Mountain Man Trails: 1967 Pontiac Lemans #2 - budget build - Episode seven

October 5th, 2024:

October 6th, 2024:

Episode one, introduction, here.

Episode two, disassembly and assessment, here.

Episode three, rough body work, here.

Episode four, quarters, here.

Episode five, toe panel and rocker, here.

Episode six, fenders, inner fenders, here.

Episode seven, the doors, found here.

Episode eight, tail light panel, found here.

Episode nine - Hood, windshield gutter, back glass gutter

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It's now time to turn to the doors. I've actually been a hammering fool already, especially regarding the driver's quarter and the passenger fender, both of which needed extensive work.

The third problem area is the doors.

Passenger Door

The spare parts, the (excessive) Bondo, the radiused rear wheel openings, and the (awful) black paint, this all points to the car being someone's project. It's easy for me to look at all of this as being an amateur's hack job, but someone actually did a lot of work.

Further, the car was important enough to the prior owner that he purchased a replacement door skin. The work was not done correctly, but this is no surprise. The skin crimped over remnants of the old door skin, and it was not welded.

So I started by prying up the flange until I could slide out the door shell.

The shell is generally pretty nice:

The two lower corners are not rusted through, but they are pretty thin:

Turns out I didn't need to do anything other than wire brush it and weld up a single pin hole.

The skin seemed savable:

Before I put the skin back on I need to find out if I had all the parts to install the window and the wing window. With the door skin off it's a lot easier to lay everything in place:

There are a lot of parts for these assemblies. Various rubber stops, screws, brackets, and rollers make up a pretty intricate mechanism. As you can see, I have all the major parts. But I don't have the special adjuster screws for the wing window:

Or the special nuts and screws for the wing window:

Or the special nuts and screws for the window channel:

It took some searching, but I was happy to finally find all 14 pieces on ebay. But they weren't cheap. The three groups of items pictured above totaled $74.00 with shipping. Ouch. I count myself lucky, though, because some other sellers were selling each nut and screw individually for between $10 and $20 PER PIECE. omg.

Ok, back to the door. As mentioned, the skin was installed right over the top of the remnants of the original door skin, so I started by peeling back the folded over edge and removing the remnants of the original skin:

I gave everything a good wirebrushing and slipped the skin back on. I did test fit #1 on the car, in order to see where the horizontal body lines needed to be positioned. Here I've got a problem. The top of the shell where the belt molding attaches ought to be level with the quarter, but doing that puts the body line about 1/4 inch above the quarter panel body line.

I'm thinking that permanently installing the skin will help, since its inclination is to be arched too much when not attached to the shell. Opening up the skin and bringing it closer to the flange will make it "longer," and maybe lower its body line, but I don't know if that will be enough.

But I got to looking at the quarter and I notice that as I sighted down the bodyline from the rear, the last few inches just before the door gap drops down too quickly. Turns out there's a slightly flattened area right above the body line near the jamb which changed the shape of the body, essentially pushing the bodyline down.

So I'll try to manipulate the metal around that area and see if I can reshape the bodyline. That will help with the door skin alignment as well.

In the meantime, I gave the mounting surfaces of the door shell a coat of POR15:

I wandered off and hammered on the passenger fender for a couple hours until the POR15 dried, then came back and slipped the skin back into position. From test fit #1 I determined that I wanted the skin to be positioned as low as possible on the shell, so with a hammer and a wood block I tapped along the top until it would move no more. I vicegripped the corners and put a ratchet strap around the center to hold the skin tight to the flange. With a hammer and dolly I eased the flange back over in a few key spots.

But before I hammered the whole flange I needed to do test fit #2. It wasn't terrible, so I removed the door and hammered the flange down all the way around. I took a straightedge to to bottom, and did some hammering and dollying until it was straight:

The two lower corners tended to curve every which way, so I spent a lot of time fiddling with them. Once I was satisfied I put in a few tack welds and did test fit #3. I wasn't happy with the fit of the lower back corner. So I put a piece of 2x4 in the door jamb above the door handle and pushed on the lower left corner to add some twist to the door.

That helped, but not enough. So I pulled off the door and cut the spotwelds. I braced the door flat on the floor, inside up, so the hinge end couldn't move. I stacked a couple of 2x4s under the lower corner (door latch side) and pushed down on the upper left corner.

While holding the door in this position I put in several spotwelds and released my hold. The door held its position. I added a bunch more tack welds and reinstalled the door.

Here's how it looks:

That's better, but the skin will require some bodywork because unfolding and refolding the flange caused some damage. Plus, the shape of the skin was faulty in a couple of places. The reverse curves at all four corners are not correct.

Also, the lower lip does not follow the contour of the rocker. So I took a mallet and a 2x4 block to the lower edge, beating it into shape. Now it's starting to fit like it should:

The gap's a little too tight along the bottom. The gap spreads goes from narrow to wider from the latch side to the hinge side. But the door can't come up because of the body line, so I'll need to grind a little off of the lower lip and reweld it. Also, you can see a hole in the rocker. I'll weld that up later.

Here's a test assembly of the whole passenger side:

Now we have arrived at the point where I abandoned hope. You can't see it, but the area below and just forward of the door handle is bowed inwards from top to bottom. I discovered this when I was working on the driver's door and it had the same exact problem (see below). There is supposed to be a slight curve in the door's shape (the "coke bottle" styling), but not like this.

After all this work, sweat, and hammering, I cried "uncle." I can't fix the door. And for the same reason, I can't fix the driver's door.

But, I will go ahead and chronicle the work I did on the driver's door.

Driver's door

The condition of the door caused me to wonder if I could save it. New panels are expensive, but my labor is free to me. So I'm financially motivated to repair things whenever possible.

