Thought I would post a few pics to show how I plan to fix an original 1970 Core Support that I have. From the pics you can see that both mounting "cups" and associated sheet metal was gone from this support. I had pieces from other supports and a decent 71-72 support so I was able to make some templates. The first thing I did was to repair a pair of cups. I used some flat washers, with a 1 1/2" hole and welded them into the bottoms of the rotted original cups. I also used a 1/2" bolt with nuts and washers to mount the cup into the correct place in the core support so you can see how it fits. The sheet metal piece that will go on top of the cup also has this same 1/2" alignment hole. Once I do some final grinding inside the cups to smooth them out, they will be finished. Duane
The next area to tackle is the sheet metal on top of the mounting cups. I started with the driverside, as it had less damage, and made a paper template from another core support. Once the template was done I transferred the info to a piece of sheet metal and started cutting/forming it. One thing to note here, early 70 core supports use a 2" hole for the Body Bushing, while later 70 and 71-72's use a 2 1/2" hole. So you need to know when your car was built to be correct. The first 2 pics are from a 71-72 core support that I used to make my templates. You can see from the 2nd pic how the 1/2" alignment hole goes through the sheet metal, mounting cup, and the core support. Duane
Now I needed to tackle the Passenger side sheet metal piece. The damage to this side was greater so I opted to make another template for a larger piece. Again I made a paper template, transferred it to the steel and started cutting it out. This piece also needed 2 capture nuts to be installed. I had some from other pieces and grafted them into the new sheet metal part. These nuts will need to be welded (on the top side) to the new sheet metal, but when the inner fenders are installed, they will cover these "scars" and will not be seen. Now that all the pieces are cut and formed, it will be an easy weekend job to finish trimming everything up and weld it together. I probably will not finish the support until the spring, as it will not be needed for a few years, but I wanted to show all you guys, how to fix them. Duane
Looks great Duane, I remember doing this not too long ago - definetly worth taking time to get it right so it can't be seen as a repair!
Can I ask which tool you use to cut the metal? Tin snips? Drill press? Jigsaw? Thanks for sharing this is excellent.
I mostly used an air powered wizzer wheel. (Cut off wheel.) What I would do is first drill out the holes in the part, including the square holes for the capture nuts. Then I would cut out the exterior shape, and finally bend the parts to the correct shape. Drilling the holes first allowed me to do it much easier as the piece was much stronger before it was cut out. Otherwise it would have made it much harder, especially where the holes were getting closer to an edge. Duane
FYI I designed the smaller of the two sheet metal pieces to be trimmed down even further when it is actually installed. If you look at the damaged core support pic, (3rd pic in post 1) you will see that the sheet metal damage is only directly over the mounting cup. My idea is to temporarily mount the cup back on the support, then mark and trim off the damaged sheet metal area. If the damaged area gets trimmed back so it is directly over the cup below, then you could weld it to the cup, and there would be zero scars seen from the bottom. (Less body work.) Many original 70-72 core supports have this type of damage on the driver side, so this small piece could fix a lot of them. Another thing, The sheet metal I used was part of a cover from a portable welding unit. It was a little thicker then the original sheet metal but that's what I had laying around. Duane PS. I have been asked, and already had planned to post PDF's of the templates I used to create these pieces. I will have to make up one for the mounting cups as well. I will make sure to put a 1" scale on the templates, so you can make sure they are "true size" when copied. I will see about getting this done next week. Stay tuned. Duane
Nice work (as usual) Duane and showing, as you have before, that we don't always need new parts to restore these cars.
I made pdf's and jpegs of all the sheet metal templates and will get the one for the mounting cups within a few days. For the larger sheet metal template I made a copy of both the front and back. The back side has some additional information on it. Some of the holes are not drilled on both the driver and passenger sides, and the same thing happens with the capture nuts. The larger template has a 2 1/2" hole, which works for late 70 thru 72, while the smaller template has the 2" hole, which works for the early thru mid 1970 units. Between all of them you can repair any of the 70-72 units. Also, do not simply use a template and change the larger hole diameter. The center points are in a slightly different place, so you might get into some trouble with that. I will try to post the first three templates tonight. Each also has a 1" scale drawn on it so you can make sure your patterns are the correct size. Duane
By the way, the reason I needed to do this in the first place is because the X-Camino needs a core support. I don't know what happened but the one in there, as well as the pass inner fender just rotted away. When I built the car (20 years ago) I thought I put a good one in there, although I did actually make it from 2 different core supports, a 70 and a 71. It was pretty funny to see 70 numbers on one side and 71 numbers on the other. Anyway it looks like there was some type of acid leakage and it ate everything up, and being that the Car is a 70 I wanted to use a 70 core support.......so it was time to fix one. Duane
Get that thing freshened up and bring it back out to the GS Nats. I figure you'll be bringing your GSX in 2021 but maybe for 2022 you can bring X-Camino. It's been a long time since it has been at BG so for many people it will be the first time they've ever seen the X-Camino. Definitely one of a kind.
I remember when I took it there when it was just finished. I had it on an open trailer in the hotel parking lot and people kept stopping to look at it in the rain. You would have sworn they never saw a car before. Duane
