Projects Truck into a coupe- My next pet project

But in order to get there...
Both cowl feet needed to come out and get fixed with steel instead of mud

 

All better now x2

 

And the rockers needed to come off.
Pop rivets, lots of well carved and painted mud, a little itty bitty tiny tack of brass and a fucking pipe !!!

 

See, when I was playing with the hinges, the rocker / door jamb developed a crack at the a pillar. Considering that's a structural point including the body mount and support for the cowl/ doors I figured I had better investigate. Well thru the mud, then the caulk filling the hole- what do I find? A pipe, a 36" long pipe that some how is tiring to hold the car together by the tinny brass tack. Some further investigation revealed some engineer figures that the 35" long cantilever bearing on the 20 gauge pop rivetted to the inner rocker will do the job ! Brilliant !!! There was only 1 tack on the 36" pipe so it moved easily 3/8 to 1/2" back and forth. Thankfully the bondo and caulk were there to control that .

 

Yes it's headed in the right direction now.
Wonder who else saw it? 9 thousand some views here.
(But only 3 stars- what's up with that lol)

I'm not happy about any of the back steps here. Not one bit, but once I quit tearing shit apart I can be happy about the future of this project. I just wish it wasnt my money I'm spending getting it right and my money I spent on the shitty work headed for the dumpster.

Was supposed to tearing up the road by march/April 2014.

Now what "right" means to different people is obviously different. Some guys really think, and with good intensions that a kittyhair hairball patch is a quality repair, that 6 pop rivets on 6" centers actually have some/enough structural resilience to hold a car together let alone the patch on.

 

If you're wondering, she ain't so happy about this situation of this car now.
But she's really supportive and talked me into finishing it. Actually talked me out of having it blasted and selling it. Hope she keeps the pep talks up. I really should be working on my Vicky.

 

The hinges were woorballed out, some more than others.
Ball nose end Mill to remove old parts. Spun up the new ones.
Welded them up. This worked extremely well.

 

Cowl foot-

Tried 3 times to rotate this pic , sorry.

 

Rockers, inner rocker/subrail piece

Before thumbnail & also see 153 -4

After - nice, clean, simple and actually structurally quite strong. Almost like factory but with a little artistic interpretation. Ill finish the backside when the body comes off the frame, screws will come out after finish and final welding. Sorry that pic is so big, wow?

 

Passenger side.

 

So far, this is the pile of "stuff" cut off the car.
The sad part is this was all new work and newly fabricated parts - done to some standard of "shit". I'm unsure if this is high quality "shit" or the lowest cheap quality of "shit" as I do not deal in it. I do know it was not inexpensive to purchase this "shit".

I'm sure there will be some more, lets hope its just a few shards that will fit into your pocket.

 

Firewall started , well missing

 

The fire wall needs a recess for clearance.
Some simple beads for strength before heading to the brake.
The beads go in because I plan on covering the firewall with some very cool ribbed stainless.

 

Cowl sides need haircut .

 

All trimmed up. Nice I like it.

 

Top section needs some beads and gauges.

 

Got this headed in the right direction now.

 

Almost done, thinking on an edge treatment

 

Now the cowl is done and the door hinges are fixed with the doors hung nice & straight. Being level to each other hanging off the cowl, the B pillars squared and locked down & everything is good up to the body line.

This is where the real fun starts, fixing the chop.
Now that the car is totally stripped of its prettyshinyexpencivesandedandrubbed red paint to bare metal, its easy to see that some stuff just can't stay the way it is. A tape measure would have been real handy here before hand, but who needs a tape measure when you can just "mud" it up right?

The entire car will need to be cut back apart and put back together. Ill be doing it in sections to keep the disaster area under control while this goes on. The windshield posts are off- WAY OFF! The passenger side post is back from the front 3/8 of an inch. This was masterfully disguised by a gallon of bondo on the post and inside the rusty windshield frame. Not all of it was rusty because some of it still had paint on it all nicely paved over with mud. I'm guessing that's where the first fuck up was because the rest of the car was fudged to accommodate that. With that post off, the drivers side post is twisted and since the roof from windshield mid door was not altered the drivers side mid door roof takes a wicked left turn to meet the back and the passenger side is sort of where its supposed to be, that is as long as the post remains misaligned.

