Mountain Man Trails: 1967 Pontiac Lemans #2 - budget build - Episode eleven, core support, roof, headlight extensions and miscellaneous little parts ***updated 5/11/25

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, core support, roof, found here.

Episode twelve, final body prep and reassembly, found here.

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There are a hundred little details to get done to reach my goal of a paint-ready car. Originally it was to be six months, which at this writing is only days away.

I'm not going to make it.

Here's my punch list as of 3/28/25:

Many of these are the big tasks. Within these are smaller tasks, plus there's a hundred other things that need attention, like door latch and window riser mechanisms, little brackets, nuts and bolts, chasing threads, polishing the trim pieces, and the bumper brackets.

So I will soldier on.

This post will also document some more of the rust and body repair.

Core Support

The core support on the car was rusted completely through on the driver's side:

But the car came with a spare:

I thought that all this one needed was for the dent to be pounded out on the close-out panel (lower right), but it turned out that it was twisted and bent, and some of the spotwelds had let loose. Plus, the steel is pretty thick, which makes moving it a chore.

I flopped it over so the grill side was down and started working the big dent on the close-out panel. I put one end of the previously-mentioned piece of 3/16" plate on top of the dent, into the recess, and the other end on the floor. I put all my strength into the hits, and the metal started to move. I actually got it to move quite a bit:

But not enough. (In this picture I turned it upside done.) After pulling, twisting, hammering, and beating until my arm hurt, I decided that the two core supports needed to be pulled apart and combined into one. The core support on the car has a really straight close out panel, and the spare core support has a good lower structure. Bingo.

First I drilled out the spot welds and removed the good close out panel:

Then I did the same on the good lower core support:

I put the two together and rewelded it together. Here's what it looks like in the car:

5/11/25 The time has come to clean this up and fix some problems. If you look at the left edge of the panel where it touches the fender, you might be able to see that the closeout part of the panel droops toward the nose. The upper panel is somewhat floppy and the whole thing is twisty because a few spot welds have let go. And there is some damage on the lower horizontal brace, as well as some other damage.

So I took it off the car and worked out the dents. I then braced the panel on a stand and began twisting. I got the panel looking pretty straight, so I welded the broken spot welds, ground them smooth, and wire brushed and sanded the whole panel.

Then POR15:

Part of the reason for doing all of this is because I needed to see if my fenders, cowl, and hood were going to fit. We'll get to that in Episode 12.

The Roof

4/17/25 - I have been putting off the bodywork on this last of the major panels. This is one of those major repairs that has a lot of potential to go wrong. It seems the roof has been jumped on or something, then pushed back up, because there were ridges of damage all around the perimeter. I drew arched sharpie lines where the ridges were.

Passenger side:

Driver's side:

Plus, there appears to have been a roof antenna, because there are several holes drilled in the back center area:

I'm worried. This is a large panel with a lot of damage. It isn't that it's deformed, crushed, or rusted out, it's that these seemingly minor creases can cause a lot of collateral damage which can be a nightmare to make look right.

The first thing to do is strip the paint:

The car was repainted black at some point which wire brushed off relatively easily, but the original champagne color is is much tougher, and also goopy.

I kept at it for a couple of hours, then I sanded it out with 60 grit:

That original paint just doesn't want to come off.

Time for some hammer and dolly work:

Though I had already begun hammering at this point, you can still see some damage. But this went very well, which I didn't expect. Maybe it's because I was so used to having no backside access up to now, or maybe I'm getting better at my hammer and dolly work. Or maybe, it's some of the techniques I've learned from youtubers.

One of those techniques I learned from Carter's Auto Restyling is to add opposing pressure. This means to firmly push up on the dolly on the low area underside while hammering off dolly on the topside ridge of damage. This opposing pressure is important to create a sort of tension in the metal, which the hammering relieves because the metal wants to return to its original shape. The opposing pressure is its incentive to move. So that means I'm not hammering the metal down so much as I'm persuading the metal to come back home.

I was sort of surprised at how easy it was to fix this damage.

Big Update

4/29/25 Much like I did with the driver's quarter panel in Episode four, I went in the shop this morning with steely resolve. My goal was to get the roof bodywork done and in primer by the end of the day. Git 'er dun. So I finished up the hammer and dolly work, which continued to yield good, even amazing results. At the beginning I had been concerned that I'd have to cover the whole roof with a layer of Bondo in order to get all the waves and flaws to disappear, but now it's looking more and more like the center of the roof was undamaged and won't need any work at all. The damage was isolated to the perimeter and didn't carry into the center of the panel.

But I did need to put a surprisingly thin layer of Bondo nearly all the way around the perimeter. It seems odd that the damage was isolated to the edges with the center was undamaged. But this made it easier to repair, not only because I didn't need to reach under/over the panel to work on the center, but also because the curve of the outer edges of the roof are pretty steep, which meant that oil canning wasn't a problem.

After a single thin layer of Bondo I sanded my tush off and sprayed some primer:

Praise the Lord! This is a miracle. I couldn't have hoped for better. There are still lots of surface flaws, but the shape is perfect. I accomplished my goal to get the roof in primer by the end of the day, and the results were very satisfying. One of my biggest worries became one of my best outcomes.

Headlight Extensions and Miscellaneous Little Parts

The car didn't come with headlight extensions, so I bought a pair on ebay. Of course it's a risk to buy based on photos, but I needed them and they are pretty hard to find. Turns out, one was good but the other was rusty:

I wirebrushed it to reveal the full extent of the damage:

It ended up that I replaced part of two bolt tabs, a third tab completely, the above corner area, plus a few rust pinholes. It was way too much work for the size of the panel.

Here's a couple of pics of those repairs:

Sometimes it's not worth trying to put in a tiny patch on a tiny piece. That's why I just cut off the tab and made a new one.

After the welds were ground down I put on a little putty, sanded it smooth, and primered it:

This came out really good.

5/11/25 I found out that the mounting holes don't agree with the fender mounting holes. Maybe a 66 to 67 issue again? It's not a major issue, a couple of holes just need to be redrilled.

There's a lot of other little parts that need attention as well, like the glove box door, the cowl grill, and the lower grill support. So I started sanding: