1967 Pontiac Lemans budget build - Episode ten, frame repair and prep, body drop - updated 02/05/24

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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So just to bring the reader up to speed, we've gotten a little out of order. In the previous episode I noted the body had been dropped back on the frame in order to finalize the floor pan positioning and passenger rocker so as to weld them in. Which means today's episode has already happened. 

I couldn't do the final welding on the underside until the main welding was done on top. So that means the body had to come off again, both for the welding as well as the undercoat. I'll cover that as well. 

That will be body drop number two, this time for good. 

As I mentioned in another episode, the rear crossmember had been yanked backwards and twisted, probably by a tow hook. Plus it was rusty enough to justify buying a new crossmember. Here's the old and the new:

I had to straighten the old crossmember enough to get at the mounting bolts. So even though it looks kinda ok in this pic it is really wacked out. 

With the bumper brackets removed and the old crossmember out of the way we can see the driver's rear frame rail had cancer:

I marked out the cut line and fired up the grinder, which yielded this result:

I used the cut out piece as my pattern and used a piece of the old rear crossmember as patch material. It's about the same thickness as the replacement crossmember. 

I cut out the patch, did a little tweaking to make it fit, stitch welded it in, and ground it flat:

This job was was done before I pulled the body into the driveway:

It amazes me how unsubstantial the frame is. Aside from the front and rear suspension crossmembers, the only thing holding the frame together is the (missing) transmission crossmember and the body itself. 

You'll see later that several frame mount holes have rusted into larger holes. I had already fixed the drivers side trunk mount when I did the trunk panel replacement: 

To do this repair I cut about three crescent-shaped pieces of metal donated by an old DirectTV mounting bracket I had saved from the no longer used dish on the side of my house. The metal was just the right thickness.

I shaped these crescent pieces to fit the diameter of the hole (the replacement rubber mounts are made to fit a 1 1/2" hole so I made the new hole just slightly larger than this). I couldn't assume that the metal had rusted evenly or that the holes were still centered so I took a bunch of measurements to locate the correct center points of the holes and welded in the pieces. 

A little grinding and shaping and I'm done: 

This is the passenger side trunk mount, looking back at it standing by the rear wheel. 

I repaired the other mount holes the same way. 

Here's the driver's side firewall mounts welded up:

And POR15'd:

Passenger side:

This pic illustrates how big the frame hole had gotten on the left mount compared to what a finished hole looks like on the right. The one on the left was large enough for the rubber mount to fall through.

The driver's rear corner mount required the most work. I had to cut a chunk of the frame out because there was so little metal left:

Here's the patch I fashioned:

Here's the piece welded in:

And here's it is POR15'd:

In total there were seven out of fourteen body mount holes to repair. It was tedious work, and took me an entire Saturday. 

Now it's time to look at the frame itself. I found a diagram with all the important information:

I took a few measurements and the diagonals were also good. Th frame sat the same height all the way around, except for the rear frame extensions. The end of passenger side rail was higher by two inches, which was probably caused by the rear end collision it had suffered. We mentioned that in episode five. I'm not too worried, though, because this area is barely structural since the coil spring rear suspension is all forward of this. It should move relatively easily.

I started by creating a sort of frame straightener:

The idea here was to jack up on the frame just behind the rear axle at the point where the boxed area ends. With the end of the rail immobilized with a post under the garage door header, the jack will raise the portion forward of the immobilized end. 

But as I was jacking the frame rail began rotating under the pressure. So I used a piece of angle iron to maintain the spacing between the rails. I measured the distance between the rear body mounts on the car (39 1/2 inches center-to-center), marked the distance on the angle iron, and welded one end to the top of the driver's side rail. 

The passenger side needed to roll back over to vertical and also widen a couple of inches. So I lagged a piece of 2x6 to to the outside corner of my shop and screwed a large hook into the edge of the block so that it protruded past the corner:

I connected a come-along to the hook and to the top lip of the passenger frame rail. Don't have pics, sorry.

I also cut a a piece of 2x4 to fit horizontally between the side jamb of the garage door and the passenger frame rail to keep the frame from moving sideways. I jacked the come-along until the frame rail started to roll back, continuing until the mark on the temporary brace lined up with the center of the body mount hole. I tacked a weld on it. 

So now that the frame rails were secured in the correct position I resumed jacking on the frame rail. Once the height matched side to side I welded in the new crossmember and cut out the angle iron:

Job done. 

You can also see in the above pic I had already POR15'd part of the frame. I'm not building a show car so I didn't want to do a whole lot of detailing on the frame, but at the same time I couldn't leave it this way:

It wasn't as bad as it looks. Turns out it's pretty solid except for the previously mentioned rust around some of the frame mount holes. 

My friend Marcus was kind enough to come over with an offer to help, so I put him to work wire brushing the frame:

It was a job I was happy not to do. 

