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| Attacking the passenger floor pan |
Finally, Daniel has realized that the time until his 16th birthday is not infinite. Suddenly there's been a marked increase in the interest to work on the car. While school is still in session, there are a lot of afternoons that we have obligations, but we get a couple of afternoons each week, plus the weekend, to get work done. Even working an hour or two each day makes a huge difference.
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| Daniel jumps in and welds |
We finally got the driver's side floor pan done, welds ground down and primered. While we had the paint out, we shot etching primer on the whole body to stave off the inevitable rust that appears on bare metal within days here in humid Florida.
With that done, we confidently moved to the passenger side and began cutting, mindful of all the mistakes we made on the other side. Our experience paid off, as we got the second side done in a matter of days, instead of weeks. The thing that made the most difference was handing the welding gun over to Daniel. It turns out, the kid is a pretty good welder! He did most of the seams on the floor pan, while I did the spot welds. Between the two of us, it came out much better than the driver's side.
The other benefit to Daniel taking on some of the welding responsibilities was that it freed me up to move to the front, where we had considerable rot around the battery tray area. This is a notoriously bad spot on these cars due to the acidic environment around the battery, and it seems our little car suffered terribly. Not only was the inner fender mostly gone, but the passenger side of the radiator support had rotted away, the front crossmember was toast, and the inner and outer frame rail was nearly rusted through.
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| 40 years of battery acid fumes.... |
With time to carefully plan, however, I was able to grind away spot welds and frame sections piece by piece until I got back to good metal. I was careful to not cut away too much at one time, for fear of not having anything to measure off of upon reassembly. To that end, I've left the front radiator support on until I get the frame and inner fender welded in place, then I'll work around to the front.
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| .....wreaks havoc on carbon steel.... |
Our car appears to have taken a severe beating in the past, so I hope the things I cut out, and the remaining parts I'm relying on for alignment, are not already out of whack. There was considerable denting on the underside on the car, from the oil pan back to the gas tank, and the passenger side bumper bracket was twisted badly towards the sky (there was no front bumper). With nothing to go by, I can only hope that the new parts are a close enough match so that the fender will go back on!
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| ....which means lots of surgery.... |
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| .....before new steel can be welded in. |
