie]

I should not have mentioned fixing holes...

This weekend I ripped off the vinyl top (everybody who ever removed the vinyl prolly knows where this is going...):



It revealed a lot of glue. But also it removed a little bit more that required investigating. The investigation turned into a hunt which required a few hours of sanding. The results (get tissues ready):











And the winner is:



So I thought I did not have a lot of welding left to do. Well, SURPRISE!

There are rust holes and pitting all along the edge of where the vinyl was. I guess there's going to be a lot of patching in the near future for me!

Thankfully the center of the roof is very well visible from inside the car and looks spotless.

Any pro tips or things I have to watch out for are welcome, as usual!

Cheers,

Vincent.

 

[c9zx]

Hang in there. I have seen many that were MUCH worse than that. The vinyl roof is in the hall of fame for being a bad automotive idea. Chuck

 

[Sheriff41]

Now you can use your refined welding skills where it shows! Like Chuck said, I've seen much worse. Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[Vinnie]

Alrighty, time to start patching this @#$*!

Got one done, it went like this:







Got the crown in with my new English wheel, surprisingly easy. And after cutting the crap out I was happily surprised seeing that the inside of the roof edge's structure was nice and clean! I'm off to a good start, let's hope the other 29 patches will go as well! (I won't post about each and every one ;-) )

Cheers,
Vincent.

 

[c9zx]

You are doing lot of very good work. Perhaps a side job as a welder! Chuck

 

[Vinnie]

Side job as a welder? Hmmmm, no thanks ;-) Had a crappy day, welding-wise. On the driver's side C pillar I had a shrinkage dent from welding in my quarter. Since I now also had to patch a rusted area I thought I'd try to fix the dent as well. So I cut out the patch and also made some cuts to relieve the tension from shrinkage:



This seemed OK but in the end it went sideways again and I ended up cutting the patch out and making an extra cut:



Initially this went a lot better:



I took it really slow with the welding, cooling and hammering often and checking for shrinkage. If there was any I'd correct it.

But then suddenly when I was 80% done, the whole area within the red line in the picture below curved inwards and I can't correct it! The deepest spots are about 1/6 of an inch (4mm).



I dunno wether to leave it like this and just use filler to make it pretty again or do something else to fix this. The problem with this part of the car is that there is a structure behind this which blocks access from behind so you can hardly push it out...

Any ideas on how to fix this will be appreciated!

V.

 

[c9zx]

A shrinking disk will probably work. Chuck

 

[tpj71mach]

That's a shame it pulled in on you, I am sure you want to use as little filler as possible. To work out the distortion you could try using a stud welder and dent puller to work out the metal as if it were a dent. This might be the best way because your biggest challenge is not being able to get behind the panel to push out and metal finish with a hammer and dolly. The good thing about this method is as you are welding the studs to pull the low spot, the heat of the weld will be shrinking the metal around the stud. Then you will essentially stretch the metal to pull out the low spot after that if you want to shrink it more, you could go old school and use a torch and cool water to shrink the metal more as necessary. Just a suggestion of how I might try to resolve that issue, but I am no experienced body man I just play around in the garage at home, LOL. Hopefully, there is someone more experienced who might have a better idea on this, good luck.

 

[Vinnie]

I think the problem is that it has shrunk too much already so shrinking it more (using disk or studs) does not sound like the right solution?

 

[NG8264723]

Unfortunately, that needs to be stretched there is really no way to do this without access to the back. If you use a dent puller you will end up with a huge mess. It needs to be replaced or filled.

 

[Vinnie]

Unfortunately, that needs to be stretched there is really no way to do this without access to the back. If you use a dent puller you will end up with a huge mess. It needs to be replaced or filled.

Yea, that sucks donkey balls...

I'm gonna let this sink in for a while before I do something about it.

I suppose I could see if I can remove the structure behind it (and weld it back later). How do I stretch the metal back in shape? I wouldn't mind using a bit of filler but as it is now I'd have to use a serious amount which I'd rather not do...

 

[Vinnie]

So, happy new year ya'll!

I just saw I never showed how that dent in the previous post was fixed. Well, in the end I cut a huge hole like so:



... and I patched it like this:



After this I happily continued fixing the holes left by the vinyl roof:



and even further along the back:



However, those paying attention may have noticed that I have removed the last piece of glass that was left; the rear window. And surprise surprise.....

MORE RUST!​

80% of the edge that the window leans on is bubbled, crusty, hard to remove iron-oxide. And this was the first time I actually needed a break from the car... (this also resulted in a small break from the forum but I'm here again now)

So the last couple of weekends I have been working on my garage instead, pulling up some more metal poles to support an extension of the upper floor and now I am actually looking forward again to picking up where I left. Gonna finish the roof first and then I'll crack on with that window!