Rust Removal - Continued

[gramercyjam]

A month or two ago I posted some pics of rust I had uncovered after removing some undercoat on what many would consider to be a rust free south Texas car. Of course the more I looked, the worse it got. I won't even mention that the front of this car was cut off sometime in the past and another one was welded on, kind of sort of. Maybe I will mention it!

I finally cut out the firewall, battery tray area/inner fender wheel well, and frame rail and pounded out some replacement parts. I also fixed that old front clip cut. Here are a cople of pics, all fixed up, in bare metal and ready to paint.

Materials and tools required, a few square feet of 22 Gauge and 18 gauge steel to fab the panels out of, tin snips, hammer, MIG welder, 4 1/2" abrasive cut off wheel and a grinding/sanding wheel and a few welders clamps. A decent air compressor and a $50 Harbor Freight sand blaster helps too. This is a car used in competitive driving and not a future beauty contest winner so the repairs haven't been made invisible, but they are good and strong and shouldn't ever need to be done again. If you are into undercoat and bondo, the repairs can be hidden quite nicely that way.

<rant> Yes, you can do this too! I don't ever want to see post about how you can fix your car by pop-riviting a patch over the rust and fiberglassed/bondoed over! </rant>

[ChrisA]

Thanks John, yet another inspiration for the Z faithful. Did you weld on the splash panel to the inner fender/cowl panel?

Chris

[gema]

Did you have the car on a rotisserie or jackstands while you were doing all this?

[beandip]

Vary nice job , you did good. Gary:classic:

[abas]

I was wondering what was holding the front end of the car together once you cut out that huge section of inner wing/chassis member.

Great job though. Inspiration to all those who think their car is too far gone to repair:classic:

[gramercyjam]

Thanks guys.

Originally posted by gema

Did you have the car on a rotisserie or jackstands while you were doing all this?

Jackstands. Tall ones. Actually worked out pretty well. I did half the work lying down and that beats standing up. Rotisserie's are great, but this projecs schedule didn't allow me to take the time to deal with one. But what I would have really liked to do was turn the car upside down to dump all the blasting sand out. It is really hard to get it all that blasting grit out.

I two-part epoxy primed it last night, some of that expensive Dupont stuff. I never used it before. It goes on NICE. I just discovered painting is the most enjoyable part of the project for me. I can't wait to start another car project.

Originally posted by abas

I was wondering what was holding the front end of the car together once you cut out that huge section of inner wing/chassis member.

Nothing special. The radiator support and the box section that runs along the top of the wheel well held it all together just fine when you cut out one side.

You may not realize tha the chassis is incredibly light so there really isn't a great need for extra support. You can pick the front half of the bare chassis with 1 finger. It is that light. The biggest problem is you need to be careful not to knock it off the jack stands if you lean on it or bump it.