Sept. 28, 2010 - She Got Her Braces Off!

It was time for the driver's side. Hard to believe that the driver's side was worse then the passenger side, ...but it was. There was more rust on the frame rails that needed to be treated.

The rear brace that connects the rear back-rest was also in bad shape but Mark had a fix for that too.

We cut away the driver's floor pan and torque box and removed the pedals and steering colum before fitting the new pans. Mark did most of the driver's side floor pan while I was off earning a living.

**Little Hint** while cleaning the front suspension area, I found a lot of crud ( official term for " no idea what the heck it is") in the ledge behind the coil spring, on top of the frame rail. There are holes in the bottom of that ledge that lead me to believe that they are weep holes. I can not find any good on-line images of this area but after I cleaned about 2" of "crud" the holes were exposed. I will be cleaning this area well, priming and painting it too. This is a great spot for rust to start. AGAIN!

So here is the new under carriage. We did not put the seat supports in at this point.

Before this image was taken, the floor braces were installed. It got late on us last night so I don't have the new view of the under carriage posted.

After we cleaned the top of the Floor Pans, we coated the area that will receive the Seat Risers.

We wanted the area that will be very hard to seal to be done while it was still easy to get to.

I took the time to prep and seal the bottom of the Seat Riser before it went in too.

After it was sealed, we removed the sealer from the area that will be welded to. I know, we used the weld thou primer before but we still ended up grinding off the primer before we welded because the primer was giving us a head ace. So we decided to grind off what was needed and then we will re-seal those areas that we are able to seal again after the welding is done.

We tacked the Seat Riser in the center first then the edges then fitted and welded the rest.

I sealed the entire area after the welding is complete.

This is the brace that had to be removed and repaired before it was put back in.

Mark ended up making the entire bottom of the Driver's side brace then welding it in place.

Sept. 18, 2010 Driver Side Inner Rocker and passenger Pans

Mark has been busy since Thursday. He cut and fitted the passenger Floor Pan, Floor to Firewall Extension and the Rear Pan Extension. It was more work having the pans in three pieces but I think that was easier to manipulate.
We still need to weld thru to the frame rails .

The pans laid in really nice. They are very solid and look great. The rear extension is a bit high but we figured we will be able to still fit it. The pans had to be stretched a bit to get them to fit just right. Mark decided to weld the entire seam instead of spot welds. This will make the floor a bit more rigid. It does take a bunch longer to finish but I like what I see.

The pans were not butt welded, This was a choice for time and strenght. The new pans were inserted from the top. This gave a lip on the bottom. There is not a wide overlap. Mark was able to fashion the overlap nice and close. We are going to tack a few spots and them use a seam sealer. It is the plan to prime then we will be undercoating the car. I realize this is not an original feature but remember...This is a driver not a show car, I want the work to last, We will not be doing this again. Hopefully my grand kids will be stuck with that task after I am long gone.

We will need to stretch the rear extension too. They will be welded to the frame rails soon.

Now it is time to get started on the driver side. The "Blair" tool really does a nice job, BUT...I was having a tough time with it today. I was able to get the top of the inner rocker drilled out, ( approx. 30 spot welds) then the tool broke. A tooth broke and then the tip and then the shaft broke at the thread.

I was taking my time but it seems to have a design problem. The shaft that the hole saw portion of the tool attaches to, is very thin. I believe the tool could be made better by increasing the shaft diameter and also using a better steel on the saw part itself.

I will say that when the tool was working, I found the "magic depth" of the tool. When done correctly the spot weld drops out as a plug and leaves the Outer Rocker perfect and ready for the new Inner Rocker welds.

The brace that attaches the back of the rear seat support was cut to get to the very back of the Inner Rocker. There is a bunch of rust on it so we may need to patch parts of that.

Mark used a Plasma Cutter to take off the top of the Inner Rocker. This made it a bit easier to get to the old welds.

This is looking up into the Inner Rocker after the side has been cut away. They were in really bad shape.

The frame rail has rust that will need to be treated and hopefully not replaced.

Sept. 16 , Rocker and Torque Box

We started the evening by cleaning and spraying the areas of the frame rails that will be covered with the new items. We used a rust inhibitor by 3m. It was kinda expensive but I don't want to ever worry about those areas again.

