1970 1800E Driver Restoration

Never mind....

Looked at it with a fresh set of eyes this afternoon and figured it out:









The inner rocker looks simple enough to patch up but the mid rocker is a twisty mess and appears to also serve the purpose of providing a vertical flange on the bottom for the bottom of the inner rocker to be welded to. Wolf Steel in Quebec sells rocker kits and I've got a request out to them to see if they'll sell just the mids so that I can use them to patch fore and aft.

Here's the section of floor pan that I removed. It's only a rotted a little bit towards the inner rocker; plan on patching it up and re-using it.

Your flicker photos went private.

Sine Qua Non said:

Your flicker photos went private.

Click to expand...

fixed; thanks for the heads up

Plinking away at cleaning up the rockers. Would have gotten more done but I think my $9.99 HF high speed cutter gave up the ghost....got good service out of it while it was working though. The middle sill/rocker is ~ 20 gauge so I think I'll be able to do all the forming that I need to without any trouble.







Finished cutting out the weakened sections of floor board as well.

Been plugging away on the driver's side rocker. These are from a couple weeks ago, still in the process of cleaning out the rot on the mid sill and figuring out how to work the repair.







Got a HF blast cabinet and tested it out on the rear brake backing plates, then shot them with wheel paint.







This is the outer rocker. The hole on the left of the photo is just aft of the bottom of the front fender section.



Filling in the pilot holes from drilling out the spot welds and patching up some thin spots on the bottom of the outer rocker:





There is a solid section of the outer rocker panel more or less under the door pillar. This patch is to repair the hole just aft of the front fender section and to tie into the solid section.













This is how it looks from the outside. I'm going to have to work to neaten up/even up the seam between the outer rocker and the front fender.



Plan to finish stitching this patch in after work over the course of this week.

Still working on driver's side rocker. Got the outer patch finished.

I got the Eastwood spot weld kit and used it here for the first time. Works well; squeeze the trigger and count to four-one-thousand and that's it. This is the flange from the outer rocker extension where it ties into the bottom of the outer rocker.













I need to get a metal brake before I tackle the mid sill so I moved on to cleaning up the front longitudinal support (from frame rail to inner rocker under the driver's feet). Of course there was more rot than I expected:





















Overdid it a bit on the primer...those are droplets of wet primer there:



Next step is to patch up the frame rail where it kicks up toward the engine bay. There are a few perforations and one small section cut out already but it doesn't appear too bad (hit it in multiple spots with the MIG welder looking for blow through and only found a couple of weak spots. The hole near the tow hook seems to be related to the factory welding there.

You are battling some serious rust. Reminds me of the P1800S I restored. It was worth it! Every time I stopped for gas someone would come over and ask me about the car. Looking forward to seeing how this plays out for you.

Have you considered Silicone Bronze wire for you non structural welds? I find you get far fewer blow through on thinner sheet metal plus it handles less then perfect surfaces better then traditional carbon steel.

I'll look into the silicone bronze wire; thanks for the tip.

There's definitely more welding to be done than I counted on, but I think once I get the driver's rocker and the frame rails sorted out the rest of it will go faster. Definitely re-assessing my original goal of getting it on the road before the snow flies this fall.

Do you still have your 1800S?

I wish I still had it. Unfortunately I lost interest in the car many years ago and it wasted away. Its pretty sad I guess. I ended up selling it to a guy who claimed he was going to resurrect it. I started work on it in 1997 and I was driving it by 98. After finishing the body I performed some major engine upgrades to it. Electronic ignition from Mallory, Isky cam, and Weber DCOE's. I never had it dyno'd but it was rocket.
Like I said I couldn't stop for a tank of gas without someone asking me about it. To this day I still think it is one of the most pleasing body designs to look at.

Here's a photo of it in 2002.

Beautiful car!

Made a lot of progress on the driver's side rocker mess.

Got the forward portion of the inner sill patched up:









Patched up the frame rail section at the kickup and towing hook:





Got the mid sill all patched up:















Inner rocker patch fitted and ready to weld in:

Still plugging away, but any hope that this will be on the road by August has been vanquished.

Got the driver's side floor pan patched up:













Got the front cross member (under feet) and frame rail extension patch (under butt) welded in:



















I didn't match the original contour of the floor pan when I patched things up and as a result I had to cut the pan just forward of the rear frame rail extension (the frame rail is taller towards the front of the car, shorter to the rear). Once I had the cross member fully welded in I had to fill this in.







Next task: patch up the small section of rot under the parking brake lever:







Next task: sort out the sills and quarter panel between the driver's door and rear wheel well:

Patching rear section of left inner sill





<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/11865416@N06/14323663694" title="Left Rear Inner Sill Patching #2 by didenpx, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5575/14323663694_c44c3e8e06_b.jpg" width="1024" height="681" alt="Left Rear Inner Sill Patching #2"></a>/IMG]

[IMG]<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/11865416@N06/14301187746" title="Left Rear Mid Sill Repair Piece by didenpx, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2903/14301187746_f5ee1819a1_b.jpg" width="1024" height="681" alt="Left Rear Mid Sill Repair Piece"></a>







Got the repair section for the right rear wheel arch. Awesome piece (thanks High Performance!). This will probably wait til later in the month or July....



On to the radiator core support....finally.

