Project Boondoggle (or, so I went and bought a Z!)

[charliekwin]

That's good advice on the hinges, thanks. The door alignment gets better at the bottom, but it is still off. The other panels seem to align pretty well, at least. The car's been in at least one collision, and I know the headlight bucket and hood are both donor parts (though the fender looks original), so there may be just enough out of whack all over the place that getting the door to align by adjusting the fender may be a lot tougher than just grinding down the hinge.

I have a shrinking disc on the way right now and am eager to see how well it works. The YouTube videos look encouraging. 

And I finally welded something! The only scrap metal I could find were some old angle brackets, and it seemed to go...alright. So armed with my newfound experience from doing 5 whole welds, and knowing the hatch is already a mess, I gave filling in the holes a shot. Ugly, but mission accomplished! Of course, now I have to do it on all the good panels.

[Mark Maras]

 Those are very nice looking welds for a first attempt. Keep up the good work.

[Patcon]

Yeah, for short term use they don't look bad. It takes as long to figure out how to adjust the welder properly as it does to physically weld.

Just remember when you add heat to a panel it expands. If you don't let it cool enough between welds it will warp or oil can. Disepyon had some good advise and pictures in his build thread. Hew went back and dollied his weld seams to make it right. You just have to learn to look at the panel and know whether the metal needs to shrink or grow. Shrinking is discing or torch and cooling. Growing means dolly work...

[charliekwin]

Productive afternoon today: all the holes on the body panels have been filled up. The rear quarter was a little more work than I was expecting when I got started (thanks, guy who didn't see any body work that couldn't be done with just filler!), but that just meant more opportunities to practice. Blew through a bit a few times, and the flap disc cleaned up the ugly from most of the others, but a handful of the welds came out just right on the first try. Those were satisfying.

USPS delivered my new shrinking disc this afternoon, so I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow.

[charliekwin]

Looks like saving the hatch won't require as much work as I was worried that it might. I'm getting my money's worth for the stud welder I bought. And these pictures are terrible.

Can anyone give me a little insight to this bit here? It looks like the hatch sheet metal should rest against it to provide some support, but unless I've got the overall curve of the metal way wrong, it seems to be too short. Is there a rubber piece or something that should be in between?

[Patcon]

Very good work with the stud welder! I didn't mention, the stud welder can also be used to shrink if you leave the stud out, then cool with water.

Make sure the inside isn't warped inward. I will have to look tomorrow. There may be a pad that is supposed to take up the space

[charliekwin]

I never would've thought to use the stud welder that way...great tip, thank you!

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[charliekwin]

More progress here and there (I can't help myself, I tend to bounce around from one thing to another, especially if things start to slow down) over the weekend. I feel pretty good about the hatch right now. It needs filler in a couple places, but not much and I don't have any loose areas in the panel. Don't want to push my luck.

I moved on to pulling out the dent at the bottom right of the license plate, which has not gone especially well. There's no access from the back and the curves make it hard to re-shape. It's better, but still fairly mangled. I'm strongly considering just cutting it out and welding in a new piece.

The big dent in the rocker is coming out nicely, though. It was over 1" deformed and I got that down to about 1/4" before my back go too sore to keep at it.

And one choice that I'm sure not everyone will agree with, but I'm going with a body mod: no more seam on the headlight buckets.

[Patcon]

The dent in the rear below the tail lights is a hard area to work. There are multiple layers of metal there and they can be very stubborn. I had a bigger dent and couldn't pull it. I ended up cutting out a section. I repaired it and welded it back in.Probably would be a better repair if you remove the whole valance and repair it, but there are a lot of spot welds back there.

I thought about removing those seams at one time too. Be sure and seal the seam on the inside too with some seal sealer to prevent water intrusion.

 

[charliekwin]

Guess it's about time for an update. Kind of slow going lately -- I've started up a new business with a partner of mine (anyone out there in hospital/physician marketing? message me!), kiddo started playing baseball -- and pulling dents just isn't that interesting to talk about. I think my original goal of getting this thing back on the road before summer is out the window

But little by little, improvement! I bought a profile gauge just to see how bad the rear quarter was out of shape, which was a lot. Not finished yet, but the worst areas are only out by less than 1/8".

Fun stuff: I made my first patch panels and started plugging up some holes. Passenger side bumper:

Tail light panel:

Antenna:

Driver side door:

There's still some work to do on that last one, but it turns out that welding in patches is super satisfying! Also: old filing cabinets from the office basement are a great source for sheet metal.

The bottom behind the wheel is kind of a mess. It too had a bunch of holes drilled into it for the body filler to grab. Despite my best efforts with the stud welder, it does not want to go back to something like the original profile and it's turning into Swiss cheese. I am very strongly considering cutting the whole thing out and welding in new metal. Thoughts?

[rcb280z]

You sure do have a lot of energy! Keep up the good work.

[Patcon]

I looks great and you seem to have a good handle on it!