I had hoped today I could get the LH door on today… but plans don’t always work out. I really need to stop saying there are no more can of worms to open on this car… cause I found another one, not too bad but it took a couple hours of my time cutting pieces out.
So the closing lip that goes to the floorpan from the bulkhead looked like it had a gap, I always figured it was due to the car being jacked up by the floor pan, turns out it wasn’t welded to the replacement floor pan… actually after cutting it there was a couple layers of metal. Luckily it seems there was mostly surface rust and a little rot near the inner wing where I will be welding a repair anyways. So I cut the lip off and treated the rust between the layers (no pics of that part).
Next up was to patch the floor pan, the inner wing folded over to the floor pan and I found it easier to cut the floor out with the inner wing. I then welded a panel in and it actually looked really good. Then I held the inner wing repair over the panel and realized something was off, it seemed the panel was too long. Did some measuring and for some reason the floor pan is about an inch and a half too high. At first I blamed myself, but then when I held the piece I cut off against it I realized I only repaired a patched area that was slightly off to begin with. Some hammering banging and cutting now the floor lines up a little better. I will definitely have to beat it some more once the inner wing repair is going on.
If you notice in one of the pictures above you can see the a panel boxing section cutout along with part of the inner sill. This panel was pretty crusty at the bottom and I decided to cut the inner sill as well because it was missing the fold over that meets the inner wing (stupid magnum panels). I then made two repairs and welded in the inner sill first, then welded the boxing section up. It still needs some fine trimming along the door step as I made it too big I also need to weld it to the inner sill but its sitting pretty good for now.
Next up was to do the final trimming for the door step, this was quite a pain but I managed, I believe the panel lines up correctly. It measures within an 1/8th to the other side, and the seam strip on the scuttle side measures identical.
Seems I didn’t take a picture of the other end trimmed up, it lines up pretty well and will only need a little beating. I cut the gap that will be covered by the quarter panel a little large. I should be able to sudo plug weld the gap to the B post easy enough though.
Next up I decide to cleco clip the door step/post in to see how it was lining up, I was really satisfied with how the panel was fitting at this point. So I went ahead and lined up the hinge post to the boxing section and clipped it as well.
At this point I wanted to see how the door would line up, I know there is going to be a lot of movement due to the panels only being temporarily held, but figured this would give me a baseline to see how far off I am at this point.
So I fitted the door and bolted up the hinges, the door was fit with one shim on each hinge and I had to pull out the bottom a little to make the lines fit well, most likely this will be ok, cause the boxing section isn’t exactly the strongest yet. But I was pleasantly surprised when the door seems to be fitting very well.
Honestly I can’t complain about how it is fitting at the moment, I am actually really happy with it. My original plan was to weld the door in place and fit the inner wing repair first then work my way to the door step but with how the inner wing was this didn’t seem like the best place to start. I suppose in the end if you get to the same goal does it matter how you got there?
Next up I am going to hit the door edges with primer just to help show the shadows on the gap better so I have a good idea on how its looking. Then once I am satisfied I will start tacking things in place.
The Rust chronicles 