So how does one attempt to correct this? Man I don't know any other way that having every problem mapped out- then developing a plan so there are no double work projects. I started with the doors. I figured its about the best place to get an idea of where the hell the roof and upper B pillar wants to be because they can't stay where the hell they are now. Geeze !!!

I cut the doo tops off and made a buck out of 3/4" mdf to fit in the window channel. Lined up everything off of the inside and glory be- a pretty damn straight door appeared from the dogs hind leg corkscrew mess. I guess you can polish a Turd or make a silk purse from a sows ear. HAA! The door planes excellent now instead of needing 1/4 of mud to not look and like a roller coaster. I also made both doors identical vs their former condition.

The drivers side door was the worse of the two. The drivers door was about 1/8" shorter that the passenger side at the front, and it was 1/8 shorter in height at the rear than the front. So a 1/4" at the rear vs passenger. The pieces needed some shims to help hold the alignment due to the torturous twisting needed to get the thing welded the first time.

 

This one didnt need shims to push the twists out of the pieces, just cut and realigned on the buck. it was relatively the same height front and back just a little kinky.
The drivers door was about 1/8" shorter that the passenger side at the front, and it was 1/8 shorter in height at the rear than the front.

 

holy crap!!! just when I think you're about to turn the corner and make forward progress you get smacked down again! Can't imagine the frustration, but I'm happy to see it coming along and getting fixed right.

 

I didn't look at this thread for a few weeks, and I come back to look at the last page to see how it has progressed....not what I expected. Damn,man, that sucks big time. I'd be super pissed too.

At least you'll know exactly what you have when you get it done, and you'll be able to live with it. I confess I only went back about three pages, I didn't read the whole thread....Who or what is Priscilla?

 

good work making it right.
personally i did not care for the color anyway....

 

Sir, your workmanship, manufacturing/fabrication skills and eye to detail, are impeccable, however, for someone like me, that has the ability to fabricate, but cannot form sheet metal or do simple body work, this thread showcases why I'd rather buy a quality glass body, than go the "Steel is Real" route. Don't take my post the wrong way, I'm definitely in no way belittling you, your work, or your traditional builds, it's just that for some Hotrodders out in the real world, glass is the way to go. Keep up the great work. Someone needs to "Correct" the person that built that crap to begin with. It was a beautiful paint job!

 

Going into a fresh paint job sucks for any reason but
Once you find shitty prep work under the new stuff, what can you trust?
No car is perfect, but all those little nagging questions really start to throw red flags. Like why is this gap off, why does this window look different ...

I'm not sure I have a way to describe the frustration, I've not known this level before. I'm not sure if I will be able to afford to keep it when it's done. There's just soooo much into it at this point. There's been talk of clearing it after the metal work is finished.
Check the thumbnail below.

Thanks, tough decision to make because its based on math.
I personally don't care for red, but I really liked that color. It shows a little different in pics but its got an orange flavor to it that's really kinda cool. But a color change will be easy now.

 

I understand that point and it makes a lot of sense for many people. But for me though, I really couldn't imagine how to live without knowing how to weld or make stuff. For almost 40 years I've heard my dad say "keep it stock it's always your easiest and best bet, but if you just can't leave stuff alone , you'd better get real good at figuring things out and making parts"

 

Whenever someone spits out the line "It's good enough, nobody will ever see it" this project should instantly flash in their mind. Nice save, correction, rebuild. Bob

 

Ok , so I went back through the rest of the thread and I must have missed something. Only saw one mention of Priscilla . So the black 5 window is yours too? You mentioned a frame on the table for it...it looks like a nice, finished car. I'm confused. Maybe I just haven't been paying enough attention.

 

Probably not
Yes 1 or very few.
Yes
The frame its sitting on is a modified 35-40, and its not up to my standards. I suspect it was done to get about an inch more headroom with the deep channel. Lots of great chassis parts though. So she's getting a freshened original 34 frame with a model A crossmember. I'm going to take some of the 8" channel out. 2" less would be real easy, any more than that and it will take a few days to redo the floor, and taking about 6" of the channel out looks best and is a net 2" channel over stock. It's too damn low and scrapes on everything and the grill is way above the cowl. Maybe a 2" haircut and 331 hemi if I have any hair left. I'm down to the short and curlies now as it is.

 

Wow, you've got a few irons in the fire. The angle of the photo makes it look really good. You're right though, a two inch channel is plenty on those cars, and you can't be riding around with the grill up above the cowl.

I hope you decide not to chop that one.