1967 Pontiac Lemans budget build - Episode four, door rust repair - updated 02/24/24

Episode one, introduction.

Episode two, trunk panel install part one.

Episode three, trunk panel install part two.

Episode four, door rust repair.

Episode five, tail light panel and rear crossmember.

Episode six, passenger quarter panel.

Episode seven, driver's quarter panel.

Episode eight, floor pan and rockers, part one.

Episode nine, floor pan and rockers, part two.

Episode ten, frame repair and prep, body drop.

Episode eleven, radiator core support and miscellaneous rust repair.

Episode twelve, trunk repair and more miscellaneous rust repair.

Episode thirteen, fender and inner fender repair.

Episode fourteen, panel prep and block and prime.

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Having got the trunk pan pretty much in order, I turned to repairing the rust in the doors. The driver's side door was savable but the passenger side was too damaged by collisions:

So I bought a pretty decent OEM passenger door from Frank's. Let's start with the rust repair of the front inside corner.

The reason I'm doing these Stage Two repairs now is because the doors need to be perfectly positioned with good gaps in order to allow the proper installation of the quarter panels and rockers. 

The new passenger door was in relatively good condition, except for some rust through in a couple spots:

I originally considered the vestigial door hinge to be a bonus I could sell since I already had both hinges from the original door. It turned out, however, that there was a reason the hinge was left on the door: Stuck bolts. Which means I couldn't adjust the door in the jamb.

You can see above that Frank's got two of the three hinge bolts out a little ways. So I broke out the Dremel with a tiny cutting disk and started going to town on the lower bolt, which was the one most accessible. I managed to get the head cut off, then I drilled out the center bolt. 

The highest bolt, tucked under a protrusion in the hinge casting, would be the tough one I thought. But I realized that since the other two bolts were freed up and this one was part way backed out I could simply spin the hinge around. This allowed me to cut all the way around the bolt. 

Having freed up the hinge I was left with a hole and two stubs in the door's captured plate. The plate has the three threaded bolt holes to hold the hinge to the door and is held in place inside the door shell by a sheetmetal retaining cage. It is a loose fit to allow for door adjustment.

Having no desire to try to drill out the two stubs while the plate was in the door, I made a cut through the retaining cage and slipped out the plate. It looked like this:

I thought about drilling and retapping the threads, but that's a lot of work. So I drilled out the holes to a size larger than the bolt shaft and welded three nuts on the back side. I was concerned that the nuts would interfere with the cage, so I put a tiny grinding stone on the Dremel and opened up the relief holes on the cage. 

I also rounded the nuts with my angle grinder. The plate slipped right back in to the cage, and there was a free range of motion for door adjustment. I was happy, so I welded closed the cage. The photo at the very bottom of this post affords a good view of the reinstalled hinge. Indistinguishable from stock.

Now it's time to tackle the rust. 30 seconds of wire brushing opened up more rust than was apparent before:

I wire brushed the curved underside as well, and it was toast with hardly anything left. I cut out the remnants then carefully cut out the surface that holds the weatherstrip (above). You can also see that I painted on POR 15 as far inside the door as I could reach.

This repair would be very difficult to build out of one or two pieces because of the compound curves. It's easier to make the patch out of several simple pieces and simulate the effect of a compound shape. That's why I carefully cut out the rusty piece. It would be my pattern. 

So I cut the new piece, number one of four, and I stitch welded it in:

The screw you see is my handle, which I tacked to the patch. This makes it much easier to maneuver the piece into the right position. I left the piece long on the inside, which won't matter since eventually it will be hidden.

Now it's time to shape piece number two:

When I put in the first piece I shaped and formed it as I welded so it was no longer a flat plane. So the second piece required a half-moon shape cut out of the bottom in order to conform to the first piece, as well as a twist. In addition, you can see there is an angled plane that come in from above and dies out as it rounds the corner. That is the reason the curved piece is cut the way it is.

So I stitch-welded it in. I wanted some extra bead at the junction point with the first piece so I could shape the weld to match the slight round over that the original panel has. Here's how it came out:

You can also see I ground the first piece's weld, and the shape looks really nice. 

I then cut the corner piece, which the door panel will cover (piece three), and stitch welded it in. That left only the little triangle, piece number four. Here's the completed repair:

And lastly, the installed door:

There were several shallow dents on the door. The dent close to the door handle was right on the character line, so it had secondary damage that pushed out the surface above the character line. Thankfully I had just enough access from the inside to tap out the dent to the ridge, which allowed the secondary damage to be fixed.