Now the POR15:

You can see I still have more to paint in this pic, which I finished up later. And in this pic the rear crossmember has yet to be installed.

I took the front suspension out:

In this pic the body has already been dropped. 

Not much of the front suspension will be re-used, except perhaps the a-arms and the steering center link. I plan to run disc brakes which means new spindles. The sagging springs were "fixed" with rubber spacers so they're no good. New tie rods and the idler arm are needed, as well as ball joints if I don't upgrade to tubular a-arms.

Now it's time to prep for body drop number one. At this point the floor panel was still only loosely attached to the body. 

The only part of the of the floor of the car I did not replace was the section above the rear axle and the part where the tail light panel attaches. The area above the rear axle was the last place that needed to be cleaned up, but the saw horse holding up the back of the car was occupying that space. I needed to find another way to hold up the body.

Here's the rig I created:

This is the second iteration of a body lifting mechanism, an improvement over the first one but still not the best.

I positioned the lower 4x4 on the forward flat part of the new trunk pan. I looped a chain on each end and over another 4x4 hooked to my cherry picker. Once I found the balance point I jacked it up and pulled out the saw horse.

I put a couple of jack stands on the floor pan and left the rig under tension so I could crawl under and not feel like it was going to fall on me.

When I crawled under to clean up the area I found cancer around the two body mounts. Those body mounts have cage nuts contained in the cross brace above the axle. You might remember that they were solid donuts with no bolt holes. Previously I planned to just reuse them but now I had the opportunity to rejuvenate the cage nuts. So I got a double bonus: Fix the rust and use the cage nuts with bolts through new rubber mounts. 

I cut out a square around the bolt holes and the cage nuts just dropped out. So I cleaned them up, tapped them, and POR15'd everything I could reach. The cages were still good up inside the cross brace, so I cut a patch, put the cage nuts in, and welded it up. After grinding the welds and doing the wire brushing of the rest of the area, I POR15'd everything:

The only thing I'm not happy with is the front edge of the replacement trunk panel, seen in the top left in the above pic. The panels came with an offset flange which is the way I installed it. So it sort of sticks out like a sore thumb when you look at it under the car. But since the area is pretty much hidden by the axle I decided to just put some seam sealer across it for now. But, I may change my my later and cut and butt it, but right now I'm not in the mood.

Now I'm ready for the first body drop. 

Another reason for creating the rig in the above pic was to suspend the body without getting in the way of sliding in the frame. You might remember from episode eight I lifted the body by putting 4x4s under it and holding it up with jackstands: 

This was the first iteration, and it was just too perilous for me. So now the front is suspended by my chain hoist, and the rear with the rig shown above. This made the way clear for the frame to make a side approach.

I had already put a cart under the frame's front crossmember so for the rear I took off the tires and put it on my floor jack. This allowed me to roll the frame sideways and put it just high enough to clear the legs of the cherry picker, but low enough to clear the body.

I maneuvered the frame in under the car and began to set it down:

 

I put the rubber frame mounts on the frame mount holes and lined up the front holes with the body. 

Down she came:

Wow. looks sort of like a car again. Only this time with a lot less rust.

This was still not a great method. I came up with a third iteration, a better way, when I re-raised the body. I'll describe that a little later.

We have now arrived at the moment of truth. Did the body settle into position as I hoped? With all that rusted structure removed and replaced this was potentially dicey. Here's what I needed:

• all the body mount holes to line up with the frame mount holes - check
• the body to settle evenly on every body mount rubber - check
• the floorboards to come tight to the flange on each side - check
• the doors to line up and operate properly - check
• the trunk lid to remain straight in the opening - check

We began this episode with repairing and straightening the frame, so the fact that the body settled properly onto all the rubber mounts (especially the four located in the trunk area) is monumental. This is a big load off my mind.  

The other big deal was the doors. And they lined up. In fact, once I removed the temporary braces across the door openings things actually improved.

This was all very difficult for me. Some of the repairs I had never done before. At any point a misaligned panel, or the body being twisted, or it being not square, or if it got dropped, and the whole thing could have become a pile of scrap. I had this in the back of my mind ever since the body came off the frame. 

What a relief. It couldn't have gone better. 

This is a milestone. My goal when I began 4/1/23 was to do all the structural rust repair and get the body back on the frame in 6 months. This happened on 10/28/23, seven months later. The extra time was probably wrapped up in the trunk install, which was much more involved than I than I expected.

Ok, celebration time is over. I covered the finalizing of the floor pan in the previous episode, so we're jumping back to where the body has to come off again. The underside needs finish welding, grinding, sanding, and undercoating.

My friend Taylor was indispensable:

As mentioned, I've tried a couple of different methods to lift and drop the body, but neither of them had been satisfactory. Taylor came up with method number three, the best one by far.

First, we put a 2x6 across the trunk opening:

We ratchet strapped each end to the trunk braces to keep it from slipping forward. We also attached a couple of scraps of 2x6s screwed to each end to spread out the load a little. The single attachment point means we could pivot the front of the car sideways.

