Finish Work Begins

We decided to start the finish work on the doors before removing the body.  The reason is because our body dolly no longer supports the nose of the car and we thought that might alter the doors alignment.  I started with the passenger door because there is a spot that I suspect needs more than just Bondo.

I was right.  Using a burr grinder I removed old damaged fiberglass all the way down to bright metal.  The fiberglass was feathered back so that the repair would cover a large area.  The larger the area the stronger the repair.

Five layers of fiberglass matte were used to make that repair.  While the fiberglass was curing I started sanding the louver area.   All blemishes and questionable areas were removed by grinding.  In this picture the areas that still have green primer are shallow/low areas that require Bondo. 

The green primer was removed before applying the Bondo.  Bondo is intended to be applied directly over fiberglass and metal, not primer.

After the fiberglass resin and the Bondo cured, the area was block sanded until smooth.  The next time we work in this area it will be for fresh primer.

Ty was able to come over for a couple hours today.  Ty used the same basic technique on the front of the passenger door.  After sanding, the thickest amount of filler material is estimated at only 1/32".

The passenger door is  2/3 done.  As we continue to finish the car we will have less and less primer.  You can gauge our progress by watching the primer disappear.

So how did we do on our first day of finish work?  Ty and I think we did pretty good.  Double click on the picture to judge for yourself.

After cleaning up the mess we took a few minutes to admire the car.  There is shop talk about a white racing stripe.  What do you think?

A Pillar Modification

When this A pillar was repaired over a year ago it was done without the benefit of the drip rail or the door being in place.  Now that the drip rail and door are hung/aligned we can see we don't have a gap between the door and the drip rail on the inside of the car.  An interior molding goes here so the gap must be increased.   

After examining all options we decided to modify the pillar in the area shown.  A gradual taper was needed starting at the mid point of the pillar working down to a 3/8" gap at the bottom.

The drip rail was removed then the pillar was cut using a thin cutting wheel.  The pillar was bent into its new position then prepared for welding.

Using dozens of tack welds the pillar was re-welded into place.

The tack welds were ground smooth then JB Weld was applied to fill in any nooks and crannies.

The drip rail was welded back in place then we check to see how everything fit.  We ended up with a nice even gap between the door and A pillar as viewed from outside the car.

And we have a respectable "3 tongue depressor" gap on the inside.  This will be perfect for that piece of molding.

Body removal should be next.  Stay tuned for that!

More Fitting and Aligning

All right, I wasn't done.  Rivets, rivet holes, thinning fiberglass and general workmanship issues drove me back to the headlight buckets.  I marked the areas that needed attention...

then ground all the areas until the fiberglass was almost paper thin.

Those areas were then filled with fiberglass resin and matting.

After grinding the fiberglass, a thin coat of Bondo was applied...

then the front end was painted with 2 part epoxy primer.

Although I don't have pictures to support his effort, Ty spent several hours fitting the rear bumper area to perfection.

After all that hard work we loaded up the Corvette and took it to a local Friday night car show a few miles down the road.  It was a fun evening and several people stopped to talk about our project.

Oh yeah.  I got tired of people referring to my trailer as a POS so I made some minor modifications and gave it a fresh coat of paint.  I think it turned out great and I doubt Ty and Dennis will bad mouth it any more.

OK, so here's where we are.  There is one more repair that needs to be worked on before we can say "fit" is complete.  There is an interference between the right side A pillar and the passenger door that won't allow a chrome piece to be installed.  This interference can only be corrected by cutting and repositioning the A pillar.  Once this is repaired we can remove the body and start doing "finish" work.  Be forewarned, finish work will be a long process.

While the body is removed we will fix several items on the rolling chassis.  If you double click on the picture you'll see some of the things we need to do.

Check back in a couple weeks to see if the A pillar has been repaired.  Thanks for watching.

Fitting and Aligning Headlight Buckets

Fitting and aligning headlight buckets.  Sounds simple.  Sounds innocent.  Yeah, right...
First you start off with what appears to be a perfectly fine 1963 Corvette front end.

Then you look real hard for any kind of stress fractures that might later show up in the paint job.  You grind back a little paint and you grind back a little fiberglass then you sandwich the area with fresh fiberglass to make it real strong.

