Too long, but it's worth it to prevent rust from coming back quickly. Nice work as usual.
Too long, but it's worth it to prevent rust from coming back quickly. Nice work as usual.
4 hours
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Were you in the room? That is exactly what it took.
Pete
NOHOME said:In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Were you in the room? That is exactly what it took.
Pete
Elvis is everywhere, man.
My sheet metal bits have been sitting on a shelf long enough that I forgot that my inner sill replacement panels don't extend all the way back. Any tips on stitching these in?
I was thinking maybe I extract the rearmost section picture here, join with my replacement panels off the car before offering back up.
In reply to Nukem :
That will work just fine.
I have done several where I only use a short portion of the inner sill repair piece. A lot depends on how much rust damage you are dealing with,
The first thing I do when working on sills is one long straight cut along the entire sill.
This one only needed a new outer sill and even at that I only did a rockerectomy where I cut a new heritage sill along the length and welded it on to the straight cut.
This one needed repair to all parts but only up front. Stagger the repairs for more strength and add a plate to the inside of the inner sill repair panel. Until you get past the A-post I don't think there is a lot of stress on the sill structure, If you are going to do repairs like this, do yourself a huge favour and use Heritage parts because they are going to butt-up to the factory parts. The car I am doing came with an assortment of parts collected over years at flea markets and is adding a lot of time to the effort.
Not sure how the pic will show, ( thak you photobucket for eating thousands of pics) but here is one where I do a full length repair to most of the parts. The idea is to not break all the spotwelds behind the door because it is a PITA . This method just involves a lot of butt-welds to the intact portions of the original metal. Once again Heritage panels will mate up exactly, Steelcraft not so much. Not that it will be seen.
The inner sill got patched with a repair panel either steelcraft of heritage.
The castle got replaced.
The middle membrane got repaired with a long butt-weld
The outer sill got repaired using all of the new panel except for the portion that goes under the dog-leg; that got butt-welded to the remains of the original outer sill.
If you have any questions feel free to ask. If you dont know where to start I can walk you through the whole thing. Not hard per-se, just a lot of work.
And stick a fork in it cause the PS sill is DONE!
Pretty sure there are enough welds on there so it dont fall off going over a bump.
And as a PSA here is why you don't try to save $$$ buying Steelcraft panels. They are going to cost you more in the long run especially if you are paying someone to do the work. Plus the shapes are close but not quite right and something that will be seen as a negative if you ever want to sell the car.
Was having trouble getting the gap under the door to fit nicely. Was opening up towards the front. The sill did not want to but up against the bottom of the A-pillar.
Can you spot the issue where the very front of the sill is butted up to the side panel and the part by the A-pillar still needs to come up?
Right in the middle of the pic, you can see where the stamping rises towards front. Time/cost to discover the problem, figure out the fix and execute, is much more than the $40 it would have cost to buy the Heritage panel in the first place. Plus there will be other fitment issues with the Steelcraft sill -to -fender fit later on. That one I am at least aware of. I also believe the Steelcraft panels are a gauge thinner steel than the Heritage stuff. So maybe this car will be lighter and faster?
Next we move on to the inside floor and crossmember work. That E36 M3 is a mess.
And two hours today and the cross member is out. The original cross-member was a rotted mess, but still put up a valiant fight before it surrendered to an assault with virtually every power tool that I own.
The scaffolding welded in place combined with the bit of floor remaining, is holding the main longitudinal frame members in place while the transverse cross-member is detached. I don't think the frame members would have moved, but I don't want to take the chance.
Going to shoot for having the passenger compartment tin-work buttoned up by end of the year. Wish me luck.
The new crossmember is in. Sorry about the light flashing in your eyes, did not notice when taking the pic. Looking at the crossmember, it looks like a one hour job to cut out the old and weld in a new one. Took a bit longer than that!
Also managed to get the last bits of the floorpans out. The bits that reside in the footwell area are never going to fall under my definition of fun things to do on New Years Eve. But they are done.
