More Body Work

Bob returns to do some further repair work on the inner sill and panels.

Worked on the inner sill some more today. I need to cut away rust but only after I have a really good mock up on the inner sill and lots of witness marks. This is the only original reference I have.

Starting the cutting out process.

My inner sill had a slight bow to it from 4″ to 4.5″ and it made it hard to get things lined up – so I just tacked in some braces to keep everything at 4″, not really original but it was fighting me too much to get things lined up….

My template.

Not everything gets bent on a big brake. Sometimes the vise and scraps work very well for making small bends.

Worked on the body panels today and welded the areas that I had to cut and bend and then took the grinder to them and painted them with self etching primer.

Some more effort today. Removed the rear body mount bolt while I could see it and put it back in place with lots on anti-sieze so when I lift the body it will come off easy. Cut out portions of the old body mount that were rusty and made a new piece. Used plug welds to connect the body mount to the repair panel.

I also added my repair panel for the back of the pilla.

I then moved to repairing a hole in the frame. I welded on a “handle” to the repair panel to make it easy to hold inside the frame so I could weld it in place. I used the big vise to bend it to shape.

The trick is you need to cut all of the rusty metal out so you have thick clean shiny metal showing for the cross section. If you look at the picture you can see the cross section of shiny metal. The frame is thick enough that what is exposed is enough to get a good weld. If the frame was thinner then it would be necessary to grind more of it down on all of the sides. The mig welder I used today is set up with .025 wire and I can lay a bead on the 16 gauge repair panel and move the puddle over to the shiny cross section. It also helps that the repair panel is bigger than the opening so there is no burn through and works as a pretty good heat sink.