An Ounce of Prevention!

[EScanlon]

Many have posted about the little pins for the plastic panel rivets used to hold these things in place. Replacing the rivets is ONE solution, finding the pin is another.

Unfortunately with a ton of good intentions we look into it and find the task to be easier said than done.

Since I was being extremely cheap (i.e. tightwad) I was unwilling to let the pins be swallowed up by the car. So I came up with the following procedure which in turn prompted me to post this here, it is a solution to the problem of the pins but it also results in taking a step towards preventing RUST. So now that I have your attention, read on.

My initial intent was to recover the pins from the nether regions of the panels. I looked at my shop vac and figured it COULD work, IF I could somehow sort through all the stuff already in the collection container. Hmmm, not a pleasant concept since my shop vac gets used to pick up anything deemed "yucky" by my owner (ahem, wife) AND talk about making more work than it's worth.

I figured that if I could put some sort of screen inside the hose, then I could stop the pins from going all the way into the container. Well, after trying several items I came upon a very easy and cheap solution. A nylon Knee-High Stocking.

I inserted the hard plastic hose end of my shop vac into the knee high, and duct taped (great stuff isn't it?) the top of the nylon to the plastic. Turned on the shop vac and sure enough, I had a nice little "net" that caught just about everything, just like a filter. To remove the stuff, all I had to do was shut off the vac, wait a second and pull on the nylon and everything came out. VOILA!! Out came 3 or 4 of my pins. Excellent, I had successfully saved myself a couple bucks with a bit of ingenuity.

However, I discovered that the nylon didn't take much abuse before unravelling AND the end of the hose was just too darn big to get into all the crevices I needed to get it into in order to rescue ALL the rivet pins. The biggest problem was the metal panel just below the quarter windows. You simply cannot insert the shop vac hose into that area.

So, back to the R&D Board. Replacing the nylon was easy, they come in pairs. Duct tape easy too (can you have too many rolls of duct tape?). But now had to find a way of shrinking the vacuum hose end. The attachments for the shop vac would just make it longer and that would just make it more problematic. What I needed was flexibility and reduced diameter.

I happened to have a 4' section of 5/8" ID rubber hose, and I checked and sure enough, I could insert it into every opening on the metal panel in question. Hmmmm, (Light Bulb Lights Up!). I inserted the rubber hose just an inch or so INTO the now sucked in knee high, which was inside the shop vac and once again Duct Taped the connection.

Turned on the shop vac and proceeded to MICRO Vacuum every nook and cranny of the car BEHIND panels that ordinarily would have prevented this. I pulled my contraption apart, pulled out the knee high, expecting to find the last of my pins, which I did, but much to my surprise AND dismay, I also found something else.

GUNK! Not only GUNK, but WET gunk. The car had been in the garage for over 2 WEEKS and this stuff was still WET!! YIKES!!

Where was all this stuff? Way down deep INSIDE the rocker panel!

Well, after sifting and making sure I had retrieved ALL my pins (after all that's why I STARTED this whole thing), I emptied the vacuum canister, removed the nylon, and once again with the 5/8" hose REALLY went to town with the hose.

I must have vacuumed for at least an hour if not two. The end result? When I opened up the canister, thinking that all I would find would be maybe another cupful or two of this GUNK, I discovered that I had enough dirt, fluff, sand, and other assorted and unidentified bits of stuff to fill 2/3 of a coffee can, a BIG one. AND all of this gunk was WET!!!

Need I say more? This is not a good thing to have on a 71 240, with the thin sheet metal, let alone ANY car.

So, my ounce of prevention tip for you is to get a length of hose AND get to vacuuming. The gunk you pull out today may in fact be the rust you DON'T have to fix tomorrow.

Hope this helps!

[2ManyZs]

Yep, that is one of the biggest problems with a Z-car. There isn't a seam on any car that is sealed. The reason? SPOT WELDS. Ever really look at your car? Ever open the hood and look down the inner fender at the weld flange on the frame rails? Notice how many waves and gaps that are there? Guess what goes into those gaps. Yup, water and dirt. I doubt if there has ever been a frame rail that truly rusted through from the outside. They always rust out from the inside out! Rocker panels, quarter panels they all rust from the inside out. By the time you start to see the rust on the outside the little "metal maggots" have got a big head start on turning your car into junk.

What to do about it? Well, since it's not likely anyone is going to completely dissasemble their car, clean every nook and cranny, then butt weld every panel back together. The only solution is to try to get as much of the crap out using whatever means you can think of, (however EScanlon's idea sounds pretty ingenious) and after letting it sit to dry for a couple days invest in a little seam sealer. It isn't expensive, it's easy to use and best of all it might just keep your car from becoming a rust bucket parts car before the really nice paint job you just spent so much time and money on starts to lose a little of its shine.