1979 Holden 1 Tonner Ute resto
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Ok... so it's a bare shell now except for the front windshield, I need to find my screen removal tool & get that out.... but now I can crack into the old girl with the grinder & find out just how bad things are.... fingers crossed I've already found the worst...
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Speaking of rust... lets get her ready for stripping... so out with the engine & trans again. If I had a dollar for every time I'd pulled this engine in or out I'd have.... well $3 actually, so not much of a retirement plan..
We're into spring finally here & the weather is looking up so I've decided to do the paint (read bog) removal outdoors
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Right so we know that the drivers side of the upper cowl is bad where it joins to the window channel...
Lets take bets on how good the passenger side is.... hmmmm 6-7mm of bog you say, well that can only be hiding pristine metal I'm sure
WTAF! some muppets just shouldn't be let near a car... I mean they just bogged in the holes, no advanced repair techniques here like balled up paper, fiberglass or chicken wire... nope just pure Bogatti & if you're going to cover it in that much bog why not weld in some new metal... I mean it's not like you even have to get the shape close if you're going to sculpt the fecking body line out of bog afterwards. Who in their right minds does this & then drives the car at speed.... sorry.. rant over
Found out why the drivers side door sagged when opened... on a positive note the door hinge is probably fine & doesn't need to be rebuilt... in other unrelated news, the B-pillar is cracked when the support plate for the hinge bolts up. I have seen this on other Utes of this era so I guess its a common weak spot
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Time to play a game... a game I like to call rust roulette or bog bingo maybe, you choose. The idea is that I walk around the car & look at areas that I'm convinced will be bogged over rust under the paint... then I grind the paint & presumably bog to see just how bad it is... I'd already repaired the Passenger side lower B pillar & we know that the drivers side lower B pillar is just as bad... but lets play....
Drivers side lower A pillar.. yep bog & rust...
Passenger side lower A pillar... nope, all good actually
Passenger side sill panel
Drivers side sill panel
Now for the really fun bit... passenger side roof
Drivers side roof
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Got the rest of the cab stripped back now..
This uncovered a new horror previous repair to the front of the sill
Again... I'm not trying to claim that I'm any good at this stuff, I mean I'm not metal finishing panels... anything I work on will still need .5mm-1mm of bog skimmed over it.. but WTAF... these guys saw this hole & filled it with silicone that then then smoothed out & bogged over that...
The people who sold this Ute claimed it had been lovingly restored.... well may a hive of flesh eating termites infest their rectums
The cowl is pretty good other that the two edges I showed above
The roof itself (again other that the horrors shown above) is ok
Someone has cut out the small hole that the roof aerial would have had & welded in a patch of steel... I'm assuming not the previous owners as they'd have used paper & bog I'm sure
Next steps will be to fire up the A-Team montage music & break out the grinder with a cutting disk this time & cut all the cancer out of the old girl
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Took to the Ute today with the grinder & the plasma cutter to remove the first sections of rust I plan on attacking... the drivers side lower B pillar, this will be a copy of the repair I did on the passenger side earlier on in this thread...
The sill top & the inside sections will again need to be worked too
Then I moved onto the passenger side roof rust... cut that out & now we can see that the superstructure behind is rotten too... so that gets cut out too... I'll have to replace that first with some thicker 1.6mm plate I have before I replace the section of roof skin with 1.2
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Then went to the drivers side roof rust... cut that out, same issue with the superstructure but this time the cut to fix the roof skin rust isn't big enough to get to the issues behind so it needed to be enlarged
Once I have the repairs done on these bits then my plan is to inside the cab & unpick & remove this central panel that will give me access to the rest of that superstructure to see if it needs any attention & means I don't need to cut anymore holes in the roof as no one wants that...
This is going to be an exercise on metal origami as it's rather complex in how the different layers join up... once the superstructure is done then the metal that would have come up from the Qtr panel needs to be made & that attaches to the superstructure & then the new roof skin needs to be made to come down over that repair piece that comes up... then the drip rail needs to be reattached to the roof skin... this will be tricky I'm sure... to try & explain the overlaps better see the pics below, I'll aim for slightly better tolerances on the finished article
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Right well cutting out rust is fun but at some point you have to start putting new steel in... or just fill the hole with a kilo of bog, either/or really. I had some 3.5mm plate laying about so I patched the inner structure with that, not fussed with how this bit looks for obvious reasons... it should never be seen again.
