1967 Pontiac Lemans #2 - budget build - Episode ten, Back glass gutter, grill header - updated 3/26/25

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, roof, found here.

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The Back Glass Gutter

This was a known issue, but the actual extent of the damage was not known. You can see below the hacked out package tray as well as the suspicious perpendicular cracks, indicating failing Bondo:

And indeed, that is what I found:

So I started by cutting 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.

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. This 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 having to modify it along the trunk opening, because it almost certainly will not form a good gap with the trunk.

I haven't yet decided.

As far as I can tell no one makes a replacement panel for the understructure, so I am forced to fix it. Given the amount of rust I wish I didn't have to. This will require extensive work. The package tray portion is hacked to fit big speakers, the understructure of the deck panel is rusted through in several places, plus the front corners of the understructure are disconnected from the package tray portion. Though I have the replacement deck panel skin (which includes the gutter), the rest of it will need to be rebuilt from scratch.

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. 

So I started cutting and patching the passenger side:

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 this 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 becomes a bigger hole. 

I turned to the sail panel. The first patch to make is the continuation of the vertical pinch weld flange, which curves around the corner and meets the spot weld flange that connects to the deck filler panel. That was an easy one.

The second patch fixes 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.

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 means a couple of extra little patches.

Still 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 from 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 old panel removed, I have access to the more pressing problem:

Oof. It's bad.

The whole depressed area of the understructure is either pitted or rusted through. The passenger side seems to have suffered the worst. I'm 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 half is the passenger side. Had I retained this panel I would have had to cut into it a couple of inches to find good metal to weld to. 

I started work on the biggest problem:

I need to go up the canyon walls on both sides in order to get to metal solid enough to weld to. Teh just-removed deck skin supplied the metal for the patch. I cut off a piece approximately the right size for a patch, measured the width of the valley floor and 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. Once the patch was solid enough I was able to hammer these 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 the grinding process:

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. Even though that is not easy to see, the underside is 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 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:

Now it's time to start prepping for installing the new skin. First I removed the remnants of the old sail panel flanges, then cleaned all the welding surfaces, and then I sprayed the bare metal with weld through primer. 

Decision time: The cut. I've been worrying 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:

This is right at the intersection of the bend downwards into the weatherstrip area. 

I drilled my spot weld holes along the front and the two sides, and test fitted the panel:

There were several modifications I needed to make. The two front corners did not sit flat on the spot weld flange, so I trimmed part of the corner's foldovers, which were contacting the package tray. In addition, the side pinch weld flanges were too wide in a couple of spots, interfering with the skin's proper placement.

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 the waste material out. 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, removed the skin, removed the waste, 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:

I was fearful that I would botch this because 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 why I'm now resigned to the fact that I will not complete the body work in my planned 6 month timeframe.

The only remaining obstacle is if the trim pieces will fit. They didn't come with the car, so I'll need to find some.

More to follow.

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 one 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.

I'll add to this post as I complete more work.