Hi guys looking for some help/advice here so I went a bit nuts over a '57 Chev I saw on craigslist the car was gutted and the price was ludicrous but I couldn't stop myself once the ball got rolling I even borrowed money to buy it.....I wasn't having a problem with any of pretty major issues it has until I realized the entire roof panel INSIDE and out was severely rusted! on the inside the pits are so deep there are pinholes here and there the worst part is the boxed inner frame running along the edges is completely covered in surface rust and virtually inaccessible ..... :-( aside from selling it to another unsuspecting ****er or cutting it off and dipping it or welding a better one on ( these suggestion would be beyond my financial means and skill level) does anyone have any thoughts/ ideas? p.s. my well meaning wife bought me a '57 date code 4 manifold in a fresh coat of orange paint for christmas what a sweetheart! but I was smiling through my tears when I realized the paint was applied over a thick coat of rust and on the inside too! the thing must have sat outside for years....is this thing junk? even if I sand blasted it I still wouldn't be able to clean out the runners etc
I would suggest a mol***es bath for the manifold. That would be cheap, and it should remove the rust inside & out.
How's the rest of the body? if it's good, you could consider a roof transplant ( I can't tell you how many rust buckets I owned with perfect roofs). If the rest is bad, I don't know what to tell ya'. As for the manifold, a good soaking in Evapo-Rust or a mol***es solution will probably solve your problems.
You bought yourself some work! Not unusual for BC cars,,saw lots of rot buckets in Kelowna last year. Many were severely rotted below the skin such as you have found. That will keep you busy for a season or two.
****....Rust = both brown - with limited skills & budget plus, already owing $ on it no easy answers - likely more rust that is not shown in pics - forget about the intake manifold - hopefully can find someone that needs parts - Aw ****!!
just get a new roof - any 55-57 chevy or pontiac sedan will do - even a four door (may need a little pillar surgery) you can not use (the much rarer) hardtop (no post) roofs.......still tons of rotted up to the door handles parts cars around
mol***es? um will sweet & lo work? lol .....thanks simplestone I will research it.....tubman I would say over all considering its a canadian car the rust is moderate but there is a little everywhere main problem being where the roof skin meets the roof substructure how the F do I clean or derust in there? probably even be difficult to point a sand blasting gun in there on the angle needed
If you can't find a suitable source for Mol***es and need an off-the shelf solution, I've had great luck with Evaporust. You'll want a snug container though, because it's about $22/gal on a good day. With either method, get the part as clean as you can first. For the roof, It depends on what you want the car to be, how bad it really is, and what you have the means to do. What I would do in you shoes is remove as much as you can manually, everything you can get to, as best you possibly can. Then spray some EW rust converter (when it is in a DRY and sheltered environment) and prime it with complimentary product (an epoxy primer/sealer would be my bet) to seal it as soon as the directions indicate you can do so (I've learned this the hard way).
The top is repairable,but it would be a job for a experienced sheet metal guy. find a parts car for a better top. HRP
Yeah, I'm thinking something along the lines of bracing from the top, cutting out all the internal structure so there are no nooks and crannies, cleaning the top, then fabricating and welding in new structure as being a possible glimpse of that process.
-jalopy there are no parts on it what you see is what I got and i'm not going to s**** ANY 50+ year old cars PERIOD i'll fix bubbles in the paint for decades before i'd do that - ididntdoit first thing I thought of too but then i'd have to buy an entire car ....a canadian car...the headliners hold moisture chances are i'd run into the exact same issue....so what ship another car or roof from somewhere in the states? .....throwing more money at it is no solution neither is dicing up other cars that people could build thats just compounding the issue but there is a solution i'm sure....maybe i could spray the mol***es in there?
you have a project that will take time I would start looking for a roof If that is all you have for the car other cars will have to give up parts to fix it The roof and gl*** off of a bottom rotted 4 door that has already been striped for other parts would be a good sacrafice to save a fixable 2 door
spraying mol***es won't work, that kind of stuff needs to remain wet, in a bath, to work. If it dries out it's just dried sugar you'll have to wash out.
Why not make a padded Carson top designed after a convertible top with convertible rear side windows, but make it smooth, no ribs and a small back window. Maybe use your top as a pattern.
