13.
February. Rocker panels modeling.
 | ||
| Welder and the new left inner and outer quarters |
After a
very long hiatus (as you can see, the previous post in this blog is from August 2011 ), I’m finally back at the Chevy
project. Year and a half was spent on house renovations, moving to a new
garage, fixing the daily drivers, lack of expensive parts and general laziness.
You know that Skyrim can tie you up for quite a while?
Anyway, A
brief recap, if not for anyone but myself: in 2012 I moved to a new garage much
closer to home. I managed to sell the
old Pontiac Grand Prixes (’89 and ’94) that I had in the winter of 2012, which
enabled me to finally get new inner and outer quarters for the left side of the
car. I also finally got the new tail panel for the car. As you may have seen
from the pictures, the trunk area and the left side of the car are in pretty
horrible state.
So, with
new metal in stock, we set out to continue the car from where I left it in
August of 2011. We set a date with Janne to see what could be done with the
rocker panels. Night before we headed to the garage I spray-painted the inner
sides of the rockers with zinc-spray to prevent rust and other nastiness.
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| Left side rocker secured by sheet metal screws. |
The next day
was great, because I really had no expectations. The A- and B-pillar bottoms
are rusted out on both of the sides, so practically there are no lips to align
the panels to. This was no problem for an experienced builder like Janne, who
just aligned the front doors accordingly (meaning that he lifted the doors with
jack and I was in the car tightening and losing the door bolts) and then
proceeded to align the rockers according the rightly-aligned doors. Even though the rocker panels were “Made in
the USA” –quality, they still needed some persuasion to fit right. Especially
on the driver’s side.
We secured
the rocker panels to their correct positions with sheet-metal screws. Next up
is getting the rockers off, drilling holes for spot-welding and welding them to
their place. Also, I need to manufacture new A-pillar pieces that connect the
rocker to the pillar.
24.
February
 |
| Right side rocker spot-welded into place! |
About a
week ago I welded the passenger side rocker panel, but with poor results. The
welds weren’t good enough, so today I took the rocker off, re-drilled thru the
welds and cleaned the area properly. I then proceeded to redo the spot welds,
and now it was spot on!
25.
February
Got the
left rocker panel ready for welding, but ran out of welding gas. Gonna continue
soon. But I wanted to post something to
the blog after a long pause. Anyway, at least the car is being worked on... Oh, and I should probably point out, that the B-pillar bottoms will be replaced on both sides, so there are no intentions of leaving the car with the gaps. I just wanted to point that out :)
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