Door Repair

I've been out of commission for a couple of years and the Hot Rod has just had to sit.  I had an ankle injury that I thought was just a sprain so I toughed it out and after a year saw a doctor.  The result was surgery where they performed a ligament transplant from a cadaver donor (thank you unknown person) because I had torn a ligament, walked on it for a year and ground it away.  A 1/2 inch bone spur had grown in it's place, which was removed.  I had just recovered when I tore the meniscus in my knee which required surgery and rehab but I'm back at it.

I was pretty excited until I stripped the doors.

The problem of the unique body of the Lemans once again reared its ugly head.  Some body parts aren't readily available or even available at all, because most people restoring a Lemans will swap a few body parts and make a GTO out of it.  I'm not going that route so it means repair instead of replace.

Rust inside and out.  Story of my life with this project.  This bottom front corner of the driver side door was all but gone.  I immediately patched the top you see in the picture to maintain structural shape.  Then continued stripping.

Lots of tiny patches and fill but it's solid.

Rust along the bottom edge.

Patched and repaired

The passenger side door was worse

Matching the beauty lines took a few tries

But I eventually got it

Covered all the repairs with a short strand fiberglass body filler that will seal any pinholes so moisture doesn't get behind my body filler.  Ready to start the body work.

Driver Side Front Fender

 I took a little time off from the project to learn and practice some welding and bodywork skills.  Mostly because, this front fender was the biggest repair challenge so far.  I've looked far and wide for replacement fenders for a ' 70 Lemans.  There are none.  Basically, there's no front end body replacement products for this car, in this year, including the grill, fenders, or bumper.  There are plenty of parts to make a GTO clone, but that's not the goal.  I was lucky enough to find a guy selling an original front bumper which is rare since that's where most of the collisions took place.  Ya, I grabbed it.

So, here was the problem...

There had been a small collision on the corner of the driver side front bumper.  It had pushed the bumper up into the fender.  Now you can see why I grabbed the bumper when I found it.  I'm not sure I could straighten out the old one.

You can really see the damage with the bumper removed.

 Not having any fancy (expensive) body work equipment, I made do with what I had; a tow hook off an old Jeep, a ratcheting come-along and an iron pry bar wedged into the basement stairwell.

  

 The Hospital Rig held long enough for me to pull and pound out the majority of the kink.  Then, I took the fender off before I pulled the engine.  It has been sitting in the garage for the last couple of years.

I then began the work of pounding out the rest of the dent.

I worked the shape and contour until I was pretty sure I would only need about 1/16th of an inch of filler.  It was really close.

I had to do some welding on the back where the bracing had bent away and been damaged, so I started with the short strand fiberglass infused filler to prevent moisture from coming through any pin holes I missed.

After sanding down the short strand, the body filler went on.

The final filler result.

After finishing the body work, the fender got a coat of glazing putty.

It amazes me how the tiny little imperfections stand out with glazing putty.  All these little imperfections had to have come from the factory because there was no body work on that part of the car, just factory paint.  In the picture it appears to be pretty major.  In reality those white glazing putty spots are about as thick as a coat of interior latex paint.

Then the fender got its first coat of epoxy primer.  I know it's going to be a beast to scuff that stuff up when I shoot the final paint, but until then (which will be a while) I've stopped the rust.

As an extra rust conversion and prevention, I coated the inside of both fenders with POR-15.  I love that stuff.  I've been using it for a few years now and if the directions are followed it converts the rust and the coating dries, almost like a ceramic.  I just wish it could be exposed to UV rays without a top coat.

Passenger Side Front Fender

I've decided that stripping paint off a project car is like opening a Christmas Present from your Grandmother.  You really want to open it and see what it is, but you know it's going to be an ugly sweater.  Sure enough.  I started stripping paint and found about 1/2" of Bondo on the passenger side fender.  It had to have been there for 20 or so years.  It was surprising that it held that long since it was so thick, but it was pretty solid.

So, off comes the paint

And here's what I found in my "Christmas Present from Grandma"

Who drives that far through road tar?