The ends of the main frame rail where they meet the crossmemmber were not confidence inspiring, so I whittled a couple of couplers out of a 2x4 piece of tube.
Today's job was to get the heel-board extensions in. These form part of the structure for the front leaf spring mount and turned out to be a bit lacy after sandblasting.
With the = extensions repaired, it is time to toss the new floor=pans in place, go underneath with a marker to trace where the mounting flanges are going to be, and then drill 232 holes in the new floo=rpan in order to weld it in.
Its come a long way to being a solid chassis again. But still has a longer way to get to the finish line.
OK, so I have been slacking on this. Kinda.
Did manage to get one of the floors completely finished. Awesome seam seal job courtesy of Re-Pete
Only 210 spotwelds to do on the DS and the car can be declared struturaly solid once again. Still a bucket-worth of outside tin to repair/replace but that can happen on the spinner once I get that built.
The least fun place to work on an MGB is in the hell-hole under the dash fixing the toe-board that meets the floor-pan. This area rust in very imaginative ways and there are a lot of panels coming together in the area. If you want a clean repair you will spend a lot of time with your head stuck in this space. Also a great space to get into with your welding helmet on and try to see what you are welding.
And we have crossed A finish line. Three hours of plug-welding later, the car is solid enough to put on a rotisserie. I really want to take another picture of the bottom side to compare to the first time we leaned it against the fence to sandblast.
Still needs to be seam sealed, but I am crossing "Floors" off the list as DONE.
As usual, Pete your work on these nearly hopeless tubs is incredible. I can fathom the amount of work needed and it overwhelms me. Would there be a market for buying solid rust-free or nearly rust-free cars and sending back east? I've seen several cars recently that would fit the bill for restoration back there without the deep dive into rust mitigation. For instance:
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/d/oakland-1977-classic-mg-roadster/7700051945.html
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/cto/d/deer-park-solid-rust-free-california/7700027071.html
https://monterey.craigslist.org/cto/d/marina-1974-mgb/7704211175.html
https://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/cto/d/campbell-1967-mgb-only-miles/7703547687.html
https://sacramento.craigslist.org/cto/d/placerville-1976-mgb-roadster/7707997170.html
What would be the price point that a rust-free chassis would be worth the trouble. 100 hours of work is a lot of money in most cases. Is that more or less than the 5-9 Steves these cars are asking?
I've had very little experience in my years of automotive work on rusty cars since I was born on the left coast and I've lived here nearly my entire life. A few years ago someone posted a resto-mod of an early '80's VW caddy in New Hampshire or something and I was amazed how much work they were willing to invest in fixing a tub that would've been scrapped out here because you could score a good solid one (I've had three of them) for about a tenth the cost to fix the one they brought back to life. Impressive work but seemed odd to me.
Learn me please...
In reply to rdcyclist :
Your though process is a good one and there should be a business model in there
The problem is that individuals who restore cars run more on emotion than sound financial decisions.
In my world, any mgb shell that does not need sills should be worth 5k to someone who is going to go ahead and save a rusty one.
I managed to escape from my dry-wall task downstairs and get a fix of rust dust up my nose. So much more satisfying than the talcum taste of drywall compound! The bulk of the quarter comes of pretty easy, but then you still have like 40 spotwelds to pick apart in the wheel-opening.
I have a decision to make at this point: Normally I cut the new quarter panel to match the cut shown below. Saves a lot of time trying to fit the part around the twilight housing where the pattern part does not fit very well. The argument for cutting more to the original quarter panel and using the entire length of the new panel is because I have to repair the rear chassis leg where the shackle and the bumper iron attach. It is going to be a tricky repair no matter what and if the entire quarter is open, it might make the task easier. Not sure yet since I have never tacked the rear chassis leg repair.
I was actually happy to see this amount of rust in the wheel-tub. I was expecting a lot worse. Easy enough piece to shape and weld in. Then POR the rest of the tub.
