October 5th, 2024:
October 6th, 2024:
Episode one, introduction, here.
Episode two, disassembly and assessment, here.
Episode three, rough body work, here.
Episode four, rust repair, installment one, here.
Episode five, rust repair, installment two, here.
Episode six, rust repair, installment three, here.
Episode seven, the doors, found here.
10/17/24 While waiting for my patch panels to arrive I did some hammer work on the major body damage. This episode covers
- Pounding out driver quarter
- Pounding out driver door
- Pounding out the center area of the tail light panel
- Making two core supports one
- Pounding out and shaping passenger fender
I'll be adding to this episode as I progress.
Shrinking Disc
I took delivery of this shrinking disc from wolfes metal fabrication:
He's gotten some good reviews, and has posted a couple of youtube videos demonstrating the product. It looks promising, and I certainly have enough bodywork on this car to justify the $60 it cost for the kit.
I've been experimenting with less than stellar results. The videos talk about doing a lot of hammering and dollying in between shrinking sessions, which I have been learning to do. But lately I've discovered the 5 inch disk I own cannot just swung back and forth across an entire panel. It will shrink an area about the size of a silver dollar, so that has shifted my approach to a more incremental strategy.
Driver Quarter
Pushing out this damage is necessary for the driver quarter because the damage needs to be straightened before the patch panel can be welded in:
Not only is it pushed in, there's a horizontal crease below it (out of sight). There was also a cave-in in front of the driver's rear wheel. And of course the radiused wheel lip. And as I discovered later, the area around the tail light was rusted out (this is covered in episode six). Frankly, had I known I might have just popped for the whole replacement skin.
First I worked from inside the trunk with a 2x4 lever and a pry bar to work out the pushed-in area. At the same time I relieved the stress in the panel by tapping around the outside of the dent on the other side. Here's the result:
You can just see the lower body area that still has some damage, but the patch panel will replace this area.
I did some sanding:
The paint turned to goop as I sanded with a flap disk, so I swapped to a wire wheel for the results you see. This was a lot of work.
Driver Door
I also spent some time on the driver door, because I needed to know if I could fix it or if I had to buy a replacement:
This was a harder repair because of the lack of access from the inside. I put the 2x4 to work again. Plus my pry bar, which is a fairly flat piece of steel, makes a good panel slapper.
Again, some pretty good success:
That rag is so I won't bang the Camaro with the door.
I go into a lot more detail in Episode seven. The damage was a lot more severe than it originally appeared, to the point where I wondered if I could even save the door.
Tail Light Panel
I also spent some time on the center of taillight panel:
You can see that the area is pushed up as well as in. First I got the bumper off (never an easy job). That revealed the damage was more extensive than I thought. Plus the bumper itself was trash.
The pinch weld was folded over and the hit was delivered to the strongest part of the panel, where the factory stamping was folded, rounded, and connected to the trunk pan. Ugh. Plus the damage carried upward into the main part of the panel.
I started from inside the trunk, working the ridge down and out with a piece of 3/16" plate and a big hammer. I spent 20 minutes trying to move it. I had some success, and it moved, but not enough:
Some prior "bodyman" thought he could pull out this area with a slide hammer. Har.
So it's certainly a lot better than it was, but the pinch weld is still pushed in about a quarter inch. I might try to improvise a pulling rig and see what happens. More to come.
Core Support
The core support that was on the car was rusted completely through on the driver's side:
But the car came with another one:
I thought that all this one needed was for the dent to be pounded out on the close-out panel (lower right), but it turned out that it was twisted and bent, and some of the spotwelds had let loose. Plus, the steel is pretty thick, which makes moving it a chore.
I flopped it over so the grill side was down and started working the big dent on the close-out panel. I put one end of the previously-mentioned piece of 3/16" plate on top of the dent, into the recess, and the other end on the floor. I put all my strength into the hits, and the metal started to move. I actually got it to move quite a bit:
But not enough. (In this picture I turned it upside done.) After pulling, twisting, hammering, and beating until my arm hurt, I decided that the two core supports needed to be pulled apart and combined. The core support on the car has a really straight close out panel, and the spare core support has a good lower structure. Bingo.
First I drilled out the spot welds and removed the good close out panel:
Then I did the same on the spare lower core support:
I put the two together, lined it all up, and rewelded it together. Here's what it looks like in the car:
Problem solved.
Part of the reason for doing all of this now is because I needed to see if my fenders were going to fit. And they do:
Passenger Fender
You can see above that I had already began the rough body work on the passenger fender. Let's look at that now.
Here's the before:
It's promising, but it turns out the headlight area had damage I hadn't noticed before. It took a hit there and the area was pushed back and bulged out. I've been working that area too:
It's a little hard to see, but you can just make out the remnants of a vertical ridge line to the left of the headlight lip. This was a pushed up area, which I've been working back down. The lip of the headlight still needs to go forward. You can also see that the flange where the headlight bezel mounts is folded back.
So I put a stack of 2x6s on the floor and turned the fender up on its nose:
I hammered on various chisels, pry bars, blunt screwdrivers, etc, to push the front lip down (forward), checking my progress by fitting the headlight bezel:
This is close. Considering how misshapen this area was, the fit is very nearly a miracle. I added some weld to key areas and dressed out the welds:
Very pleased with this.
I got the front edge of the fender pretty close and gave it a thin coat of filler:
Sanded it out flat and primered it:
I was worried if this fender could be saved. I've got a lot of work yet to do, but I think I can make it look good.
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