It's not over yet. I got some more parts. Got a fixable radiator support and another fender from a good friend. The fender is very straight and will save me time from welding my 2 halves together. I'll probably still weld the 2 halves together just to show how to do it, though it will come later. The radiator support has some rust near the battery (dont they all?), but it's not nearly as bad as my current support. We'll be fabbing up a replacement section and cutting out the bad spot. Passenger front fender. Not really much wrong with it from the looks of things. Well, except that it's blue and my car is white. I'll sand the paint off and get a better look. Got the majority of the paint sanded down. Looks like there's some body filler in it, but not much. Turns out that the body filler was for imperfections in the metal. There were some deep scratches up front that looked like they came from a wire wheel. After cleaning it up, and re-smoothing back over the scratches, I hit it with a coat of KBS rust seal, and a light coat of primer. I ended up stripping the bottom section back down and filling in those 3 holes for the stainless trim. I decided that I am not going to put that back on. After grinding down the welds, I repeated the previous steps and left it in a coat of primer. This will do for now until I get the fender on the car. Now onto the radiator support. This is the old rusty drivers side fender that we pulled off recently. Once you get passed the rusty sections, there still some good metal here. We used this to make patch panels for the radiator support. I guess now, once we're all finished, we can still say that the car still has all of the original sheetmetal, huh? The lower part of the radiator support. This is right near where the battery sits. Remember how bad mine is? Yep, mine doesn't even have any of this metal left because it all rusted out. This will be an easy fix. Grind it down, get all of the rusty area's out, and rebuild that support piece using metal from the scrap fender. We used any cardboard we could find to make templates. After measuring and trying a few different idea's, we agreed on this one. This is just after cutting it out and starting to shape it to mock it up to see how it would look in place of the rusty area. Brazing the back of it in place so that we can shape the rest of it to follow the contour and shape of the original. We ran out of Oxygen and went back to the MIG welder. This is after welding one section in place and starting to grind down the welds. You can see it starting to take shape now. Ignore those nasty welds along the bottom and side. They haven't been ground down yet. Now the front section. We decided that it would be easier to make a middle section and then an end section. Test fitting a piece I just cut. This looked good, so we cut out the rusty metal underneath and welded this section in place. We also made a cap to go over the side where it's still open. These aren't the best looking welds. To be honest, I think we had the amperage a little too high causing the splatters. Ah well, it got a good penetration and once we grind it down, it'll be smooth again. Besides, this is the bottom of the support where it bolts to the frame. All of the bolt holes line up to match the exact same height and location as they did before we started. Had to make sure we got that right so it didn't sit crooked in the car. I'm pretty confident that this will sit just as level and even as it's supposed to. Another Harbor Freight angle grinder desentigrated. Good thing they warranty these. There was a collar around the center of the fan blade. That metal collar slid up over the black part to the left of it. Some how, the fan came apart while my father was using it and locked up the grinder. Inside the case of the grinder. You can see where that fan blade tore into the sides of it when it gave out. After grinding down all of the welds and smoothing out everything we just did, I sprayed it with a coat of KBS and some flat black primer/paint. Tomorrow, the goal is to swap this radiator support out with my current rusty one. Also, I will be swapping out passenger side fenders in the process. More on the way.....
7am, behind the garage, ready to take it apart. Got the bumper off. Looks like I found out why the bumper was so bent out of shape. At some point in time, someone bumped into something pushing the bumper into the lower grill pan. That's going to be a project for another day as I plan to repaint the fins of the grill and polish up the chrome on it. Closer inspection of the lower grill pan. I can bend this back into shape easily. Got the passenger side fender, inner wheel well, and front end parts off of the car. The drivers side bottom of the radiator support. It's pretty toasted. You can see where we made the temporary fix a few weeks ago as well. The passenger side is pretty rotted as well. Got the old support off and have the radiator resting on the frame rails. The frame bolts that held the support to the frame were horribly rusted. It took a can of Liquid Wrench and a pipe slid over the end of a ratchet just to get them most of the way out. Since I would be using new bolts, I was hoping they would just break off and fall out. Surprisingly, they didn't. The frame is in great shape with minimal surface rust on it. The rubber bushings that go between the support and the frame were also in great shape. The old rusty fender and inner wheel well. Of course, I kept the antenna. We got the support bolted up in this picture. Closer look at some of the rust on the old fender. The old radiator support. The bottom is completely gone. There was nothing for this side to bolt to. This was the drivers side with that temporary fix that we did a few weeks ago. The passenger side wasn't much better either. Right after starting to wire wheel and strip down the inner wheel well. I had to take a break. That old grinder gets heavy! Another shot of it bolted in. It was supposed to be painted flat black, but the rust seal and paint we used looks more of a flat grey. I'm not to concerned about the color right now. My main concern was getting rid of rust. More pictures to follow of the finished product all put back together, along with pics of the passenger fender. Gotta fix the radiator first. :TU:
wow, incredible amount of work, but great to watch, learning a lot and definitely nice to see how it's done and what can be done with some skill. good stuff, keep goin!
