Passenger Side Door

Click images to enlarge

Now that the Driver door is finished, we moved on to the Passenger side door. This side is in much better shape. With the exception of a few small dents, the sheetmetal is in great shape. No Rust! The door had been previously repainted. There was a skim coat of body filler on the entire door, primer, and a couple of layers of paint on top of that.

Matt got busy removing all of old paint, primer, and body filler. We use a few different tools for paint removal, in this pic he is an 8" 80 grit sanding disc on slow speed on a variable speed sander / buffer.

Once we removed all of the materials, it exposed 6 wholes that were filled with body filler. This is where trim was previously attached. Matt punched out some little patch disc's and got prepped them for welding.

The old man knocked out the welding. (pro fab skills on display!)

Hot!


Nice flat Rosette weld, with good penetration

All welds completed


Matt took the lead on grinding down the welds. He didn't volunteer to do this. He received some strong encouragement that motivated him to complete the job.

Weld ground down, it's now ready for a small amount of filler to finish it off.

Driver Side Door

Now that we have the rear of the car all completely free of rust, we are working our way toward the front of the car. So next we are working on the Doors. This is the driver side door. The outer skin was in bad shape. It had taken a pretty big hit in an accident and had a fairly large crease on the body line. We decided to put a new skin on the door. Unfortunately the camera was acting up while we were doing this, so we don't have all the detailed pictures.

Click images to enlarge

Here is the door frame with the skin removed.

here is the inside of the skin after it was removed.

Inner door frame.

We missed a few steps in the process due to the camera, but here is inner door frame fully restored, all new hardware inside. New regulator, latch, handles, rollers, etc. It opens and closes as good as new. We also lined the new door skin with Second Skin's Damplifier sound deadner.

Here is the driver door on the car with the new skin.

We need to do some final tweaking to get the gaps fitting better, but it's pretty decent overall.

Rear Valance Work

Matt and I never said we were Chip Foose or Rad Rides by Troy! We have had our first major setback on the car. We replaced both full quarter panels, new rear frame rails, new crossmember, tail light panel. With all this being replaced, and some of it with repro sheetmetal, we had a situation where the rear valance didn't fit right to each quarter panel.

Never fret, we will fill the gap with sheetmetal and mold/blend the seam and make it disappear.

Click images to enlarge

Here you can see the gap between the rear valance and quarter panel.

We made a little template, and Matt cut out a piece of sheetmetal to fill the gap, here it is tacked in place.

Patch fully welded and smoothed.

The weld was covered with a think layer of water proof fiberglass reinforced body filler. It's made by Dyna-Glass.

The Dyna-glass was block sanded, and a couple of skim coats of Evercoat Rage Extreme filler were applied and block sanded. We spot primed the areas with PPG Epoxy primer.

Trunk Pans and Tail light panel complete

After the frame rails were repaired, we put in the new cross member and trunk pans. The trunk pan installation was probably the easiest things we have done on the car to date. Piece of Cake!

Click images to enlarge

Here you can see the driver side trunk pan welded in, gas tank installed.

Closeup of the Rosette Weld technique (plug weld).

Here is a shot of both pans in, before we put welded the tail light panel in.

Most of the sheetmetal we have put on the car has been reproduction pieces stamped in China. It's cheap, but usually doesnt fit well. Since the tail light panel is a prominent part of the rear of the car, we spent the extra $$$ and got the stamping from original Ford tooling.

And here is a shot of the rear of the car with quarter extensions and decklid isntalled with the new tail light panel... it's coming along slowly but surely...

Rear Frame Rails Replaced

Matt and I expected to have alot of work to do on the rear part of the car, but honestly thought it was in better shape than the rest. We started peeling back the layers of paint, fiberglass matt, and filler where someone had repaired some major rust improperly. We ended up pulling the full trunk pans out, and replacing the last 18" or so of frame rails on both sides. We also put in new trunk pans, tail light panel, rear valance, and replaced both quarter panels.

Click to enlarge pics

Some Rust!

This was hiding underneath layers of fiberglass matt, fiber filler, and paint. Ouch!

So we welded in some bracing to keep things in tact and cut out all the rust.

The frame rails are galvanized from the factory, so they were actually in decent shape, but the inner supports for the spring shackles and the tie downs, were uncoated mild steel, and as you can see they were rusted pretty bad. So we decided to replace the last 18" or so.

Frame rail section cutout.

Here is the piece we cutout compared to the new replacement section.

We cut the new piece the same length, and clamped it in... making sure to keep it square and level. Don't want the car going down the road crucked (if that is even a word).

Matt welded in the new piece... his welding skills are coming along.

And here it is all painted... We did both sides the same way.