Project Franken Riviera -64 Riviera T-type- - Page 3 - Lateral-g Forums

CTX-SLPR · #21 05-05-2018, 03:16 PM

Continued working on the floor of the car, mainly on the passengers side. Since I paid a fair bit of money for it and there are no good repos, I've very carefully taken apart the passengers side donor section of floor by drilling out the spot welds and the like. This has left me with a lot of good donor sheet metal but it's been time consuming. I finally got the replacement section of inner rocker in the car and spliced in the new section of under floor bracing but when I was cleaning up the welds under the car I managed to get a metal grinder spark/frag in my eye past my safety goggles. I've been recovering from that for almost a week now and it was not fun having them dig a splinter out of my eye with a hypodermic needle!

Passengers side under floor structure is 90% done. Need to redo the last spot welds on the underside of the bracing and patch a small section of the second brace that rusted out. Then it's weld the seat mount plate on and then the floor over it. I'm guessing I've got another 4-5hrs left on the passengers side depending on how long it take to stitch weld the floor back in to keep it from warping. Then it's seat mounts and final paint to wrap that up.

The drivers side will be easier since I know what I'm doing better and have already taken the donor apart, but harder since I have no drivers donor so I'll be fabbing the floor out of sections of the passenger side and flat sheet. Have to get done by the end of the month so I can take the car to see my students from the auto maintenance class I taught on the last day of school.

CTX-SLPR · #22 05-23-2018, 07:54 PM

FINALLY got the passengers floor all rebuilt, primed, and welded in! Need to grind the welds down and apply seam sealer to finish that side out till I go back and build the seat mounts.

In other news I got a hold of a large section of drivers side floor plan, it has a rust hole in it but it has most of the more complex shapes so I don't have try to fab those up from 16Ga sheet.

CTX-SLPR · #23 07-31-2018, 07:02 PM

Well things have been well and truly stalled since Memorial day when I hit my thumb with a hammer trying to chisel out the rusty drivers side inner rocker and broke it. What didn't help is that right when it was healing up enough to work with again I was out of town for 3 weeks on a business trip so nothing's been happening.

I'm hoping tonight to start cleaning up the spot weld locations from the existing under floor bits so I can put the new seat mount in.

CTX-SLPR · #24 08-04-2018, 02:39 PM

Now what I've been upto this week:

CTX-SLPR · #25 10-09-2018, 07:51 PM

Been on the road a lot and while I did get the rest of the passengers side welded in, I'm not happy with it so I'll be taking it back out and redoing the structural bits of the welding.

Drivers side is mostly in with welds I'm happy with. Just need to wrap up the seat mount for that side's CL seat and I can start grinding it smooth.

Sigh... at least my wife has been patient and I've been cleaning up my shed slowly so I can move my work out there and have a chance to work without disturbing her sleep as our bedroom is right next to the garage and she's a light sleeper.

rustomatic · #26 10-09-2018, 08:17 PM

If at any point you're concerned that someone will become aware of the repairs in your floorpan, or their authenticity/provenance, just go to a car show. Watch how nobody will stress his/her beer belly nearly enough to examine the underside of your car. Hack away. Just make it as awesome as you need it in the best way you know how.

At what point in history did "experts" decide that automobile assembly welds needed to be more visually appealing than ____ (insert favorite proper noun here)? The more you take one of these old cars apart, especially with a useful tool like an air chisel, you realize that nearly anything a half-competent person would do with a MIG welder, a modicum of skill, and some nice, clean steel would be better . . .

CTX-SLPR · #27 10-10-2018, 06:29 AM

I agree with you, I can deal with ugly using a grinder and hiding it under the carpet but this is structurally insufficient.

One of the seat mounts where I thought I had good penetration on the drivers side popped a weld when I used it to form a missing piece of the floor pan. The passengers side I'm far more suspicious of to begin with so it's getting new welds. The spot welds floor to bracing might be good but I've got to get them out of the way to get to the seat mounts again.

CTX-SLPR · #28 01-29-2019, 07:54 PM

So I ended up fixing the problems on the passengers side by using a combo of the spot weld cutter and a step drill to reweld the seat mounts back down to the underfloor bracing. Follow that up with lots of grinding and then welding in the thin spots and gaps and I think I've got that side done. Just need to finish up the toeboard area and it's complete.
The divers side needs some more grinding as my disk started throwing chunks and I didn't have any new ones. This weekend I should be able to finish it up and maybe get started on the seat mount brackets.

After I'm done with the welding and grinding I'll take a rust/paint eater wheel to the whole area then prep and paint it with Eastwood rust encapsulator primer top and bottom. Then seam seal it, paint it white (body colour), and the bottom is getting under coating. The inside of the car needs to be cleaned out really well and some wiring work done to improve the routing and organization as well as bring power in for the power and heated seats. Power will probably run off of the original power supply from the fuse box but the heat will need fresh power off of the underdash power point I added specifically for stuff like this.

CTX-SLPR · #29 01-31-2019, 08:13 AM

Well grinding is 99% done, but ran out of gas for the welder when finishing up a small patch I forgot.

Tonight I'll prep the toe panel to prime and this weekend I'll seam it and paint it.

CTX-SLPR · #30 02-04-2019, 06:21 PM

I really don't like wearing gloves for working on cars because they snag, slip, and make my hands extra sweaty.... However I'm never stepping near seam sealer again without them! That mess took 2hrs of worrying it off of my fingers before I went to bed.

Anyway, passengers side is done minus having to weld on a seat mount bracket. I'll just grind the paint off of the section I need access to when I do and repaint it then.