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

[Mark Maras]

 Try heating the area around each stud with a heat gun prior to pulling on it.

[Mark Maras]

A flattened piece of copper tube works great as a back up strip when welding the holes. 

[charliekwin]

Kept working on the rear this weekend. Had to persuade the rear quarter a bit to get it back into position (it worked!). The area around the bumper hole was one I was worried about, but it worked out alright. The rest of the rear, I think body filler can take care of.

Tried using a heat gun as Mark suggested, but no luck with it; maybe the metal's just been worked too much. I never expected to be so cavalier about cutting holes into a car, and now I have something to work on next weekend.

[Patcon]

13 hours ago, charliekwin said:

I never expected to be so cavalier about cutting holes into a car, and now I have something to work on next weekend.

Yup, not such a big deal if you know you can put it back

That's all good progress

[charliekwin]

Things are still happening, and FedEx delivered some goodies today. Hoping to get at least parts --if not all of it -- in epoxy this weekend or next!

Sent from my SM-G950U1 using Tapatalk

[charliekwin]

Quick catchup on the last month or so of work; mostly body stuff. Got the holes patched up pretty well and the front of the fender support back into as good a shape as I'm willing to make it. The roof required a fair amount of work with the stud gun and a completely non-dodgy use of a bottle jack. I desperately wanted to avoid pulling out the headliner, and am happy with the shape I got the roof in to. Same with the driver side quarter panel. And a fun discovery: it turns out I've had torsion rods for the hood all along. They were just sitting there under the hood hinges. One less item on my shopping list.

Now for the fun(?) stuff. Finally got something painted! Taking a cue from @Home Built by Jeff I bought a 20x10 canopy on ebay for $70. When I put it together, it turned out to be a little taller and longer than my garage, but I chopped off 8" from one end and 4" from the middle and got it to fit pretty well. If I didn't live in the Los Angeles suburbs, I'd just put it in the driveway, but I don't want to invite that much scrutiny. (Fun fact: the former tenants used our place as a grow house. I imagine the neighbors look on those days fondly and wonder when our lease is up!) Stuck a filter and box fan on one end, and a filter on the other and taped up the big gaps. Took way over an hour to put everything up and is kind of a tight fit both inside and out, but hey: it worked.

I managed to get epoxy on the hood, fenders, and cowl, which were the only ones I was able to prep. The SPI epoxy sprays really nicely, and aside from a couple spots where I was a little too quick with the gun, I think I did a pretty good job. There's a long road ahead, but this felt like a milestone.

I wanted to avoid pulling the doors (mainly because they're hung well, and they're wired), but will probably just go ahead and do it. It'll be a lot easier to paint the doors and I can easily do the jambs if I remove them. Doing just the roof and the rear quarters in one shot is also more manageable in the space I have to work with.

Also: it'll be a lot of work, but now I think I might do the primer and color myself.

[Home Built by Jeff]

Looks really good. Now you have a booth you may as well paint the whole thing yourself. Do a couple of practice panels first to get the hang of getting a nice finish. You can always cut and buff it when you are finished, and you will more than likely need to anyway. 

Great work, keep it up.

[charliekwin]

I was waffling on a lot of things (paint myself? do the jambs? paint panels on or off the car?) and that indecision made it easy to just do little bits at a time so I wouldn't have to make those choices. Shooting the fenders and hood brought some clarity and has helped get things back on track. Finally feels like real progress is getting made.

Last week I was hoping to paint the body. Figured the prep work was a two day project, but by the time day one was over, I was already a day behind  That carried over to this weekend, and was further delayed by cold weather and rain, but I had enough blue sky by 2:00 on Sunday afternoon to shoot the epoxy. Whatever plan I thought I had for the first coat went out the window as soon as I started spraying. Easy to get ahead of yourself and start to rush. Second coat went better than the first. Just have the hatch, doors, and some of the little bits left to do, then I can move on to filler.

[Home Built by Jeff]

Nice work. I am a little ahead of you at the moment with mine. The body filler is time consuming to get it just right, but be patient and you will get there. Looking good so far.

[Patcon]

That sounds just like body work! You have some serious "bumples" there in areas you don't normally see serious "bumples"!

[psdenno]

Looks like lots of hours on the roof, but should look good when you're done.  Power on!

Dennis

[charliekwin]

Lots of bumples on the roof and rear quarter from the stud welder. I wish I knew more about the history of the car, because there is a lot of mystery there. The roof, driver side rear quarter, driver side front fender support, passenger side rocker, and the area of the passenger side tail light and hatch all had damage that looked like it was caused by low-speed collisions. But the body panels, for the most part, were all relatively straight! I'm optimistic that I won't have to use too much filler except for the roof and rear. I think I'd rather fill and sand than strip off old paint and try to reshape metal anyway. At least for now. Maybe not in a month or two.