This damage turned out to be much more severe than I thought:

As mentioned in Episode three, I did some push work on this door with a 2x4 and got most of the major damage out of the panel:

This left various wrinkles and creases, so I decided to strip the paint off the door and start working the remaining damage:

Here I discovered that the door had been previously "repaired" with a slide hammer. So the damage I had popped out was damage done to the damage.

I welded closed the slide hammer holes. Looks like a satellite tracking path across North America, doesn't it?

You can also see that my paint stripping methods leave something to be desired. Sanding doesn't work, the paint just turns to goop. A flap wheel gets clogged up immediately. It seems the wire brush does the best, but even then it leaves quite a bit behind.

What you see in the picture above is AFTER all the wire brushing and a coat of paint remover. Stubborn stuff, to be sure. So I took it off the car and put it on my folding stand in order to more easily work it. I finally got it to bare metal:

Stripping the door revealed more damage:

Sigh. More work. Undissuaded at this point, I started filling these holes. But fixing rust like this is more than filling the holes with new metal. This rust is from the inside out, so the interior of the door will eventually need to be dealt with.

I started by drilling out the holes:

Oh! I looked underneath. More rust on the inner door shell. This was my view when I sat down to weld in the first little circle. Now I'm really wondering if the amount of work I need to put into this door is worth it, or if I should buy a replacement door.

I pressed on. I cut little circles of sheetmetal and welded them in:

I spent another day bumping out the dents around North America. Access to the inside is pretty limited by the interior structure of the door, so I used a wide pry bar as a slapper. There was just enough room to slip my arm in and do the slapping. Barely.

The door also has other damage and dents, particularly around the door handle area and along the front edge. I was able to get those in order relatively easily, so I was starting to feel pretty good about the door... But now I have arrived at the last straw.

I put a straight edge on it:

As mentioned above, there is supposed to be a slight curve in the panel, but nowhere near this much. I've already got a lot of time invested in this door. Well, I thought about it. I decided if I kept on working I could make it look good enough. It would end up fitting the car and would look right, but really, it will not be as good as it needs to be... probably about 3/4 of the door would be covered in filler.

Entertaining a little ray of hope, I kept working. I put the door on a heavy rubber floor mat, skin down, and started beating on it with a mallet and a 2x4. Hard. I kept at it for quite some time, checking it every once in a while with a straight edge. The shape started to change. I finally got the surface to within about a 1/16 - 1/8 inch of where it was supposed to be. Since I don't have the skills to metal finish the door, that's my standard for it. Then I prepped the surface and put on some filler:

I'm not liking this. Not one bit. Now, I should say that this represents maybe 15% of the quart can of filler, but it's going to take probably three applications to build it up far enough. That's just too much for me. I've got to get another door.

Actually, two doors. ***Sigh****

Replacement Doors

Frank's Pontiac Parts is a lifesaver when it comes to original parts. They had a couple of pretty nice original doors, which they shipped to me last week. Total cost for the two: $$740.00. Reproduction door shells are around $600 each so this is a win for me. Especially considering that reproduction parts often don't fit very well.

Being original doors, these fit great:

As you see them here, the doors are fresh out of the boxes. I put the hinges on them and adjusted them until they were positioned correctly on the door. I futzed with them for a couple of hours. I can't imagine the factory workers putting these doors on in just a couple of minutes as the car went down the assembly line.

They are very nice, not damaged or twisted. Not perfect, of course. Miscellaneous dings as well rust in the lower corners need to be fixed.

Replacement Driver's Door

Here's the rusty corners:

I started by cutting out the affected areas:

Using the old piece as a pattern I cut the patches for both corners:

You can see I also painted the interior with POR15.

I welded in the patches:

It's important to note that these are are not continuous welds. After spotting them in I repeatedly checked the flatness with a straightedge. I then started filling the welding, adding about 4-5 little "stitches" of weld at a time, quenching with water in between. I've used air to quench in the past, but water worked better for me because I could actually see where the metal was hot. As a result I had little to no heat warpage.

Ground smooth:

Some minor hammering was needed, but overall it was pretty flat. I'm pleased.

Lastly, I took the wire wheel to the incredibly ugly metalflake green paint:

Underneath was a surprisingly appealing metallic silver original paint. It's a mystery to me why anyone would prefer that green to the silver.

I did some minor bodywork and sanded the snot out of the door, then laid some primer:

There are some scratches and other flaws, but this makes me very happy.

Replacement Passenger Door

Though the process was largely the same, I'll include explanation of some unique details.

One thing to note is that these corners were rust damaged around the flange, so I needed to replace more metal than I did on the driver door. First I needed to fix the location of the corner. The bottom edge is straight, but the vertical front edge has a significant angle change and is not 90 degrees.

I put a ruler horizontally on the corner and measured 12 inches (any point would do, but the ruler happened to be 12 inches long). I then measured up four inches and made another mark. You can see my mark in the second picture below.

So when I cut the patch I left an extra half inch or so to fold over. I fine tuned the fit of the patch, then used my measured marks to establish the location of the corner and made a mark there. I then drew a line at a 45 in order to create a notch in the fold-over, then cut off the corner.

Over to the vice. I clamped the patch on the marks and hammered it into a 90, then turned the piece to do the other foldover. Now that I have two 90s I need to complete the foldover but still be able to slip the patch on the door. So I used another piece of scrap and hammered the flange down over it:

This is the completed patch:

You can see I welded three perforations as well.

I wirebrushed and POR15d everything I could reach. The next thing to do was lightly tap the patch into place over the flange. Careful measuring and grinding yielded a surprisingly nice fit. I don't have a pic of the hinge corner, but I do of the jamb corner: