My '75 Can of Worms

[CutteRug]

Howdy all....

With the doors on hold, I spent the rainy evening indoors (and in the car) getting some cutting done... Yes, there were several jokes made because my last name is Cutter...

But tonight, I really was! Man, cutting sheet metal is FUN! It's dangerous and loud, but very gratifying, and not nearly as messy as working with all the paint stripper has been... Nice to take a break from all that for the time being...

Okay - here's the driver side... By far the smaller rust hole.....

[CutteRug]

And now the passenger side...

As I've observed before, this car MUST have been consistently parked on a curved street. I'm guessing always parked on street parking (not in a driveway) so its passenger side was always slightly lower than its drivers... Oh, and probably was almost always parked with its nose slightly uphill...

Wow, I feel like a detective! With a little help from Grover (who already saw the car in Fairfax) I could probably track down where the car was actually parked!!

Who says '02 owners are obsessive about their cars??

Ok... As promised - pictures of the passenger side floor repair.. Actually had time to get a panel cut for this one!!

[MrNvgtr]

Thank you for an entertaining read while sip my coffee here at work. Keep up your enthusiasm and you'll tackle this project in no time.

[indisguise]

Looking nice....

On mine I used a mixture of butt welds and lap welds ( depending on mood). Butt welding is time consuming but it looks way better. For the larger gaps, use a copper spoon(or any piece of copper - squashed plumbing pipe works) on the backside, this will allow you to fill the larger holes.

Great updates.

Lance

[golf73]

So the car is going Taiga. I'm putting back on the deleted trim, converting to a Euro-rear bumper Squarie, and a Kamei repro front spoiler with the kneeline trim continuing around on it like Senna 27's Agave 02...

it's gonna look sick if you're going for senna's car's look, with taiga - great color choice! what kind of wheels are you gonna run?

p.s. senna's car is actually jadegrun, not agave.

[JustinB]

ooh cool. I didnt know you had a thread going with pictures of all the rust and... shit. I had some doubts that it would keep the doors from rusting, but I thought if there was some flash rust on it already it might seal it over for a couple days. Of course it also rained! Oh well, just more prep. At least the bondo is all off, DAing surface rust wouldnt take as long as going at the bondo did. It's a car of lessons learned

[JLENHAM]

Great posts and a fun read. I think we all try to identify the guy/gal about like ourself to see if we have the ability to jump in on a project. I like that you signed up for a class and dove right it, that inspires.

Good luck!

[Tommy]

This is my current project, originally korall red. I think yours will be finished well before.

http://www.bmw2002faq.com/component/option,com_forum/Itemid,50/page,viewtopic/t,309762/

Be careful with the cutting disk while you have windows on the car. Sparks will melt to glass if not well protected and that's it. Only thing to do is get new windows.

Tommy

[CutteRug]

Michael - Good times!! Sip away, I will grind/cut/weld/strip/and prime away... In case you haven't noticed, I do love to entertain too!

Lance - great advice on the welding... So far, it's been the cool old retired guys who've done the actual welding (pictures coming soon - I'm just too tired), but they've talked about the brass or copper bar behind the gaps to help... The guy who welded up my panel didn't use anything! He managed to bridge the gaps on his own... Retired 30-year pipe-fitter, so I guess the guy knows what he's doing, lol...

Golf73 - Thanks for the kudos on Taiga and the heads-up on Jadegrun... I'm pretty well set on running 15 inch Aplina clones by either OZ or Rota... Mmmm, love that look.

Justin - Oh yeah... The lessons of this car I'm sure have only yet begun!! But we found out today that the acid we put on it made the surface rust give up easy... Sorry everyone else - ya'll just have to wait for pics.. Soon - I promise!) Justin - see ya tomorrow night for more 02 madness!

JL - Thanks! Keep reading.. Hopefully I won't destroy this car ;-)

Tommy - As always - great advice.. I will DEFINITELY watch out for the glass... Luckily so far all my grinding's been on the floor, but you never know, right?? I'll keep an eye out. I'll also keep an eye out for another Taiga squarie!! Looks like you're doing great with that 76... The work you do is on a whole different level than what I can accomplish.. However, I do have some talented retired guys hangin around... I'll try and get as much free expertise out of them as possible...

Cheers all.. Thanks for reading. I'll post pics soon...

Adam.

[Tommy]

You really never know. The sparks seem to find their way to the glass even when you think it's not possible. Keep up the good work :-)

[CutteRug]

Howdy all -

A busy couple of days!! Doors and floors... Doors and floors... It's like my mantra... "Finish the doors and floors before the rain!"

Luckily the teachers are being nice and letting me keep the car up at the shop for a couple of days, which has allowed me to pull the doors off...

Having the doors off has made welding up the patches on the floor A LOT easier!! All the crawling around inside, and under... So easy without a door flopping around...

Here's the pics of the doorless (and partially floorless) wonder...

[CutteRug]

It's been a busy week... Monday and Tuesday were cutting floorboards out, fabbing up the patches for them, pulling the doors off and getting ready to weld... Wednesday and Thursday (today) were WELDING!! I mostly watched, but got to also try my hand at the magic wand of fire and steel...

The first welds were on the largest patch (that also had the largest gaps). It was handled by a retired guy named Bob, who we kind of call "Welder Bob" since I guess there are other Bobs wandering about...

After watching him go at it for a while I know why he's Welder Bob....

[CutteRug]

So while Welder Bob was working his magic on the floor, we had to perform our own miracles on the doors... Luckily we had the magic potion called METAL ETCH by Jasco... This stuff works MIRACLES on rust!!

We slapped the doors up on some sawhorses in the sun and went to town with it... Followed up with PREP-SOL which is a wax and grease remover.. Gotta get all the Metal Etch off before it forms a film, because nothing likes to stick to that film (including primer or paint!)... So, that's what we did...

Check it out.....

[CutteRug]

Okay... Where are we... WELDING! Tonight was welding... Thanks to Welder Bob, the large passenger patch was pretty much in.. It just needed the beads ground down because he had to realllllly build up a lot of material since the metal was thin in places and kept breaking through..

I probably ground down too much, but with all that welding all around, I just wanted a cleaner look.. I know - it's ridiculous - this is all going to be under paint, fatmat, carpet, AND seats!! But what can I say... After I saw Justin's welds on the driver's side... I wanted it all to look like that...

That boy can weld! Someday when he's old and grey like Welder Bob, they'll call him... Welder Justin... Hmm, doesn't have the same ring..

Here we go - welding pics...

[whatrudoing25]

very nice work man!