Passenger Door

As you can see this door has a colorful history. The blue on the face of the door is the original color of the car, Daytona Blue.

There are too many nooks and crannies on the door to clean it up with power tools. I decided to sandblast instead. It took about 45 minutes.

Both the fiberglass and the sheet metal cleaned up very nice.

One of the nice things about sandblasting is that it's aggressive enough to show weak spots caused by rust. If you double click on the photo you can see an area that needs repair. There were a few areas like this, all were minor. None the less, I ground out the damaged areas then welded them back up, and feathered them smooth.

I also found a couple areas of damaged fiberglass. Prior to the repair this hole had been torn out.

A couple broken bolts and a few damaged rivets were removed and replaced.

After the repairs were made the door was sanded then wiped down with a tack cloth.

The garage was heated to 70 degrees then primer was applied. This will dry for at least 24 hours then it will be sanded, blemishes will be corrected, then it gets another couple coats of primer.

This is a very solid door with a very nice primer coat.

The Portland Swap Meet is coming up. Hopefully we will find interesting goodies for the car.

Thanks for watching.

Passender Side B-Pillar Fiberglass Repair

A few weeks ago we repaired the drivers side B-pillar fiberglass.  Now its time to do the passenger side.

This is the panel that needs to be reinstalled.

Before the fiberglass repair was started we had to fix a damaged rivet hole located near the tip of the drip rail shoe.   A copper plate was positioned behind the sheet metal then the area was welded.  The copper plate acted as a mold because weld wire will not stick to it.

The area was ground and shaped then the rivet hole was drilled a little later. 

After aligning the pieces, fiberglass was applied to the backside, allowed to cure, then the front was ground then fiberglassed.  This sandwiches the pieces and makes for a very strong repair.

The repair was feathered and blended and the rivets were put back in place.  It's super strong and it's now ready for primer.

I think we will start working on the door jams next.  We need to install the rubber mouldings so we can confirm a good fit on the drip rails.  Because the only way to install the rubber moldings is to glue them in place, this will be the first place we paint Daytona Blue on the car.  Should be interesting.

Side Exhaust on a 1963 Corvette

I recently purchased an original 1965-67 Corvette side exhaust system on E-bay that included the exhaust pipes, covers, trim pieces, mounting brackets and all the hardware.  This set is exceptionally nice and I'd rate it an 8 out of 10.  These are perfect for our driver.

As you recall I had also purchased a new set of stainless steel reproduction exhaust pipes several months back.  Since I now have an original set of pipes I decided to do a side by side comparison.  The original pipes are in the background.  It's easy to see that the reproductions have a significantly larger exhaust tip than the originals and that tells me the repo's will sound different.  Since the originals are in such nice shape I decided to swap them out and go all original.

I was bummed when I realized a portion of the front wheel wells and all of the side brackets had to be removed in order to get the exhaust system to fit.  After a couple days of deliberating I finally decided to go ahead and do it.

I cut the fiberglass using my Fein Multi-Master tool as seen in the previous picture.  It's a great tool and it worked perfect.

The brackets are heavy gage steel and they are very close to the frame.  I decided to cut these brackets with one of the most diabolical tools I own.  The twin bladed, counter rotating, tungsten tipped Twin-Blade from Sears.  You can see it in the picture below.  This is a scary tool and it demands a ton of respect.  It will cut through anything... and I mean anything.  You turn it on and push it toward whatever you want cut.  No backlash, no jamming, no slowing down.  It took 1 minute to cut these brackets.  I could have cut the frame in half in the same amount of time if I wanted to.  It's a cool tool but very scary.

Done.

The exhaust covers and trim were installed first followed by the exhaust pipes.

The front brackets were sand blasted, painted and riveted in place.

The bolt that holds the exhaust pipe is suppose to go through a hole that I was suppose to drill in the frame.  I decided to weld the bolt to the frame instead.  It worked great and is very strong.  By the way, that's only surface rust in the exhaust pipe.  The pipes are like new.

They sound great and look awesome.  

Yes, I did both sides.

This completes our Era Modified changes.  Modifications include the Torq-Thrust D wheels, side exhaust, and the 67 big block stinger hood.  Not shown is the rear torsion bar.  I like it!