Then you keep looking real hard until everything looks suspect then you grind it all back and re-fiberglass everything.

After the fiberglass sets up you clean everything up by grinding and feathering some more.

Headlight bucket inner plate reinforcements are next.  These bolt to the header bar that run left to right just behind the headlights.  After these are bolted in and the support rods are installed its time to apply bonding adhesive.

As we did for the hood, I used a set of dumbbells to match the height of the body and the buckets.  Bonding adhesive was then applied between the body and the header bar and allowed to cure.

I used a bent length of flat bar to get the proper contour as shown.

20 hours later it looks pretty good.  All it needs now is a little primer to pretty it up.

Then you do the exact same thing to the other side.  I am not sure I am done but they're much better.

What the ???  Is that Wilson?

Naw...  It's Ty.  He's working on the interface between the bumper and body.  This too will require grinding, fiberglass and feathering.  More on this in a later edition.

As always, thanks for watching.

Hood Alignment

Ty and I aligned the hood until we had a nice gap along both fenders and the front of the car.  Shims were installed as necessary then all 10 hinge bolts were torqued down tight.

When we rebuilt the front end a year ago the body was off the chassis.  Now that the body is on the chassis, the headlight brackets are installed and the hood is aligned, we can see there are issues. 

The front corners of the hood and the front center of the hood are properly shimmed with the body but the nose sags in between those areas.  Ty and I agreed the mismatch in height was unacceptable and we also agreed the cure would not be Bondo.

It sags between each of the headlight buckets.

We decided to remove the front end support structure in its entirety and start over.  This took hours of work and it was not for the squeamish.

If you double click on this picture you'll see hammers, chisels, a sledge hammer, an air chisel and a variety of other tools of persuasion.  More importantly, the nose support and the headlight bucket supports have been removed.

After grinding away the old bonding adhesive from all the supports and the underbody we started reassembly.  Because bonding adhesive sets up so quickly it was decided to bond the nose support in sections starting with the center.  In this picture the clamps hold the the nose support in position while the center section is being bonded.  The dumbbell is holding the center section flush with the hood.

Bonding adhesive is a catalyst compound that basically glues fiberglass pieces together.  Unlike Bondo, it can not be used as a filler.  Because the hood support is now bonded at the center, access to the rest of the support is limited.  In cases like this I've found that disposable cake decorating bags work great as an applicator.  In this picture the bonding adhesive is mixed, loaded in the bag and ready to be piped into place.  All I have to do is snip the bag and squeeze.  I get about 10 minutes working time before the adhesive starts to set up.  

Once again I use dumbbells to maintain alignment with the hood.  They work great.

I think the results are exceptional.  Compare this picture with the first and judge for yourself.

If you haven't guessed, headlight buckets are next.

Thanks for watching.

Rivet Nuts

Shop time remains limited and will stay that way until October or November.  For those of you that insist I post something every couple weeks or so I offer this nugget of information about a pretty cool tool.

Have you ever tried to tighten a molding, sill plate, chrome trim piece or something similar only to find that the hole for the screw had stripped out?  Options were to either use a bigger screw, goop up the existing hole with something and hope the screw holds, or just push the screw into the hole and hope it stayed there.  Now there's another option and it's called a rivet nut.  Below is a Rivet Nut kit that I bought at Tacoma Screw.  There are other manufactures as well.

It's a pretty simple process.  The stripped hole is drilled out to a size that accommodates the rivet nut you want to use.

5 different sizes came in my kit.  This rivet nut is steel but other materials are also available.

The rivet nut is screwed onto the tool then inserted into the drilled hole.  The tool is squeezed until the backside of the rivet nut mushrooms.  Unlike a pop rivet gun, nothing pops or breaks though. 

The rivet nut ends up flush on the outside...

and it mushrooms on the backside.  Here is an example of one I used on a flat washer. 

This thing works so well I decided to use rivet nuts for the whole upper door molding on the drivers side door.

10 minutes later I had the molding installed and it's very secure.  I'll do the other side as well.

I am sure I'll be using rivet nuts at several locations, especially when we start the interior trim pieces.

As always, thanks for watching.