We bought the floor to firewall extensions for the floor. The Floor Pans that we bought did not go high enough to cover the areas that we cut out to get the the torque box. We had to remove the Heater Box too. It's not a big deal but it requires removing the glove compartment box to get to the to of the Heater Box.

After we removed the Heater Box, we dry fitted the Rocker and the Torque Box again. Now it was time to start tacking things in place. Mark took a bunch of time to get things lined up. He is very careful and I see he really wants this to be right. If we screw up this part, everything from this point on will be a mess.

We sprayed the new parts with a "Weld Thru" primer. We were not that impressed. It caused the welds to be harder and used a lot more material in the weld itself. That equates to more grinding when the welding is done. This was a pretty expensive product too. We will have to see about this product. We also were not fond of the fact that the color was silver??? It was hard to see where we covered. It is our intention to prime the entire area after the assembly and also undercoat the car. The East coast is terrible on cars. Too much humidity. Denver is looking better and better.

We got the Torque Box and Inner Rocker in place and now it was time to trim and fit the Floor to Firewall extension.

Mark marked..???, anyway, Mark put a mark on the floor where he wanted to attach the extension. We chose not to remove move of the floor knowing we would spend a bunch of time butting up the sheet metal. I know some folks believe in butt welding all this but this will be a driver not a show car. Being this deep into the project you may be asking yourself why stop here?? Well...Mark has given hours and hours of time to the project. At this point if I sold my daughters I might be able to start to repay him. I trust him, but the man needs to be paid for the work without being punished for being a friend. It will look great and be strong enough to accommodate the new power plant that is due to arrive next week. WE GOTTA GET'R DONE!

Dee's birthday is quickly approaching... Good thing she will have one next year too, we might have a chance at that one.

Sept. 11, 2010, Drilling out the welds

I started Saturday by cutting away more of the Inner Rocker and drilling out dozens of the spot welds on the rocker and the braces below the floor pans. We used the " Blair" tool and it made the job a bunch easier. ( Thanks again Alex). We did drill a small pilot hole in the center of the weld so the "Blair" would stay in place while drilling. Be careful not to rock the tool back and forth while drilling because you will break off the guide pin in the center of the tool.

The goal for the day was to get one of the Inner Rockers installed.

This picture shows the underside of the Inner Rocker on the drivers side. Yes, that is the open area that between the camera and the rear tie. That is how bad the rockers were.

Well, this was going to be a big task.

We spent the majority of the day on the spot welds. When you purchase the Blair tool , it is more realistic to expect about 100 welds to be drilled out before you sharpen the tool or replace it. We hoped for a bit more then that. Remember that when it comes time to order yours.

The Inner Rocker had close to 100 spot welds itself!

We realized that the torque boxes were well past the point of repair. We needed to look at the amount of time that would be spent cutting them out so they could be re-used and the time it would take to repair them and compared that to the cost of the new ones. Mark won that battle so we decided to cut out the out torque boxes too. This left a massive hole at the front of the floor pan area. We did not install a brace between the two door braces, I hope we don't regret that. I need to recommend that to Mark. The reason was that there is a fair amount of movement possible after the torque box is removed and I don't want the opening where the torque box goes to open more then needed.

We cleaned and straighten the entire Outer Rocker Panel to receive the new Inner Rockers. We have not primed the interior of the Outer Rockers yet. The straightening took a while. When we removed the old Rocker, We used a chisel to break a few of the more stubborn welds. After we did that the sheet metal at the top of the Outer Rocker was full of waves and needed to be straight, clean and flat.
This is the rear of the Inner Rocker area. We left the rear brace in place and connected to the Transmission hump to help keep things lined up

I picked up the new Torque boxes because after the dry fit with the new Inner Rockers, we knew we were getting close but we wanted the T-Boxes to be a part of the dry fit too.

Mark and I were happy with the way things were fitting together. This is before we clamped the Rocker in place. This is only resting where you see it. It is not completely in place at this point.

In the days when I was not at the shop, Mark keeps working on the car. He spent time media blasting many of the old parts getting them ready for paint. He has given me space for the storage of the parts and has stacked most of the parts on shelves to keep them separated from the other projects that he has going.