I found a guy parting out a Riviera on eBay and got the front fenders off of him. Mine have some bad rust. He sent me some pictures of the fenders before we made the deal, and in the pictures they didn't look that bad. He said there was some bondo on them, but not much............ How many people can say that the front of their car is longer than the bed of their truck? Scraping a little away to see what lies beneath This is not the thickest spot. Antenna goes here. This was someones failed attempt at shaving the antenna off of the fender. Both me and my father worked on one fender due to the abundance of bondo someone applied to it. Using a Rapid Strip wheel, I just blew bondo dust everywhere. Someone must have used an entire 5 gallon bucket on just this fender alone. We decided that it would be easier to scrape out what we could, then hit it with the rapid strip and sand paper to clean it up. You can see how thick they caked it on. What is that? 4 layers of paint and bondo? Got most of the bondo out. The fender is a little beat up. I was going to break out the hammer set, but after looking at the fenders currently on my car, I think I am just going to cut the bottom off of this one and mate it up with the good upper half of my fenders. The front drivers side fender on my car. The fender is straight with no dents, but has rust along the bottom edges. The strap is what is holding the chrome trim in place for now. I may swap this fender out with the blue fender. The drivers side blue fender doesn't appear to be that bad. A closer look at some of the rust on the drivers side. Where the fender meets the door. This isn't so bad from what I can see. I don't want to speak too soon since I haven't taken the trim off of the bottom yet. I may swap this fender out with the blue fender for this side. I'll know more tomorrow when I start stripping down the blue fender. Front passenger side fender. Close up of the rust on the passenger side. Where the fender meets the door on the passenger side. This is where the rust is the worst, and this is why I will be cutting the bottom off of the blue fender and mating the bottom to this fender. Once I strip this fender down a little, I will know how bad it really is. I'm thinking I can cut it right under the body line. Don't want to cut too close to the body line though. I may need to make a patch panel for that rust bubble right under the R. Looking under the plastic trim. More to follow.
Looking good, but it looks like you are in Texas, why in the world you buy a rusty Canadian car? gord
That's too bad. Not only is the fender not what you thought you were getting, but all that extra weight from the bondo must have cost a ton extra to ship!
I agree. And, he overcharged me on shipping by $41.00. ----------- I decided that the easiest way would be to cut off the good bottom pieces and mate them to the top of my fender for the passenger side. The curved bracket goes inside the fender and is what the turn signal bolts too. We had to break the spot welds to get it out. The bottom half of the passenger side fender. This will be mated with my current fender. I only need about 6 inches from the bottom, but I cut off alot extra for now. This is the passenger side fender. No turning back now. The bottom piece was cut off and will be welded in place on my current fender. Measure twice and then cut off a little extra so you can trim it down and have extra to work with. That hammer is only there because I used it to prop up part of the fender while I cut it. I wouldn't use a hammer like that for metal work.. :Brow: Both fenders. Some thick bondo. This is how thick the bondo was at the front of the drivers side fender. I think whoever did this should take up pottery instead of car repair. This is where that giant chunk of bondo came from. The front of the drivers side fender. This could be repaired with alot of work, but I will just cut the bad section out. This part of my current fender is good, so I will weld it in to fill in the area that I cut out. Those holes further back will have to be welded closed. I stripped down part of my rusty fender to check out the piece that I will be cutting out to use on the other fender. It has a small dent in it, but nothing that cannot be massaged out. The part of the drivers side fender near where it meets the door that will need to be repaired. There is a support brace behind it, and that brace will need to come out so that the rough spot can be smoothed back out. The bottom is a little beat up and has a few small dings in it. There is some rust that has started to pit. This will all have to be repaired. Rapid Strip discs are awesome. This is the drivers side fender all stripped down. The bottom where it meets the door needs some repair, but isn't bad. The front of it was smashed in, but, like I said, I will be cutting the front out of my current fender and putting the 2 together to fix that. Cutting a rusted bolt that wouldn't come out. It will be a week before I can get back to work on it again, so I rattle canned some primer on it to keep it from rusting until then. New angle grinder purchased specifically for this job. Plus, I needed another reason to get more tools. I broke my new grinder after only 2 days of having it. I think I may have overheated it by running it for nearly 3 hours straight. I was using it and it sounded like the bearings inside locked up then came apart. It made a horrible noise like gears grinding. I felt it kick in my hand, and then it sounds like 2 misaligned gears dragging against each other while it is on. It sounds similar to starting a car while it is already running. So, I had to get out the old heavy dinosaur. This one will build arm muscle in no time! (I don't usually set angle grinders with the disc facing down. I only did it for the photo to show this old trusty beast) More to follow next week.