Filling in the holes left from drilling out the old spot welds:



Got distracted and bored and figured I might as well pull out the ding in the front cowl. I drilled a boatload of holes, used a slide hammer, and then welded them closed. This after attempts to work it from behind were unsuccessful (not enough room to work the hammer)





Test fitting the core support:



Holes drilled for the plug welds



Ready to start the plenum to core support plug welds:

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/11865416@N06/14344440673" title="Radiator Core Support Ready for Welding #3 by didenpx, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2914/14344440673_b50ea15dfc_b.jpg" width="1024" height="681" alt="Radiator Core Support Ready for Welding #3"></a>
Welding (finally!):

[IMG]<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/11865416@N06/14344424943" title="Project Roedluvan 1561 by didenpx, on Flickr"><img src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5528/14344424943_0d132ff79c_b.jpg" width="1024" height="681" alt="Project Roedluvan 1561"></a>

Plug welds to plenum done:



Still need to complete welding to the frame rail extensions.....next weekend

What size holes are you plugging on the core supp't..When welding two panels together I'd suggest filling a 5/16 hole.If welding three pieces together I'd use a 3/8 hole.If you use too small of a hole it's difficult to start the weld in the back piece to fill outwards,plus you won't have enough strength if the hole is to small.

This looks sooooo familiar. Amazing how much rust a nice looking car can hide from you.
Looking at the last pic, I think you need more power and less wire, but you're learning fast! Nothing like jumping in and gettin' bizzay!!

kyle242gt said:

This looks sooooo familiar. Amazing how much rust a nice looking car can hide from you.
Looking at the last pic, I think you need more power and less wire, but you're learning fast! Nothing like jumping in and gettin' bizzay!!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice on power vs. speed and for the encouragement. I definitely am spending much more time grinding than anything else; is that why?

Totally agree on the hidden rust. After going through this project I'd definitely be very leery about buying any 1800 that had been previously restored or re-painted unless I knew who had done the work. If I were cutting corners I could have glossed over a bunch of this stuff, laid on some filler, shot paint and easily flipped the car.

Heading out to the garage this afternoon and hope to post an update on progress tonight or tomorrow. Home and yard projects have slowed me down a lot. Just remembered that I also need to finish welding on rear wheel well on right side and the rocker extension to the wheel well on the left side....ugh. When I get back to the suspension rebuild, brakes, and engine I'm going to be so freaking happy; much more fun to be wrenching instead of grinding. Also doesn't send you to the hospital emergency room so often (been 2x with metal embedded in my eye ((even with safety glasses and goggles))).

Here's the intake cowl with everything finished up. I used Krylon spray bomb in "Cherry Red" over gray primer and it's an OK match for the original paint. Eventually the entire car will be painted so this is just temporary.







I spent a lot of time poking around on the passenger side floorpan and inner sill. There were a lot of weak points and perforations where the pan meets the sill but I was hoping that I could avoid sectioning the pan and doing major surgery on the sill because the inspection camera showed that the mid sill was in good shape and the outer rocker is solid.





Eventually I figured that there were enough weak spots in the pan that would need patching and enough places where the inner sill was compromised above and below the floor pan that it would be easier just to take the pan out so I could fix everything properly.













The inside doesn't look bad at all, with the exception of the extension of the door jamb. I plan on blasting it and then sealing it up and otherwise leaving it in peace. The mid sill is solid and has just a bit of scale on it. So I should be able to clean things up, treat and seal them and then patch the inner sill and weld the floor back in (after sorting it out). Definitely not the horror show I went through on the driver's side.

No; project has not been abandoned.

After a long spring and summer filled with yard chores, cutting, splitting, hauling, and stacking wood for winter, and various other stuff it's now getting back underway just in time for the cold weather (though I do have a nice kerosene bullet heater to keep the workspace warm).

Since I blew the original plan (do a minimal resto and get it on the road this year), I've re-baselined the project. New plan is to get the welding (yes, still plenty of it to do), rear suspension, and brakes done by Feb/Mar and then send the car off for bead blasting (found a place about an hour away that exclusively works on car restorations). After that going to send it out for finish body work and paint.

I haven't done much on it in recent months except some stripping, labeling, bagging, and boxing. In the course of that I made an unpleasant discovery on the rear end; car was apparently hit from the rear (or backed into something) and the rear bumper was pushed into the rear valence to the point where the rear quarters started to deform slightly. Not a great thing to find but also not the end of the world. Once it goes out for body work I'll figure out whether it makes more sense to have the metal beaten back into shape or to bite the bullet and order new quarters and a valence. VP has quarters at a decent price and CVI has the complete rear valence too http://www.cvi-automotive.se/en/articles/2.14657.43546/rear-panel-1800se). Hope to avoid going that route but at least it's there.

Couple of recent photos:


I only discovered this when I was popping out the "V-O-L-V-O" letters. Couple of the holes had drips of bondo coming through them. I chiseled some of it away and discovered real pro-level bodywork; stuff was up to about 1/4" (maybe more) deep. Doh!


Got the rear window out today and plugged away at removing external lights and trim, labeling wires, and bagging parts:


Got the driver's side exterior trim, glass, and door guts pulled a while ago.


Next step is to get back on the welding (really not looking forward to it). More to follow......

It looks like Eastwood is your friend. I've seen at least one product they offer that you may be using (the Eastwood Mig Spot Weld Kit). It looks like it works very well. What are your impressions?

I need to finish workin' on my '73 ES. You my friend are an inspiration!