Boot done

Well my list got shorter and longer at the same time, not that much longer though. Over the past few days I have been fighting with the half boot, floor, valance, and rear subframe mounts. They all tie in together so you have to play with a lot to make things line up.

So where do I start? Well first to fix my ass I have to lose my ass, lol. So thats exactly what I did. I took some measurements of the window opening and went to town with the grinder. Its kind of funny how small the pile of metal was.

Trying to make sense of all my photos to explain the process of how I did all this, but everything is a whirlwind in my head. So hopefully I will do my best to explain, I tried to follow the same method Matt Green on youtube did.

So before I could push forward cutting more I needed to have an idea of how much I could cut. So I clamped up the boot repair marked the ends then went to town getting the window lip off…. oh and I found some rust, luckily it was surface rust and only seemed to be on the RH side (go figure this is where all the rust seems to be). I hit the rust with some rust converter and let it dry overnight.

The boot floor gave me such a headache I didn’t take many pictures fitting it up or trimming it… go figure. Either way before it could be welded in I needed to finish the wheel arch repairs on both sides. I was pretty happy with how these repairs came out.

So as I mentioned before the boot floor repair panel was just a pain, it fit in some areas and didn’t in others. It was really throwing me off when trying to get things lined up. So I decided to see how it lined up with the Valance, then compared the valance to the half boot seeing they were both heritage panels and the floor section was a German pattern panel. As you can see in the photos the valance and half boot line up almost perfectly. The floor and the valance only the outside holes somewhat line up. Either way this information helped me push forward as I now knew to make sure the ends line up for the most part.

So the next step was to start welding the floor in, I started tacking the floor then realized I didn’t prime it and forgot my subframe mount stiffener plates. So I hit everything with primer then called it a day cause I was obviously pushing too hard for the finish and was getting sloppy.

Oh yea I decided to not put the valance closing panels in, some may argue that now the valance will fill with crud, while this is true I can now clean the crud out rather than have stuff possibly getting in the closer and then me finding out when a rot hole forms somewhere in there.

The next tasks were just pure torture. I had to weld the boot floor repair in and make some patches for the spots under the subframe stiffeners, oh and drill new holes for the subframe mounts. Lets say this took a long time, isn’t the cleanest, my floor isn’t flat but honestly no one is gonna be looking in there, it is solid I can live with it.

ok boot floor repairs were done.. kind of, so next up more trial fitting to see where things would fall into place.

looking good so far, but I still had some patchwork that needed to be done on the floor. Oh and I needed to remove the battery box. Somewhere in all these repairs I got curious and poked some rust with a screw driver and it went through (JOY!), I had a feeling the battery box was no good, mainly because it appears to be sleeved, well I poked through the sleeve not into the box though which was odd. Either way I don’t have a new box for comparison but this thing I removed was heavy.

Now that I had finished all that, It was time to do the final trimming on the boot, weld some plug weld holes I over drilled. Then hit everything with primer and paint (for the surfaces that won’t see day light again). Oh and I almost forgot before I did that I fitted up the valance and spot welded it, not many picture but I have the one.

Now that everything was primed and painted I had to line up the boot repair and start welding away. Lining this panel up was not very easy. The LH side seemed almost too big as the window lines were just not lining up right. Also the window opening is now about 1/8 of an inch smaller, if I forced the panel down the swage lines would be off. I figured its better to be smaller where I can remove metal rather than bigger in this situation.

With the boot welded in I finally welded in the subframe brackets. These took some tweaking to fit and I might grind the welds a little flat. But the subframe is now holding itself in again.

All that was left after that was to grind back the welds and hit everything with some primer.

So the boot repairs are now down, almost just need to weld in the tank strap mount and put in a battery box which is on its way. I have updated my punch list though. I am now down to odds and ends.

Next up, something on the list, I might knock most if it out before I have another update. Getting close to the body work finish line though and it feels pretty good.