Well, it has been a while so I thought it best to start a new page. Recent work has focused on all the front end bits. Now I am moving backwards and doing the doors.

The plan is to get from this...

To this

The plan is to replace the rotted lower part with a repair panel and then replace the door skin with a new one. The old skin will be removed in sections, starting with the bottom, so as not to distort the frame while welding in the repair panel.

The first cut has been made accross the lower skin.

The sanding disk on the grinder will sand the edge of the old skin for removal purposes. The skin is not actually welded on, only crimped over the door frame.
Note that even though the door was acid dipped, there is still rust in the crimped seam. Rust is very good at hidding!

The repair piece is seen here. I hope to weld it in this week-end of Sept 30,2006

The work went well. One thing that I did was to re-inforce the door frame where the stress crack forms. I used an old push-rod welded to the door frame from the inside. This adds a LOT of stifness to the door frame. All in all, this is an easy task with a great satisfaction factor. Follow the pics:

With the work roughly finished to the end of the doors, it is time to turn my efforts to the rear clip. This is a BIG panel and access ti bith sides is rather difficult, so I have removed the clip from the car and takem the floor panel out.

If you look carefully, you can see how bad the piece is with all the ripples. I fugure about a month of time to work out the dents to the point where a skim of filler will do the job.

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Here are the results of shrinking the dents out and finally back together and looking like a car again. Lots of welding to do.>

Here she is with a bit of primer covering her rear end. Do not want any more rust forming while working on this thing!