This body work stuff is exhausting, whole lot of up and down, measure trim, measure again. Been working the past 2 days on getting the left hand inner sill/heel board, and all other panels in the area cut out and replaced. progress is slow but I am getting there.
One good note I test fitted the door and it does clear my bracing so I shouldn’t have any issues tackling the A-post repairs while waiting on some of the RH panels. One bad thing the door needed to be lifted to close, I am not super concerned about that as I was not very gentle removing the A panel, that and the whole A post will be replaced.
First I had to finish removing the inner sill/floor pan area from under the companion box, I found the sill stiffener was rotting so this made removable a lot less methodic as I just cut through all that stuff.
So now I was finally able to start trimming and fitting the inner sill repair I had bent up the other day…. this was quite a pain, the profile was really close but I also went slightly thicker than original so it took a bit of finesse to get it to fit into place, being a large section made it hard to know exactly where to trim. Once I was satisified the panel was fitting good, it was time to weld. This wasn’t my best welds but surprisingly the stuff I did laying under the car turned out better? I am still debating how smooth I want to grind back the welds, really they will be hidden for the most part, and it not like my floor pans don’t already have patches on them.
Next up was to add a patch to the rear floor pan, this was rotten around the drain hole, I feel like this repair turned out ok.
The seat belt mounting plate was rotting so it could not be reused, seeing I have already blown the budget for this car months ago I am trying to be cheap where I can. The nut on the existing plate was in good shape and I just so happened to have some 2.5mm stainless plate laying around. So I quickly whipped up a new plate and welded it in.
Next up was time to start working on the rear heel board repair panel… this is my current pain point but I think I have it ready for some tacks, then I will test fit the subframe before the final welds. Currently the panel is held in with some cleco’s and the jig, I also clamped up the outer sill to see if the inward position was correct. It all looks good so far… don’t mind the inner wing attachment I need to bend that back into position, just one of the many tweaks I was fighting.
I was originally only going to rely on the jig I made but after the amount of fettling I had to do to get it to bolt up and measure on my marks I made correctly I am worried it could be out. Basically I am concerned while the heel board mounts are aligned correctly the subframe could end up slight cocked and not allow the rear mount to bolt up. So in theory if I can get it to bolt up without messing with the mounts then the position will be correct.
Told myself I was going to take a day off tomorrow, not sure if that will happen, would really like to have this section buttoned up, I also need to do some arch repairs, the whole section won’t be closed off until the door step/A-post repairs are done. Guess that is all for today.
The Rust chronicles 