I forgot to take pics of the shaping process & some of the tools I use, but I'll be doing the passenger side tomorrow so I'll capture that then... started roughing in the shape of the patch
Then started slowly tacking it in.... you have to be super careful with welding roofs, it's very very easy to warp them from putting too much heat in.
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Then very slowly work your way around finishing all the welding
This isn't perfect, but it's pretty close... would only need less that .5mm of bog.... or in my case I to lead wipe the join between the Qtr & the roof anyway so I'll lead over the whole patch to make it seamless. I haven't finish the bottom join where it meets the drip rail, I leave that till I have the cab off the chassis & I can turn it over so it's at a more natural angle to work with.
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Worked on the passenger side roof repair today, I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to tie the roof rail gutters back in again just yet... they are a complex layering of metal, I've opted to cut them off for now & I'll refit them when I have the cab off the chassis & I can have it on it's side simply because it's easier to work & weld when it's not above your head.
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Repaired the inner structure first
Then I had to shape up the roof skin patch, to do this I used my sand bag these are awesome for shaping metal.. this is my small one, I have a larger one too. I then have these rounding dollies that I use to put a curve into the metal... I start by pounding the curve I want into the sand bag & then place the flat metal onto it & use the dolly to hammer the metal down into the shape in the sand. Then when I have the start of the shape I put the dolly the vice & sharpen the curve up.
I think that that looks pretty good... I'll metal finish it with some lead after I've figured out the drip rails.. but for now I'm happy with that.
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Pulled the windscreen out & did a little more investigation on the cowl rust issue... spoiler alert... it's not great
Right, lets see what's behind cowl door number 1
At the risk of overquoting Chernobyl not great, not terrible
There are a few overlapping panels here so I'll have to work out in what order to start building up the new metal to get the max amount of strength without having to remove the whole cowl
Right... I've probably cut enough of the old metal out, time to start putting some new metal in... the lower drivers side B pillar has been cleaned up, rust treated & primed... now to make some repair sections up & rebuild this area.
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Got the outer skin of the B pillar sorted today... this took a few hours to get the shape close, I've used as much of original section that I could to help get the guide for the shape..
The chrome trim fits, so I know I'm close to the right shape... I'll metal finish it with lead when I get to that stage.
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I've cut the top of the cowl off the passenger side, this piece is rusted & needs replacing but I was confident that it was fine under there
Turns out I was right... it's perfect, means I can use it as a good reference for repairing the other side too
Speaking of the other side.. time to cut out all the rust bits
Also need to remove the hinge support plate that needs repairing
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Now to start stitching it all back together... first step is to rust treat & prime inside, you may have noticed in the pic above that Holden never painted this area from the factory... no wonder it rusted.
Then start welding metal back in
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For a moment today I was thinking of just making a single patch piece for the plenum rather that the two that Holden had done as you'll never see it again.... but I couldn't bring myself to do it, this old girl has had some shite repairs thrust on her in the past, least I can do is try & get it less half arsed.. so using the other side as the reference the fist section went in.
Then trimmed out the section of the window frame/dash that is too far gone to weld to...
I started making up the next repair section to go in this tonight but it was getting late so I'll finish it off & weld it in tomorrow...
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Finished up the plenum repair.. now I'm just still waiting on the cowl rust repair panels..
