Road to Paint
so here is the core support 90 percent done.
It's 90 percent done because I am making the center brackets (hood latch, and headlight) and the bar their attached to (upper core support) bolt in. So I need to pick up some washers and proper sized studs. and then I am going to tack them into place where the previous spot welds were.
You can see where the radiator studs were left on the support. It will look like that in the opposite direction on the ends so I don't have clearance issues with the fenders. It will make more sense when I post the "how-to".
While my brother was busy spot welding the core support in I was repairing my ganador mirrors. One of the adjustment studs you see broke off and the mirror only had up/down adjustment. It's mentioned somewhere in the video how to disassemble them back in this post. (Monday : Paint Prep Day 1)
The mirror adjusters are only held on by a small amount of silicon. So I just made sure the core was a tad beefier so some dipshit trying to move them around doesn't snap them again.
moving along... (video or you can read, or both even.)
We took a piece of scrap metal from my old roof like this one.
and then cut, ground, and shaped it until it fit precisely in the antenna hole.
My brother (Bert) was ready to spot it in and asked me to put my finger on the other side of the metal and that it wouldn't hurt and to stop being a big pussy. He had the shaping hammer on the other side holding it up and I touched the opposite side of the spot welds towards the lower left.
he popped that gun(welding) twice and the metal burnt the shit out of me. he thought it was hilarious.
fucker.
so he would spot a few times, pop some spot welds on it, hammer them flat while still warm, then wire brushed it, more spot welds, more hammering, grinding, shaping the panel, grinding, shaping.
I advised from this side if the panel was still wavy or not.
finished product.
normally people will just put a plate of metal below the surface, tack weld it in, grind the top of the welds, then use body filler to make up the space rather than shaping the panel.
The way we did it MINIMAL filler will be needed.
Which will net a cleaner product, obviously people with nicer materials to work with can produce better work than us. I personally don't think it's bad for an electric welder. And for free
(just to answer some questions)
Q: why are you welding without glasses, gloves, etc. Isn't that unsafe?
A: yes and no. before each pull of the trigger my brother is either wearing welding goggles, or for the video you saw shuts his eyes while he pulls the trigger 2-3 times. if he was putting down seams, the necessary safety equipment would be highly recommended but for quick spot welding. There is no elongated exposure, maybe a slight sunburn on the hands if anything depends how much welding is being done.
Q: when are you going to paint it?
A: I want to get it in the shop this week, but I am going to be patient to fix all body descrepancies my brother feels fit, that and I don't have a means of towing it to the shop currently. So that's a factor as well. But the due date for the car being back on the road is September as I still need to buy a new windshield.
thanks for looking.