I pulled the lower trim off of the bottom expecting the worst. I was happy to find that the rockers are still solid with no major rust problems. I thought the trim was plastic, but it's actually aluminum painted black. I'm contemplating leaving the trim off and smoothing out the clips. Got the fender and inner fender well off. Dirty engine. There has been a strap holding this trim in place since I have had the car. This is why it was holding it up. Rear portion of the drivers side fender that I pulled off of the car. I told you it was bad. Front portion of the drivers side fender. After looking at the rear of this fender, I will be cutting out the front section that I have covered in primer and welding it onto the other fender. No rust on the firewall. That is definately a good sign. Seems like all of the major rust happened in and around the front fenders. These fell out of the fender when I took it off. That's a rusty wrench and an old roll of electrical tape. I wonder how many decades that wrench spent inside the fender. The battery tray. This is pretty much toast. I'm going to have to build a new tray out of sheet metal, or find a donor car to get another. The metal under the battery tray that bolted to the header panel and radiator support will also have to be refabricated or taken from a donor car. Now accepting parts donations. :bla: I don't even know where this went. It also fell out of the fender when I took it off. The rusty lower trim to the front fender. I accidentally dropped these near where I was cutting some metal. Magnetism is cool. Alot worse than I thought it would be. Header panel and radiator support. This is going to be alot more work than I expected. The radiator support used to be bolted to the frame. It's now just a scrap of rust. The only thing holding this side of the radiator support in is the header panel, and the only thing holding that in place was the fender. Another look at the battery tray while it was still in the car. This is the fender I am going to use. If you look back in the pictures from last week, this nose piece was smashed in. This is where I cut out the bad section. I cut out the same section on my other fender and will be welding it in place here. The fender that was on the car. This section that was cut out was still good solid metal with no rust. I will be welding this section in place on the fender in the previous picture. Comparing the cuts. The section being held up is from the white fender. What you see here will be lined up flush and welded in place. The welds will be ground down and smoothed out. Once paint is applied, you'll never be able to tell that it was cut and welded in the first place. More to come tomorrow.
Excellent pictures and tech. That fender had alot of putty on it for sure. Keep us updated on the progress.
. . . are we having fun yet Brian ? :laugh: The worst part of resto work is not knowing whats involved till you get right into it - great pics, and step by step presentation. :beer Imagine what it would cost if you were not able to perform most of that surgery yourself ? :eek2: . . . like they say - a labour of luv ! :TU:
Great work Brian. I'm in Missouri City just up the road from you. If i ever get my car together I may just need to drive over there and check out the GS. Rick
Nice work. About your angle grinder. If you returned it for another or bought another. Those harbor freight ones don't have grease in the gearbox from other reading I've been doing. The people who cracked the case open have had very good luck after greasing them assuming they opened it before they destroyed it.
Thanks for this information. I contacted harbor freight and they emailed me a prepaid postage label to ship it back for an exchange. When I get the next one in, I will definately follow your advice.
First we tack welded the metal in place. Then worked my way around tacking in spots about 3-4 inches apart. Cooled the metal, then went in between every other tack weld and repeated the process until it was all filled in. Then we ground down the welds, cooled it some more, and welded over it again. Then grinded down those welds and that is what you see here. You can see some imperfections in this picture including an accidental hole. Pay no mind to those dots going across right under the line of primer. I had just begun to fill in somebody's dent removal holes. I repeated the same steps as above over these holes, then ground them down. Saw this while going to get lunch. No it is not launching. It just looks like it always is. Along the bottom of the drivers side fender, where the trim meets it were some tiny pin holes from where rust had just started to make its way through the metal. I took a chance with the MIG and accidentally made the hole bigger. So, my father suggested brazing over it, and that's what you see him doing here and in the next couple of photos. He brazed over a couple bad spots in the welds as well and filled them in. Cooling the metal. More brazing. After grinding down the brass, I skimmed over the metal with a thin coat of body filler. Sanded that down, with 80,600,1000, and then used spot putty to fix whatever imperfections were there. In this photo, this is where I was working on the curve that brings the fender to a point. Remember, the piece we welded in had some small dings in it. We rolled those out as good as possible and then chose to smooth the rest with filler. The filler here is nowhere near as thick as what we took out. After sanding it all down, building it back up in some spots, and then sanding it back down, I got it to where the lines were straight and the metal was flush at the body lines. There are a couple of small dings that still need to be fixed, but for now I was working on getting the lines straight. My fathers work here. Temporary long term repair to the radiator support and battery tray. Temporary, because once I find some replacement panels, this will come out. Long term, because it's not at the top of the list right now. Stripped down the inner wheel well up to the battery tray and hit it with a coat of black primer. This will be painted flat black. Yes, those drips in the primer are primer. The freakin' rattle can came apart in my hand and painted my hand black. Ignore that bubble in the paint. It's not a bubble. It is a drop of sweat. There's still some area's that need smoothing out, but I wanted to see how the welded area looked with some primer/paint over it. The fender starting to dry after wet sanding with 1000. It may look like it's dented in at the very bottom of the photo, but that's just reflections of the trees behind me. After my brother took this photo, I ended up stripping some area's of the fender back down to metal. I just wasn't happy about the way some of it looked. You can see in the picture what im talking about. I spent a few extra hours getting it as straight as possible, and eventually ended the night with a coat of primer. I'll get back to wet sanding in the morning.
