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, rockers, here.
Episode six, fenders, inner fenders, here.
Episode seven, the doors, found here.
Episode eight, tail light panel, hood, found here.
Episode nine, Hood, trunk, windshield gutter, cowl and firewall, heater box, found here.
Episode ten, Back glass gutter, grill, found here.
Episode eleven, headlight extensions, core support, roof, found here.
Episode twelve, final body prep and reassembly, found here.
Milestone: With this update the car is completely primered, although the roof work is covered in Episode eleven. Sorry for getting out of order, but I posted Episode eleven before I finished the sail panel repairs. So you get to read about the sail panels first.
There's a lot of work yet to do with various little parts, the dash, and the undercarriage. But as far as the body, from here on out it will be the prime and block process to perfect the surfaces.
The Back Glass Gutter
This was a known issue, but the actual extent of the damage was not known. The obvious damage is that the package tray portion is hacked to fit big speakers. It's also obvious that the gutter is bad: The rust, and the suspicious perpendicular cracks, indicating failing Bondo:
I did a little rough straightening on the package tray, which helped quite a bit:
But it's supposed to look like this:
This pic is of a Chevelle piece, I think. I hung it on the car as a reference but I haven't decided how much of it to re-create. I may just add in some metal where it is obviously compromised.
It's going to be a lot of work. So let's get started.
A little bit of exploratory surgery is in order. I cut out the gutter portion, which revealed more damage:
Sigh. There's always more damage.
Clinging to the sorry remnants of the gutter was aluminum duct tape, which some previous person used to keep the Bondo from oozing down through the rust holes. Sigh.
I cut and patched the passenger side of the understructure:
These patches reconnected the floppy corner and stiffened it up nicely. After some grinding this portion it is done. Not my best welding, for sure. I will find that all the welding on the understructure would be difficult. Welding the rust-thinned metal means blowout. Sometimes a pinhole will turn into a nickel-sized repair. And it seems that no matter how much rusty metal you remove it still wants to become a bigger hole.
At this point I was debating how much of the old deck skin I was going to remove, which is why I just cut at the gutter. I could just stop here and use only the gutter portion of the replacement skin. The risk is the patch might be difficult to properly position and align, plus it would mean a long stitch weld, which carries a high risk of warpage on this nearly flat panel.
The second possibility might be to use most of the panel, but keep the original metal that forms the trunk lip. This would also mean a long stitch weld, just in a different place. The big benefit is that I retain the original fit of the trunk lid.
The third choice is to use the whole skin. This way, I don't have to make a long stitch weld at all. But if I use the whole skin I risk needing to modify it along the trunk opening, because it almost certainly will not form a good gap with the trunk.
Deck Panel Understructure
Faced with the decision as to how much of the new panel I'll be using, I realized that no matter my choice I needed to access the rusted understructure from the top. So I decided without deciding. I made a cut about 2 inches forward of the trunk lip for now. This still left me the alternative of putting the seam near the trunk lip, or I could put the seam inside on the trunk weatherstrip area somewhere.
With the skin removed we can see that this will require extensive work:
Oof. It's bad.
A large part of the stamped lower area of the understructure is either heavily pitted or rusted through. The passenger side seems to have suffered the worst. I'm now glad I cut out the deck skin, because these repairs would be very difficult to accomplish from the underside.
Plus, the underside of deck skin itself was a lot more compromised than I expected:
The right edge is the window side where the gutter used to reside, and the top is the passenger side. Had I retained this panel I would have had to cut into it a couple of inches farther to find good metal to weld to.
I started work on the biggest problem:
Not only is the valley floor missing, I need to go up the canyon walls on both sides in order to get to metal solid enough to weld to. The just-removed deck skin supplied me with the metal for the patch. I cut off a piece approximately the right size, measured the width of the valley floor, then scribed some lines on the patch where I wanted to make the bends. The bends are not sharp corners, so I made a series of partial bends in my bench vice, moving the patch in the vice a little and bending some more to create a more gradual corner:
I spent some time shaping the patch to fit, then spot welded it in:
This really firmed up the whole area.
You can see that I cut and bent down the areas that go around the corners (Upper left and upper right of pic). Once the patch was solid enough I was able to hammer these down and form them into place.
I finished the stitch welds and added a couple of other little patches to close up everything:
I found solid metal up the valley sides so I didn't need to chase any blow through for the patch, but there were two places (bottom center) where a couple of pinholes widened up. I was able to weld them shut, but once again I don't think my welding was very good here.
I patched the third hole (above pic, center left), some other little patches, and started grinding:
I'm not sure I'll need to grind any more since this will all be hidden by the deck skin. But I did spend some time smoothing the underside of the panel. Even though that is not easy to see it's still a visible reminder of the fact that work has been done here. So I want it to look good.
Before I go any further, the driver's side of the package tray needs to be secured. I cut a couple clean lines into the package tray and bent up a little strip of metal and welded it in:
A couple of cold welds here. I'll need to fix that. I also added a triangular "gusset" because it seemed like this area didn't have a lot of strength. I didn't take a picture of that, however.
