73 240z restoration 904 White

[grannyknot]

Nice rotisserie!  Like rturbo mentioned you need to get all suspect areas down to bare metal so you can see what you're dealing with.  Get an aggressive wire wheel for your angle grinder like the one in the pic.  I think the rad support will come out nicely without removing it, the bottoms of the rockers don't look bad so you might get lucky on those ugly spots on the pinch welds and sills.

One of those $40 Harbor Freight bore-scopes are great for looking into the rockers and dogleg areas before you start drilling out spot welds.     The floor pans don't look too bad, the transition area where your feet are always needs a custom patch anyway and you might get away with just a section patch on the P/S floor pan rail, you'll know more when you cut it out.

 

[DC871F]

4 hours ago, grannyknot said:

Nice rotisserie!  Like rturbo mentioned you need to get all suspect areas down to bare metal so you can see what you're dealing with.  Get an aggressive wire wheel for your angle grinder like the one in the pic.  I think the rad support will come out nicely without removing it, the bottoms of the rockers don't look bad so you might get lucky on those ugly spots on the pinch welds and sills.

One of those $40 Harbor Freight bore-scopes are great for looking into the rockers and dogleg areas before you start drilling out spot welds.     The floor pans don't look too bad, the transition area where your feet are always needs a custom patch anyway and you might get away with just a section patch on the P/S floor pan rail, you'll know more when you cut it out.

 

Ok, look forward to getting out there this weekend to do some cleaning. 

[DC871F]

On 8/20/2020 at 3:48 PM, rturbo 930 said:

Take a better photo (clear and focused with good lighting) of the rust on top of your sills. Is it just a bit of pitting and surface rust? You're talking about replacing the entire inner and outer rocker, which is a major job, for what looks like fairly minor rust. I think your proposed repair is overkill for the amount of damage. I would just spot repair holes and serious pitting as needed, and treat the rest with rust converter.

Got some grinding done today, sills seems pretty good except for a couple holes. Looks like the pinch weld maybe mostly intact!

[Patcon]

I think I would make some patches and move along

[rturbo 930]

That's about what I expected to find. Some rust damage, but nothing major. I agree with Patcon, do some spot repairs and move on. You should do the same with the rust on your frame rails as well to see how much damage is really there. My suspicion is that they can be patched, rather than replaced, which would be significantly easier. 

[DC871F]

Lower radiator inboard support it toast, but thats the only part thats rusty, the rest of the support is just surface corrosion.

I think I saw this piece for sale a Z Source or one of those sites for big dollars.

Check out pin holes in left dogleg (car is upside down on rotisserie), that did not show at all through the paint, and no bondo either, hmmmmm.

[DC871F]

Adding pics of the car before breakdown, just to shoe what I'm starting with.

[grannyknot]

On 8/21/2020 at 7:45 AM, grannyknot said:

I think the rad support will come out nicely without removing it

Oops, bad call on that one.

[DC871F]

38 minutes ago, grannyknot said:

Oops, bad call on that one.

I'm going to remove the inboard piece right up to the frame rails and weld in a new piece.

The rest of the radiator support is pretty clean.

[DC871F]

Started welding, in areas that wont be seen for the most part first, I'm new at this. These are my first MIG welds ever. Small patch panels went well enough, but went to fill in a few holes I uncovered with the wire wheel and started blowing holes, wowzy! Managed to get them filled eventually. I'm guessing some rust must of been hiding underneath.

Ok, a question for you guys. The last PIC shows some surface rust inside where I cut out the lower sill, right where the lower door hinge bolts up to. Its very solid, just surface rust inside. The question is, can I just treat this area with rust converter and move on and hope for the best, or does it need to be cut out?

[rturbo 930]

If it's only surface rust, no metal replacement is necessary. Metal replacement is only needed when the metal loses structural integrity. 

[DC871F]

8 hours ago, rturbo 930 said:

If it's only surface rust, no metal replacement is necessary. Metal replacement is only needed when the metal loses structural integrity. 

Awesome, I'll keep that in mind going forward.