We used the cherry picker for the front, approaching the body from the side:

You can see that we simply moved the body sideways to clear frame, and out it came. This was almost too easy, by far the best of the methods I tried. We rolled the frame out into the driveway and rolled the cherry picker back straight. We dropped the front of the body onto a sawhorse, leveled it, and viola, a frameless body:

Just to ensure a little stability we drove a few screws between the various layers of wood and added a couple of chains:

Time to prep the underside. First I detached the waste metal from the cut and butt of the rear seam of the floor pan. I did a little grinding to make it flat:

This pic doesn't show it, but at each end of this weld there is a flange that turns down to intersect with the wheel house. I welded this flange on the new panel to the existing flange on the car. I did this on both sides and ground them smooth. Then I put in a few plug welds to connect the new panel's flange to the wheelhouse.

Meanwhile Taylor was sanding the underside:

You can also see that I took my new spotwelder to the rocker flange. I couldn't do this until now because the frame was in the way.

I took the whole day Thursday 2/1/24 finishing up the prep work for undercoating. This included grinding more welds and seam sealing key areas. 

Also, I had purchased a quart of POR15 tie coat primer years ago for another project. As mentioned in another episode, nothing will stick to POR15, well, except for their tie coat primer. So once I was satisfied with all my grinding I brushed the primer on all the POR15. 

That needed 24 hours to dry. 

Now it's Saturday and time to mask:

After some research I settled on this stuff:

I already had an undercoating gun from a previous project and the Valugard bottle just screwed right on it. This stuff was really easy to spray and covered evenly with only one coat. It took two quarts to cover the entire floor pan and the wheelhouses:

The trunk area came out great, which is a real relief considering how much work it was to install it:

Let's get a closer look at the wheelhouse repairs. Passenger front:

Passenger rear:

Driver front:

Driver rear:

These photos were taken while things were still wet so the details of the repair are more obvious. Once it attains a dull sheen the flaws in my repairs won't be so visible. I'm not too bothered about a little bit of repair evidence though because it's all metal and it's not covered with an inch of goo. 

Now it's time for the second and final body drop. I again called my friend Taylor to assist. We used the exact same method to drop the body as we did to lift it, see above. 

After putting all the rubber donuts in place we carefully and evenly dropped it down, eyeballing the alignment of the holes to the donuts. I was at the chain host in the rear, and my end touched first. We were pretty close. I just needed to jerk the frame sideways about an inch and bingo, we were dead on. 

The bolt kit I bought had four longer bolts. Taylor came down the rest of the way and I loosely put in the two rear bolts while he did the same with the four longer ones in front. 

Now we have arrived that the next Big Moment: Will the rest of the bolts line up? We worked from front to back. Taylor got his bolts in the passenger side front seat and back seat. On my side the frame was wide by about 1/4", so we moved it with a come along. I decided to omit the bolts above the rear axle since the factory did the same.

That leaves the last two bolts in the forward trunk mounts. The driver's side went in without too much trouble. The passenger side frame rail was inward 3/8" and forward 1/4". You might remember that this was the frame rail I straightened. The trunk pan was installed before the frame was straightened... mistake.

We put a come along diagonally on the frame and jacked it into position, then put a bottle jack horizontally between the frame rails (we put a 2x4 cut to the right length to fill in the rest of the space) and gave it a couple of pumps. With the hole aligned with Taylor looking like a contortionist as he held the bottle jack while simultaneously putting another pull on the come along, I threaded in the last bolt.

The Big Moment came and went. All the bolts are in. 

I torqued them down to 40 ft lbs and breathed a sigh of relief. This was a critical moment, where the bolts had to align with their holes. And they pretty much did. The AMD floor pan lived up to its reputation and was a flawless fit, even the frame mounting locations. The trunk pan, being a multi-piece kit, did not have this issue since it all needed to be assembled in place. Changing the frame rail after the fitting of the pieces moved the frame mounting point.

Now I needed to see how the fenders would fit. The donuts had the right amount of squish now, so the radiator core support could now be mocked up to the right height. I put back all the washers/spacers that were there when I disassembled the car. I could start there and change it if necessary. 

I put two shims on the cowl mount and a thick and a thin in the door jamb mount, and two on the lower mount, which made the alignment to the window A pillar perfect, and the door gap was right on:

The lower fender patch panel also aligns well with the body line. 

Here's the side view:

Just to remind the reader, here's what the start point was:

And the passenger side:

The replacement door front lip is dented in and I still need to still hammer it out. That's why the gap seems to disappear behind the lip of the fender.

Here's the before:

Quite a transformation. It still needed a ton of body work, but at least it doesn't look like a derelict anymore.

The next episode will be the repair of the radiator core support, and also a few miscellaneous rust repairs found in the upper body.