I long for a world where steel doesn't rust, welding doesn't warp metal, speed bumps don't exist, and women aren't all crazy. In the absence of that, there are threads on the HAMB about replacing entire roofs.. A big job, but possible. And Evaporust is the ****. As for keeping it in a snug container, I screwed up. and my big bucket of it with a cardboard cover.... evaporated, leaving Evapo sludge in the bottom. I filled it back up with tap water, and it came back to life, and worked fine. Might not work next time, but it saved me that $25 a gallon cost.
-Thanks HRP but how does one become one of those? by doing it.... -Patmanta a little bit daunting but perhaps there is A) slicing the entire roof off and hoping another one lines up b) cut the entire skin off clean and repair the substructure weld skin back on but jeezus its not like i'm restoring a numbers matching fuelie car easiest solution is to save myself some money and forget about having a headliner and wear a hat inside! rofl still i'm sure someone else has dealt with this and has the answer just have to find him
All that roof stuff is out there new for sedans and hardtops, google is your friend. I wish it were that easy for my nomad!
thanks i'll look into evaporust is it thin enough to flow into the extremely tight spaces and how would I get the left overs out after the solution evaporates? or can you paint on it?
Don't think Evaporust would work for your roof, but it was mentioned for your intake. You submerge your pieces in it, then rinse off after it does it's magic. Haven't tried, but have heard of covering large items with rags and plastic, keeping it wet on parts too big to submerge, and then rinsing it off. I'm going to try that on large sheetmetal, but don't know how you could do your roof with it.
thanks man it is an awesome age we live in you can build a whole brand spanking new 57 chev, camaro, mustang all the power to those with the bucks... my google search turned this up too but going this way I'd be done just in time to turn in my drivers license and sit in a wheelchair staring into space....besides my kids enjoy eating too much lol
i'm intrigued by the "mol***es" and or electrolysis maybe I could construct a long shallow "pool" rotisserie the car upside down in it then hook up some electrodes? how long does it take and what does the metal look like afterward? does it need to be treated with something after or can you just paint? - thanks
Having done a 4 door sedan to 2 door sedan conversion, I can confirm that the roof skins are identical. A 4 door donor roof would work if you can find one. Or, start by drilling out the spot welds for the overlay panel that holds up the headliner rods on either side. That will give you line-of-sight to the area where the inner roof skin meets the tops of the window/door frame. Then you can sandblast it clean. If it doesn't disintegrate into swiss cheeze, just blast those overlays clean on both sides, primer them inside and out (including the hidden seam areas you revealed) and weld them back on. A no-****ing-around hard worker could do that in 2 or 3 days and it'd be sealed up better than it was factory. A few pinholes in the outer skin could be easily welded back up, pinholes in the inner panels wouldn't hurt much if they're minor, they could be left. Once it's clean and sealed, you're fine. The picture you see here is the inside of the roof with that overlay panel removed, this was part of the process for the 2 door conversion but it's what you'll have to do to get access to the inside seams of the roof. It's not that hard.
Thanks squablow this is the kind of real deal hot rod solution that only the folks on the Hamb have done..... labor intensive but old school in that we're trying to FIX cars not throw em in the gutter and go get another!
[QUOTE="throw em in the gutter and go get another!"[/QUOTE] Nice NWA reference.....grew up on that stuff
I found some better pictures, here you can see better what I had to cut out to get access to the seams where you have moisture trapped and rust. The reason my overlay panel doesn't have holes that correspond to the spot weld holes on the roof is because that piece is from a donor car, you could just find the spot welds and drill all the way through, then once it's all cleaned up just line the holes back up and weld the holes closed. You can also see that on the upper seam of spot welds I drilled them out but on the bottom I just cut straight across with a cutting wheel, you could cut those spot welds out too but that seam is up inside the window frame and I don't know if that would benefit you, easier just to cut across. The pics only show right above the quarter windows. In the areas above the doors. rear window gl***, and windshield, once you get that headliner gripper rail unscrewed and dig out the old tack strips you should have access for sandblasting just fine.
Hey Patmanta I know you've been experimenting with electrolysis how has that been going? if i bead blast the paint off the manifold do you think it would clean the inside?
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