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04/26/09 |
       
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Made a start on the door frame and floor on the passenger side. I had very little to work from as there was practically no lower door frame left at the front, or floor pan or sills, other than a short piece of square tube I welded in to hold it stable when I moved the car. I ended up welding in a bar to hold the door frame at the correct dimensions and then cut out the whole lower front door frame.
I cut out the rusted area and then cut through the inner sill, door step and outer sill at different points so I could stagger the welding in of the new panels. I bought new panels but have been advised by everyone I have asked to just cut out the bad metal and weld in the sections that I need keeping as much of the original steel as possible. I also spent hours cutting out the foam injected into the original void spaces.
In the picture above you can see the inner sillcut back almost to the center cross member then the outer sill cut back past the center member and the door step cut back the longest. I missed one of my steps at this point as I welded in a piece of 16 gauge sheet metal hand bent to act as the inner sill. You can see it in the picture below but I had already welded on the door step so the shot is of the new inner sill welded to the front bulkhead and the underneath of the door step
you can see in the second picture I have welded in the door step however when I was looking at this picture i realized that i had welded it in lining up the curves rather than the line of the first fold in the step and as you can see the actual curve of the step is about 1/3 inch too far forward. they give you a lot of edge material it would seem in the expectation that you will line up the bits needed and then cut off the extra! I had to cut through some of my welds and then cut out part of the step and shorten it by 1/3 of an inch as you can see below
after that I had to grind off the rust and clean up the back plate (the bulkhead) and weld in the new a pillar piece which also needed a lot of trimming to get everything to line up. You will also notice that I have removed the distance bar as structurally it is now solid enough to support itself without moving. I also had to weld closed a lot of small pin holes between the bulkhead and the A pillar and I also ran a solid bead of weld up the internal bulkhead to A pillar original spot weld line (It is closed in by the hinge stiffener plate. There was also some rust up under the windscreen scuttle which I closed up with a piece of 18 gauge, its not structural or visible.
Next I will clean up the remaining rust and stabilize with zinc oxide so I can still weld over it and then cut out the remains of the wing on the windshield scuttle and put in the internal hinge panel stiffener plate.
This site was last updated 04/26/09 |