Bumper rub hole.

The worst part was that the dent was right on the body like that goes up the side of the LeMans.  It was obvious they didn't remove the fender to fix it at the body shop.  They did the best they could hammering it out and then filled it in.

I went to the fiberglass upper grill piece and made a template to bolt onto the fender so I would know where to rough in the shape and the body line.

It worked pretty good.  If you look closely in this photo you can see the work I had to put into it.  Because the body shop was beating on it while it was on the car, the angle forced them to get the body line about a half of an inch too low.  In the picture you can see a dark line where the peak used to be before I worked it up to the crown mark on my template.  Of course, it's still going to need body filler, but probably about 3/8" less than it had.

Then came the rust removal and patching.

This hole seemed to have been rubbed in the fender by the bumper.  So I ground it out and gave it a good soaking with phosphoric acid to convert the rust I couldn't get.

Then I cut a patch.

Welded it in.

 Then covered it with a waterproof short strand fiberglass enhanced body filler.  It will keep moisture or even humidity from getting through possible pinholes in the weld, which other body filler would soak up and turn to rust.  It's just rough sanded for now.  It will get worked more when I do the finish work.

The rusted out spot.

There was a rusted out hole behind the lower chrome (which I will NOT be putting back on).  There were also a couple of holes one from the chrome and the other from an emblem...I think.

I removed the rust with a cutting wheel.  I later wished I had cut out a rectangle instead of a triangle.  I ended up burning through the two points and it took quite a bit of work to fill them in and make it look good.

I scraped, brushed and chiseled away as much rust as I could see and then I soaked the brace plate with phosphoric acid and converted as much rust as possible.  Then followed up with a rust converting paint.  I still plan to work the back side of the fender, catalyze it with acid and paint it

with POR-15.  I love that stuff

I then fit a patch.

Welded it in place and welded the two bracket holes closed.

Hit the welds with a grinder.

Prepped it with a 36 grit and a pre-paint cleaner.

Then covered it with the short strand fiberglass enhanced filler to keep the humidity on the outside.

I finished the patch off with filler, covered the fender in glazing putty, then finished the sanding.

Lastly, a coat of epoxy primer.  In the picture you can see how the filler absorbed the epoxy and sealed.

Body Work

Life got in the way so, I haven't posted for a while.  I've set the goal to paint and roll by next Spring.  So, it's time to start the body work.  I decided to start with the front wheel wells.  I know, I know.  You're saying "Didn't you know you can buy those?".  Well, I've learned that after market parts are never as good as originals.  They are always thinner and never seem to fit perfect.  More than that though, I'm cheap and since these wheel wells won't really be seen by anybody that looks at my car (I don't plan to enter any car shows) this is a good place to practice my welding and sheet metal skills.

Ya, they look pretty rough.  The only areas that aren't rusted are the areas covered by road tar.  It looks like the prior owner passed a little too close to a road crew at some point.

Most of the bolt holes had been wobbled out and some had cracked the metal.  So, after stripping all the paint, rust and road tar off, I proceeded to weld patches on the trouble spots.

Clamp

Weld

Grind

Cut a new hole

Same process on the other wheel well

I used the POR-15 process to cover everything.  I have used it on other projects and if you follow the directions it works great and leaves a ceramic kind of coating.  The one problem is that if the item is exposed to UV rays it will develop a white powder kind of coating.  That shouldn't be a problem with these wheel wells.

The major problem I had to tackle was an access hole the previous owner had cut into the passenger side wheel well to access a bad blower motor.  I guess that was easier than removing the fender.  I decided to put a removable patch in there since it was much easier than trying to butt weld a patch in and who knows?  I may need in there again someday.

Since this part is completely covered by the fender, I'm not too worried about what the back side looks like.  I may put a silicon gasket in there someday, but for now, I have no plans to drive in the rain or even when there's the possibility of rain.

And they ended up looking like this.  Now on to the fenders, the doors, the roof the rear quarters, the.....