After another coat of primer, and putting the fender in place to make sure that it is straight. Also to make sure that all of the bolt holes line up correctly. You can see the holes where the Riviera emblem goes. That front section wasn't doing it for me, so I sanded it down some more and worked on smoothing out the shadows. I'm still not satisfied with that body line and will be working it some more. I think it will be easier to do while the fender is on the car so that I can use the other fender as a visual guide. The new fenders I got were from a base model Riviera. The difference? No GS emblems, and no holes for the GS emblems. I put a piece of newspaper over my original fender and pressed the Riviera logo into it while keeping the paper straight. This pushed the mounting studs through the paper. I then pushed GS logo through the paper on my original fender. This gave me a template to go by on the new fender. In the picture above, you can see where I set the Riviera emblem in the mounting holes on the new fender, and marked the 2 holes for the GS emblem. Once my holes were marked, I measured the distances between the holes on the original fender. Sure enough, they were exact. Next I drilled the holes for the GS emblem and mounted it to the fender. Measured some more just for second guesses and am still happy with it. If I open the door to the car, I can reach behind the fender and take these back off or put them on. Inner fender bolted in place. The temporary makeshift battery tray. In this picture, there is a big open spot on the right. That is where a support bracket went, and right under that bracket is where the lower trim brackets went. I bolted those up along with the chrome bumper trim that sits under the fender. Remember, the bumper trim used to be held up with a strap. This is how it looks right after wet sanding the 3rd coat of primer. The emblems are just sitting in their mounting holes for the picture. I wanted something to put side by side with one of the older pictures. If you look right under the GS emblem, there is a spot that I still need to repair. Again, this can and will be done while the fender is on the car. No more giant rust holes and no more strap. That trim is now bolted in the way Buick designed it to be. Would you ever suspect that the front section was cut off and a new piece welded in? I still haven't decided if I want to leave the lower trim pieces off or not. Those 2 holes on the bottom are for the lower trim. If I decide to leave it off, those will be welded closed. You can also see that spot that I was talking about in the other picture that needs repair. This was a dent that I hammered out with a dolly. Due to the support braces on the backside, this was the best I could get it by hammering it. I will finish repairing this section in a few days when I have more time. Looks nice and straight down the length of the car. Like I previously mentioned, I will be reworking that body line near the lens trim. More to follow in a week when I have more time.
Glad I clicked on this thread, very cool. From begining to where you are now how many hours? Keep up the hard work and keep us posted. Whenever I work on something I am always to focused to even think about cataloging the process (not saying you arent focused, it just doesn't cross my mind.)
Roughly about 8 hours each a day for 5 days. But, the weather here has also been 100-102 degrees, so we take alot of breaks to keep cool also. I have an older Kodak point and shoot that I carry with me everywhere. It's been a tough little camera and has been through more abuse than I would trust putting my DSLR's through. I like to take alot of pictures when doing stuff like this, because it sometimes makes for interesting discussions. It also lets others see your way of doing things and gives them room to offer up suggestions or advice, versus just having a single before and after picture and not showing the work. Plus, if nothing else, maybe someone will learn from these pictures and cut back on the bondo use. :laugh: :TU:
Holy cow Brian! :shock: You're a brave soul! Coming along nicely! After doing body work on my rusty Electra, I swore never again will I choose a rusty car to work on! :Smarty: Those S-10's do that with just a 5* bag of potatoes in the back. (Sorry, I owned a Ford Ranger and couldn't resist.) :laugh:
Love to see the progress. The fenders are looking good. The bad part is that it helps make me feel brave about tackling some of these jobs! I've been wanting to buy something like a cheap Falcon to do some metal work on. I figure that if I buy it for say $700 or so I can put an early Rustang 200 six banger in it and it either comes out as a car I can make some money on, or a not quite right cool work car.
I had a couple hours today, so I pulled the trim off of the rocker panel and door on the passenger side. The rocker is in excellent shape. The bottom of the door where the chrome trim went is a little pitted with rust. This is the rust that was hiding under the lower trim on the passenger side fender. This fender is next in line to be replaced. Even the support braces on this fender are rotted out on this one. I accidentally broke some of the clips that hold the chrome trim on, so I at least know that it won't be going back on anytime soon. That black hose is a fuel line, and that red thing behind it is one of the cherry bomb glasspacks. I cannot wait to get rid of those. The car sounds like a tractor at idle when they are cold. They are annoyingly loud when you accelerate. Deafening when you floor it. They only sound good when you're cruising at a constant speed.