The front lip was pushed in  and there was a dent just above it below the character line. There were a couple of other dings as well as a longer one in the lower center of the door. 

So I got to work:

As I was working I noticed more rust. Both lower corners were rusted out! 

I cut out the rear corner rust:

It looks bad but it turned out to be really solid under the layer of crud. I wire brushed it and painted on some POR15 everywhere I could reach, and cut a patch:

Welded and ground:

I moved on to the front corner:

Welded and ground out:

Installed, and some glazing putty:

Three rusted corners and seven dents later, it's done:

I deleted the trim holes by welding in little pieces of sheet metal. I had to come up with a way to hold the patches in order to shape them, so I found a piece of baling wire and touched a weld to a larger piece of sheet metal. I then could hold the patch while I cut it out and shaped it. Plus it allowed me to hold the patch into position to weld it.

I ground out the welds and put on a thin layer of glazing putty:

Now for the driver door rust repair:

It's a pretty good door gap, but the lower rear corner was rusted through. First the cut:

I cut carefully through the skin only so as not to damage the flange. The foldover part of the skin was pretty much rusted away so it was easy to pry the waste metal off. 

Unfortunately, the flange was also rusty:

More work. I started by cutting off the rusty part of the flanges:

In this pic you can see the measurements written on the door, including the distance from the point of the flange to the floor. I thought these would be helpful, but I still had to make sure everything was good visually. 

I cut some patches and welded them in:

You can see I also recreated the Oval Hole of Unknown Purpose. I discovered later this hole is for a trim bolt for the deluxe trim option on the bottom edge of the doors. The door skin for this option would be made with mounting holes along the lower edge, and the last hole in the skin would be positioned over this hole in the flange so a nut could be used.  

I ground the welds smooth:

I painted everything I could reach with POR15 as usual:

Now it's time to patch the skin:

I used the cutout piece as a pattern. I reinstalled the door before welding in the patch because the door has a horizontal character line as well as a recessed contour below this line. The only way to get the patch positioned right is to have the door on the the car to make sure these contours are correct as well as the gaps. 

In the above pic I had already started the foldover on the long edge. I formed it by first bending a 90 with the bench vice, then hammering it over a piece of scrap sheetmetal. This makes the foldover easy to slip onto the door flange. Otherwise I would have to beat on it to roll it over after installing the patch on the door. 

But in the end none of this mattered because somehow I didn't line up the piece properly. The lower edge of the patch wasn't straight to the rest of the door. I didn't notice this until after everything was welded solid.

Holding a straightedge on the lower lip of the door and extending it over the patch, I found the corner was a full 1/8" too low. Ugh. So I scratched the correct line with an awl and cut off the excess. This now meant the foldover no longer looked right, so I cut that off as well and made a new one.

Further complicating the problem was additional rust on another part of the factory foldover on the lower lip, which was just to the left (front) of my repair. The blue mark in the below pic shows where the rust ends. Sorry, I didn't take any pics of this repair.

I cut this rust off, cleaned up the flange, and welded in a little patch. 

Here's the completed repair of the main rust, taken before I fixed the adjacent section of the foldover:

And another test fit:

Here's the finished out back side:

Believe it or not, this is all metal finished with just a thin layer of glazing putty.

And now for a couple of thin layers of filler on the front side:

After working the area a bit I put a tape line on the door's character line:

Then a sharpie line:

The reason for this is when I block sand and prime I will know where to sand to. This keeps the line straight as I sand to the line from both sides.

The front edge of the door suffered some collision damage, so I pounded out the back side of the lip until the contour was right. The way I determined this was to lay a flexible metal straightedge flat on the panel, bending it until it touched the door on top and bottom. The straightedge will bend to the curve of the door, but if there's any low areas light will show under the straightedge.

 I put on a couple of thin layers of filler, sanding between coats:

The red you see is the glazing putty. I usually put on or two coats of body filler, sanding between coats, then finish with a layer or two of putty. It's much easier to sand, plus it doesn't need an activator. It also sands out really nice and smooth and fills in the flaws of the body filler.

And everything lines up:

The door needs some adjustment, but otherwise, fantastic.

This completes the door repairs. Next episode, installing the new tail light panel.