I want to keep the project moving so it's time to pull the cab off the chassis so I can work on the floor & the inner sills... I'm sure this supposed to be a multi person job but I don't have people.. so my plan was to use my engine hoist & the leveller bolted to the floor using the seat mounting bolts
Even with the leveller the cab was very front heavy, but it worked & I was able to get enough height to get the cab off in one piece with no damage.. so that's a win
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Been working away on this... but I haven't taken a lot of pics... sorry... I sorted out the big feck off hole in the bottom of the A pillar
I've also cut out all of the rust in the inner sills.. but I did take pics of all of that, just one taken
Then I cleaned all the floor again, gave it a rust treatment & have primed it now... tomorrow I'll paint it in the Raptor liner stuff if I have time
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I got the underside of the Ute finished off in several coats of the Raptor Liner today & man do I love this stuff.... it's so simple to use & it just does an amazing job... I'm really happy with how it's come up. Next job is finish roof rust repairs whilst the cab is at this angle as that gives me easier access. Then I'll have to make up a dolly frame to bolt the cab to so it can be moved about easily.
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Decided to try & rebuild the roof drip rails whilst the cab was still on its back as that's a better angle for welding what would be underneath the rails.. I had up a 90 deg piece of metal that goes under the roof skin & it joins the roof skin to the Qtr panel steel as well as giving you the flat bit to weld the actual drip rail too... lets see how this goes..
Pretty happy with how these turned out
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Next job was to make up a dolly frame for it so that it can be easily moved around
Then I used my trusty engine crane to lower it down... I've used this thing for so much non engine lifting it's not funny, I'd be lost without working on my own most of the time
I think I'm a little over 80% done on this cab now... if I can get a few good days in the shed this week I think I can be finished with it... maybe... yeah lets go with maybe...
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Got two hours this afternoon to take the paint (actually it was mostly bog) off the back of the cab...
Lets just say that this is the Ute that keeps on giving... I wasn't expecting the rust to be this bad... I'm at a loss to understand how this think held its shape when it was 90% bog... sigh, but at least these are mostly flat repair sections so they shouldn't be too hard to make up..
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Got the last of the paint off today, the firewall & I'm pleasantly surprised to be able to say that there isn't any rust at all here... who knew...
next up is to finish the repair to the cowl
Sometimes you get really good rust repair sections & other times you get what we got here.... I can only assume that the manufacturing process was to find someone who used to own one of these Utes back in the day & have him recall & describe the shape of it over a poor skype call to a factory worker in China who was in turn out sick on the day it came to make them & he too had to describe them over the phone to a work mate.... TL:DR.. these will need some work to make them fit...
In the end I had to section this piece to reshape it to fit
I'll linish the welds back tomorrow & then start on the other side
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Linished back the welds on the cowl...
I've got the gap to the central slotted panel right & the curve to the front guard is spot on too
With the door on, it's just not quite right.....
I've been around & taken some pics & measurements from my painters Ute to see what it's really supposed to look like
The problem is that the repair section has been formed too high, it's about 2mm too tall..
I'll have to run the grinder cutting blade thru the vertical face of the cowl & then pull the top down to the correct height later.. There are also issues with the doors, you may remember that I was removing massive chunks of bog, up to 7-8mm at times... well with that bog gone the door gaps are now out by 7mm...
Now the door does fit in the gap
Well when I use my soon to be patented door gap closer 5000 it does... available to you from my merch store for 6 easy payments or 4 harder payments, fist 50 callers also get as glass jar of bog dust. I did ask Bryan if he'd seen the documentary The Dukes of Hazzard & if he'd be willing to just climb in & out of the Ute thru the window if I just weld the doors up... he didn't seem too keen on that. I'll have to spend some time going all medieval on the door with some blocks of wood & bending it into the correct shape...
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But for now I'm just going to park it up for a bit... I can't ignore the fact that my shiny XB is sitting in the front garage untouched.. so I'm going to park this one for a bit & spend a little time focused on my own car & then get back to this... ah, the joys of too many projects on the go at once...
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Bryans a bit of a woodworking guru & he wants to make a fancy new rear tray... in order to do that we need to move it from my shed to his shed. Before it goes there is one rusted out cab bolt section that I need to fix..
With that cut out I just measure the thickness of the chassis steel (it's 4mm) & cut myself a new 4mm patch to fill the void
Linished back the welds & that's that done for now... I don't have the correct size hole saw to hand, but we can put the hole for the cab bolt in later
Quick coat of paint & I'm done...
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