Brian, I read this thread last year when you were going through all this and I just re-read the entire thread again...partly for the hell of it cause I thought it was a good thread and partly cause I can't sleep. :laugh: Really a great thread man! Some serious detail and real world DIY steps. It's weird, I can pull out the engine a take it down to pieces just fine, but the thought of doing body work scares the hell out of me! o No: If I could ever make the time to get my engine put back together properly and put back in the LeSabre, I'd really like to take a ride out to the beach. Maybe if it happens some time this spring/summer, we could meet up to have a few drinks & shoot the bull if you're up to it. :beer Extra time and extra money always seem to play the biggest roles...so I guess the next items on my "Things To Get" list will have to be a time machine and a money tree... Anyone selling a Delorean and/or some plant cuttings? :laugh:
Dude, I just ripped my 67 apart in Humble and found enough bondo to hide the dove tail on the trunk lid because of 2 quarter sized dents?! The hood must have taken a pole to the center, but other than that the car is nearly rust free and only has a few more dents to go. If you are ever up in northeast Houston, I'll buy the beer if you let me pick your brain on the best ways to straighten out the small details and paint it right. :beer
Both idea's sound good to me. :TU: The best way to learn is to go to a junkyard and grab the cheapest car hood you can find, smack it a few times with a hammer, and then repair it. It won't matter if you make a mistake, because you don't care about the hood, but you'll learn from it, rather than making the mistake on your Buick. And, whatever is left of the hood when you're done can be used as patch panels for your car, if it's the right thickness of metal. Just remember, bondo is not for filling holes or dents. It's for smoothing out small blemishes. I plan to add more to this thread within the next couple weeks when I get back started on the body work again. Thanks again!
Time for an update. I pulled the bumper, filler panels, taillights, and everything else from the backside today. I assessed the rust damage, and will be making new patches for the corners of the quarter panels right where the taillights meet on both sides. Pics still to come for that. I pulled the back seat out, and expected the worst. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There are a couple small rust holes that I will have to cut out and make new patches for, but nothing serious. I also found my build sheet in the springs of the seat. ... by r0ckstarr, on Flickr Would it be safe to wash the seat belts in a clothes washing machine, or will I risk fading them? I also found this little monster hanging out on my car when I pulled the back seat out. Any idea what it is? ... by r0ckstarr, on Flickr
Expecting something pretty bad, I started stripping down the rear quarter on the drivers side. I found some bondo and hoped for the best. It actually wasn't bad at all. It looks like someone backed into something at one time, and repaired it with bondo. You can see a small dent right near where the bumper meets. IMGP2131 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr Here you can see where the trim meets. The trim overlaps the body: IMGP2124 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr The original piece of trim that was there, was broken in two pieces. This piece is from another car. I pulled the corner back out some so that it lines up with the trim better. IMGP2129 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr Next, I will be cutting this section out and welding in new metal. The section where the trim attatches is pretty rusted. You can grab it and move it back and forth real easily. There's also a hole where it rusted through on the upper right side above the trim piece. IMGP2127 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr
Rusted bracket removed. I really didn't want to cut so close to the crease in the metal, but with the amount of rust, I had no other option. 050911 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr I then flattened the bracket and traced out the pattern on a scrap piece of metal. 050911 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr After I cut that out, I bent the old piece back into shape, and then matched the newly cutout piece. From there, I trimmed down the edges and sides to make the new piece a perfect match. Almost perfect.... Tomorrow, I will finish up this piece and weld it into place. I moved on to other areas of the car. 050911 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr Then, I found lead where the body was put together. 050911 by r0ckstarr, on Flickr After that, I went back to straightening that corner. While doing so, I noticed the metal had a crack in it from where it had been hit before. Once I was pretty sure that corner was straight, I went to weld up that small crack I found. I then found more lead. Right at that corner. Unfortunately, I found the lead the hard way this time. When I put down my first tack weld, I let the metal cool, then hit it again. The 2nd time I hit it, I seen a drop of lead fall to the ground. Whoops!! Now I am deciding if I want to take a chance and braze that area, or melt down some lead and try to fill it back in. More to come tomorrow.