The new panel has been trimmed around the edges an a reasonable fit has been arrived at. Note that the wheel-opening is not a perfect fit to the factory wheel-tub and some finesse and cussing ( What the Brits call "Fettling" is required)
Going to sleep on the decision to cut or not cut the new quarter panel.
OK, so after a week at it, while I am not entirely done with basement reno, I am so done with basement reno and hiding in the shop.
The task ahead is to replace the last foot or so of the rear chassis rails. The spot where the rear spring shackles attach is very much rusted out. Wish I had seen this BEFORE the sandblast and epoxy primer was done.
This killed 4 hours. That seems to be some kind of a limit to my patience for this stuff.
The main rail will get cut at the black marker line. A repair section will be welded in with a fishplate on the inside. More to come
I made a big hole.
Of course the new part does not seem to fit the old part. The mismatched part is the shackle hole, so it kinda needs to match.
The good news is that it also does not fit the new part that it mates to, so just a case of moving the hole.
The old frame rail was well and truly FUBAR.
Hopefully turn the corner and start to re-assemble tomorrow.
The new section of frame is fitted in place and ready to weld in. Tape templates for the win; just plaster over the part you cut out and transfer to the new part.
And it is welded in place.
Thinking that this might be a high stress structure, |I desiced to hedge my welding bets by making a U shapped reinforcement for the inside of the rail. The welding in there is not pretty cause I| have to do it one handed while not being able to see what I am aiming at. But the marks on the other side of the rail tell me it is well burned in, so pretty sure it will hold.
This job well and trully sucks. I really do not want to do another one. Too bad I have to do the DS one.
This job well and truly sucks. I really do not want to do another one. Too bad I have to do the DS one.
For some reason, whenever I click on one of the FBMP ads linked here, I get a coupla MGBs of various vintage with little to no rust and I immediately think of you and the marvelous rework you're doing on what would be a scrap tub in California. How hard would it be to ship a car from California to Canada? I imagine your work costs more than a reasonably restorable project MGB purchased here and shipped to The Great White North but I could be wrong.
I was working on patching up this wheel-tub today,
One of the fun things you get to do when working on wheel tubs is make panels with a curved flange. They can be a bit of a pain to make if you do not have a bead roller or like me are too lazy to haul the bead roller out and set it up! Note bead roller in background of pic.
What I do is grab a piece of solid round bar and cut a slot in it.
I then insert the piece of tin into the slot deep enough to match the curve line. In this case the line is marked by the center punch marks that I punched through the tape template to transfer the curve.
.
And after about a dozen passes where you move the part along the curve and bend it incrementally with a hammer. you get your finished patch panel.
I have been reading this thread and have been thinking. Have you had a car dip striped and acid dipped? Or does that cause bigger problems? I have only sandblasted a car I restored back in the 90's.
In reply to MyMiatas :
I dipped the first car that I ever restored. This VERY sorry excuse for a Bugeye sprite.
It sure does clean the thing up. However, Unless I was working with a vendor that was then going to dip the shell in an E-coat bath, I would not do it again.The dip does not seem to so any better of a job when it comes to finding that rust that hides in overlaped spotwelded panels.
When delivered, the shell will be bare covered in an oily coat of something. Instructions are to wash it off with water and then epoxy coat. Like putting water on bare metal is a good idea?
Dipping gets rid of coatings everywhere and leaves the surface with a tendency to flash rust|: what is the inside of the box sectoins look like on your unibody after dipping?
Where dipping absolutely wins is when it comes to the boxes of parts and bolts. They tend to charge by the pound rather than the hour as does the sandblaster and the parts come out like new.
In reply to MyMiatas :
I can expand on the above by asking the qhestion: "Should I dip/sandblast before or after I do the tinwork.
This project and the Healey I did before both went to the blaster and came to me in eopxy. MUCH nicer to work with and all rusty bits exposed. In the case of this MGB, a lot of the damage was of that lacy variety that you cant see until you blast it.
The downside to blasting first is that a lot of the metal that you paid to have blasted and painted is now getting cut off. Enough of this shell is going in the bin so as to require another trip to the epoxy paint booth.
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