You can also see the extent of the sail panel damage.
I ground all the welds to the point where the skin could be fit without interference, prepped the surface, and painted on some POR15:
Here's a wider view:
You can see the replacement deck skin on the roof.
I'm very happy I could save this panel. It came out pretty good.
Deck Skin
Now it's time to start prepping for installing the new deck skin. First I removed the remnants of the old sail panel flanges from the body, cleaned all the welding surfaces, and then I sprayed the bare metal with weld through primer.
Decision time: The cut. I've been thinking about this ever since I started work on this area. I finally decided that retaining the original trunk edge was most important. So I marked my cut for removing the trunk flange area from the replacement skin:
This is close to where the edge of the panel bends downwards into the weatherstrip area.
I drilled my spot weld holes along the front and the two sides, and test fitted the panel:
You can see in the above pic that my seam is very close to the trunk lip. I'm staying close because it will mean easier bodywork later, and the rigid corner will help to minimize warpage.
At first I was going to cut and butt this seam, but I realized I would not be able to pull out the waste material. So I positioned the skin exactly where I wanted it and vice gripped it into place. I checked and rechecked to make sure. Then I double cut along the seam all the way across, took off the skin, removed the waste, put in the fibrous insulation mat, and refit the skin.
I put in a few spotwelds, plus some plug welds along the front flange, then went underneath and put in all the plug welds on the sail panel flanges. Then I added more spot welds to the seam:
I gradually filled in the welds:
I'm trying really hard to be patient, because this panel is nearly flat and vey susceptible to warping. So I'm putting in widely spaced spot welds and letting it all cool before putting in more.
A quick test fit of the trunk lid:
Of course it should fit because I left the original front edge. But I had to check anyway.
The only remaining obstacle is if the back glass trim will fit. I just received a set of OEM pieces I bought on ebay. I put them together and slipped them into the opening. Perfect fit.
Since I had zero warpage, all that was left to do was grind out the welds, put a thin layer of putty over the weld line, and sand and prime:
I was fearful that I would botch this. It's not an easy repair. But I am very happy with how it turned out. It is the culmination of a lot of hard (and unexpected) work, which is part of the reason why I did not complete the body work in my planned 6 month timeframe.
Sail Panel Rust
Let's look at the passenger sail panel. The first patch to make is the continuation of the pinch weld flange, which curves around the corner and meets the pinch weld flange that connects to the deck panel. That was an easy one.
The second patch fixed the sail panel itself. It has a compound curve at the lower edge, so the patch needed to be shaped in two directions. This involves stretching the metal, but since the curved area is small I managed to do this with just a bit of hammering.
I welded it in:
More ugly welds. Sorry. You can also see that at this point the deck panel is yet to be installed.
Like a doofus I didn't account for the curve of the patch taking away from its length, so it came up short. And there was some thin metal that blew out when I started to weld. So that meant a couple of extra little patches.
5/2/25 Over on the driver's side the hole is bigger so I did the repair in three pieces, not two. Like the passenger side I cut a piece to replace the pinch weld flange and welded it in. I then shaped a patch that curved at the bottom to follow the outline of the window opening:
The third patch is small, but has compound curves in it:
That screw is my handle.
This patch is recessed along the center front to back, and also curves around the corner on its front edge. This means the metal must stretch, which can be done relatively easily with small pieces like this. I finished the welding and ground it out, then put on a little putty to smooth it all out. I don't have pictures of this.
5/5/25 I put on some putty and sanded it out:
Primer:
Yes, it's a little ugly at this point. I'm not prideful, I'll show you the warts. Suspect welds, surface imperfections, yada yada. But this will all smooth out just fine with some more work.
Here's the whole area, completed:
Another successful repair. I breathed a sigh of relief.
The Grill Header
I've been on the lookout for a grill header ever since I bought the car, since it did not come with one:
Frank's had one, but at $325, plus $25 to package and $100 to ship, well, I just couldn't do that. There are aftermarket replacements available, but word has it that they don't fit very well.
So I was happy when this came up on Faceborg marketplace:
It was $300 plus $200 to package and ship, and I got the whole grill assembly. Yes it's GTO, but who's to say I can't run a GTO grill on my Lemans? Hmm?
So the nose has several dents but it's an easy fix. The eyebrow strips are not pitted, the grill meshes are clean, and the parking light housings are good (but not the lenses). The pods are cracked. The bottom brace is good.
All told we're talking maybe $750 value here, based on the cost of good OEM parts. I'm very pleased.
Time to get started. I disassembled it and assessed what I had:
Aside from the dents it's pristine. I stripped the paint and started hammering:
For the most part I just popped out these dents, but the dent on the center right had pushed up the ridge. This has got to be absolutely straight since this is where the hood mates up. It did help to push out the dent, but not enough, so I put it in the vice and started tapping. It straightened out pretty easily.
I added a touch of filler, sanded it out, and primered it:
It came out pretty nice.
Here's the whole assembly installed:
I fitted this to the car in Episode twelve.
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