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53 Belair conv rust repair

1M views 6K replies 111 participants last post by  Eduramac 
#1 ·
I just brought home a 1953 Chevy convertible Monday that is 100% there. 100% there except for the bottom 6 inches that is. I have always built rusty cars no one else wanted but have tried to do a quality job of repairing them on a budget.

The key wordhere is budget. I admit to being frugal but friends all say I am cheap. Whatever, for me to be able to enjoy this hobby I must be able to build the car and have my money invested, not just spent

The cost of replacement floor pans, floor braces, inner rockers, outer rockers, lower quarter panels, tow boards, trunk pan, rear pan extension, tail pan, and rear splash apron is well over 3000 dollars. That is money that will buy front suspension, rear axle, and good buildable engine. Maybe even a complete parts car.

I have basic sheet metal tools but nothing exotic. Small 3' brake, Shrinker/stretcher jaws, home made slip roll, and a home made english wheel and 110v mig welder.

My purpose here is to show the new hot rodder who is apprehensive about what he can do what is possible with a little time and patience and not much money.

Below is the patient. She has stage four cancer but we are going to try to save her. If we don't who will? :mwink:








So far I have stripped the inside, removed the front fenders and adjusted the doors. If the body shifts or moves during the build process I want to know it before everything gets welded together. Frequently checking door gaps will let me make sure it has not moved.




Tomorrow I plan to cut the toe boards loose from the front floor brace and expose the brace. The first job will be to remove the brace and reproduce it.

I hope you guys follow along and feel free to comment share thoughts, opinions, etc.

 
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#2,615 ·
LOL....I am trying to get a crew together now to produce a reality show.

The first episode is going to have a 30 second video of me working on the car, 14 minutes of my wife yelliing at me for tracking up her floors and 15 1/2 minutes of commercials. :D:confused::nono:

John


Can't seem to find a producer....:D
 
#2,621 ·
The gutter is coming together nicely. It is 80% welded and 50% ground so there quite a bit of work yet to do. Once it is welded and ground I will need to finish forming and trimming that inner lip that rolls over.

So far I am pleased. It is going to make a good solid repair. We all strive for
perfection but never quite get it.

John











 
#2,622 ·
I would be willing to bet that the work you are doing on that car rivals the quality of most professional car builders. If I hadn't followed this build all the way thru it I would think that you are a pro. You certainly know what you are doing and think it thru every step of the way.
 
#2,623 · (Edited)
Thanks a lot. Obviously, this not the first car I have fooled with but I am a retired telephone man by trade. The thing I have tried to demonstrate here is with some inexpensive tools and a lot of patience, a lot can be accomplished without spending a fortune.

One of the professionals on here frequently says the only thing worth carrying out of Harbor Freight is the cash register. Personally, I disagree. Even though their tools may not stand up to the demands of a pro who is using them day in and day out, they have many cool things that allow the hobbiest to do things that they could never afford to do if they had to pay the price for top of the line equipment.

The only way I can afford to participate in this hobby is to keep the labor to a minimum as well as buy cars that many others would not look at twice. I do try to choose cars that have some market value when finished.

The advantage I have is I enjoy the build and it kind of feeds my ego to fix something no one else would fool with, knowing when I am done it will be a quality build even if its not a high dollar build.

John
 
#2,626 ·
Cool. If you search (Google)!for tipping die, you will find all kinds of ways to make home made dies for your bead roller. Mine is made out of a 3 dollar V-belt bulley and a roller scate wheel. Used to boot.

I believe the HF English wheel has lower anvils that are machined at a constant radius. The better ones have a flat spot machined into the so they don't leave track marks in your sheet metal. That also would be a fairly simple mofification to make if it were needed.

If you do Google these things, there are tons of people who have posted how they modified and improved their inexpensive equipment.......

The coolest modification I have done is putting a motor on my bead roller. Again, there are all kinds of cool ways to do it from using a variable speed electric drill, winch motor, or garage door motor which is what I did. I do wish I had used a system that gave me speed control but for less than a hundred dollars I am pretty satisfied.

Have fun. The journey is the destination.:thumbup:

John
 
#2,630 ·
Repairing weather strip channel

Going about the RH weatherstrip channel a little differently. The parts car had what appeared to be a fairly solid piece but by the time I got it cut out, seperated the spot welds, and sandblasted it......well, judge for yourself.

This is the piece I cut out of the yellow Hdtp.

The rusty holes are mostly where it was spot welded to the support brace on the bottom side.



The bottom shows that there are indeed problems but it is still shiney silver without heavy rust from underneath.







Here is the piece after sandblasting.



Next I made a replacement channel for the rusty area. as you can see, I also welded up just a few pinholes that the replacement channel will not cover.

The challenge will be to weld this up without distorting it so badly it will no longer fit the convertible. I may have to cut it in two in order to get it to fit and maintain my panel gaps.






The holiday will probably slow me down but we are looking forward to the kids coming for a few days. We will get back to it next week.

John
 
#2,641 ·
I'm not an expert in the field. but I think that you can control the speed of an AC motor If it is a brush type motor. Most electric drills are brush type and it may depend on how the field is wound also. If it is a brush type motor you may be able to use a rheostat. If it doesn't have brushes then you have to have a controller that will reduce the hertz. (I think) LOL!
 
#2,646 · (Edited)
Welded up my RH trunk weather strip channel today. It has pulled some, as I knew it would, and will have to be diced in the radius of the corner. Anytime you do this much welding on a piece that is free to move, you can be sure the shrinkege from the welding will cause it to do just that.

John







After I finished welding it up and ground the welds, I ran it back through the sand blast cabinet.






This was a lot of work and to be honest will not be any better than the other side I made from scratch. Not that it won't work. Just an observation..... Making new pieces that are a good heavy 18 ga is really just as easy, stronger, and more rewarding.
 
#2,647 ·
Boy, My grass needs to be mowed. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.:D

I trimmed out the old channel today and cleaned it up.





The repaired patch fit so badly it had to be cut in two but that was no surprize. I think I mentioned before it was pulling from the welding.






After drilling the plug weld holes for the support and repairing a small place close to the hinge I was ready to tack it in.










And there we are. I will finish welding it in and grind the welds but my next project is to skin the bottom of the deck lid. Once the deck lid is finished I will fit it and we can move on to finishing the tail pan I started a year ago.

Here you can see just a hint of the rust that is beginning to show through the bottom about an inch up.

John


 
#2,652 ·
Pretty much finished the channel today. Since this one is made from the origional 20 ga piece from the parts car, I am afraid to grind it too much. I don't want to thin the surrounding metal but it still needs some. Also, it could use a little more picking up at the front. For now, I'm beat.

John




 
#2,656 ·
Pretty much finished the channel today. Since this one is made from the origional 20 ga piece from the parts car, I am afraid to grind it too much. I don't want to thin the surrounding metal but it still needs some. Also, it could use a little more picking up at the front. For now, I'm beat.

John

/QUOTE]

isn't it funny how doing one side is fun but when you do the other side its work???
 
#2,655 ·
Yes. That is what I like to use too Pugsy. Also they make the same thing in a 3/16 x 3" version that is really good for grinding welds.

There is a big brace behind this weld that makes it almost impossible to get a dolly under the weld. I considered cutting the brace out, repairing the channel, and then welding the support back in. It would have been good had I spent another 45 minutes on it. I still will before I put it in epoxy.

We had a club meeting tonight and I just ran out of time and energy.

John
 

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#2,658 ·
Man, you guys got that right. I still have the rh quarter panel to go. I moved to the trunk area because I just didn't want to do the same thing again.

I have not stopped enjoying the build but the challenging "new" things are definitely the fun part.

I have started the trunk lid and will post some picture when I get enough done to make it worth looking at.

John
 
#2,659 ·
rusty deck lid repair

Hopefully the repair of this deck lid will be interesting to some who are following along. I felt like it would be good to repair the deck lid and fit it to the car before finishing the tail pan.

The first thing I did was to remove the lid and spend 2-3 hours getting the sound deadening material out of it.....Not fun.



I don't know that I will need it but just in Case, I scribed a line 6 inches up from the bottom of the lid and then laid a piece of tape down marking the same six inches on the tape. It is just easier to see on the tape.

I also circled a few of the pinholes so you can see why I am reskinning the bottom few inches..



Next I laid a straight edge across the lid an inch or so above the damage and marked the cut line for the patch. My concern is making sure everything lines up and fits as the factory made it.

I will post a little more after dinner showing how I am hoping to make this repair in a way that allows me to control the long weld accross the bottom. Getting a good weld that does not draw is going to take a little enginuity and patience.

John


 
#2,660 ·
While The deck lid was still intact I formed a corner piece to replace the rusty inside corner. there will have to be another half of this piece made to complete the repair.







I also went ahead and made a replacement piece for the lower section of the deck lid. It was pretty straight forward. It is a rounded angle that is formed to the same angle as the deck lid.

As you can see the only challenge is to make it fit the curve of the deck lid. This was easily done by using the shrinker/stretcher jaws to shrink the horizontal lip and stretch the verticle lip, keeping the piece straight one direction and curved the other.






Lastly, I used a grinder to grind the edge of the deck lid skin until I ground through the folded edge releasing the skin from the lid. At that point, it is was just a matter of cutting the skin off where I had marked it.



I am afraid to make this post any longer. I will come back with a new post showing the making of the replacement skin.

John
 
#2,661 · (Edited)
Replacement skin for deck lid

Once the deck lid skin was removed, I cut a piece of stock to fit the cut line of the lid, clamped it in place, and scribed bottom edge of the lid. Remember, I had ground about 1/& off the edge to release the old skin so I already had the margin I needed for the fold on the new replacement skin.

I also added the material for the fold to the pattern.









Now that the patch is cut out it is just a matter of tipping the lip that will fold over the deck lid frame. a few passes through the bead roller and some time with a hammer and dolly takes care of that. In order to do this, you will need to keep the piece straight by running it through the shrinker/stretcher jaws to compensate for the distortion caused by tipping the fold.







So this is where I am now. My plan is to tack this outer skin in place. Then cut out the inner frame structure allowing me to get a dolly in there so I can planish the weld as I go. After the replacement skin is welded I can weld in the replacement lower frame work and we will be on to the other side.

John

One more thing. After cleaning out the junk from the deck lid, I went out to my parts car to see if there was anything worth saving on it. I was amazed to see the bottom of the inner structure was pretty dog gone good.....Go figure!

I assume that a usable Coupe, Sport Coope, or convertible deck lid is worth 2-3 hundred dollars so it makes sense to continue on with this repair.


 
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