Bringing up the rear Part 1

The trunk and tail pan area of Old Yeller are in need of the most extensive repairs (not counting the floor pans and rockers, which were done 16 years ago).

Outdoors for the first time in 16 years. The rusty quarter is where I stopped back in 2000 and never primed the metal.

Since it's still sweltering hot here, there's not much I can do in the afternoons, when I have time. However, I decided to start pecking away at the trunk rust just to keep the project moving forward.
I had purchased a replacement rear trunk support and trunk floor section back those 16 years ago, so I pulled them out to see how they were holding up. The brace showed no signs of aging, and the floor section had just a glaze of surface rust from sitting exposed all these years.

The replacement pieces will finally go in place!

These are quality parts that I purchased from the old Classic Chevy International, and the fitment bore that out. The trunk floor section lined up almost perfectly, as did the brace.
Full of confidence, I whipped out the grinder and in less than an hour I had the whole area cut away back to solid metal.

Out with the old trunk floor and tail pan....

Once the back half of the trunk floor was removed, I realized it would be much easier to stand in the open gap and reach all the corners of the trunk to sandblast. In spite of the heat, I suited up in my protective gear and went to blasting. After a good solid hour the trunk was reasonably stripped, and many more pinholes were revealed. Fortunately, the old section of trunk floor that I cut out has some solid areas that will work nicely to repair these rotted areas.

....and away with 60 years of rust and paint.

There are two areas on either side of the tail pan (the lower edge of the trunk opening), that have rusted through. I have been thinking all this time that I would simply fab a couple of patches to fill the holes, but once I started cutting sheet metal out I realized that the whole area was too far gone to patch. Years of water and debris have rendered both of those corners completely rotted, so my simple patching plan was tossed aside. Out came the credit card so I could order replacement patches for both corners. I decided to spend the extra $70 bucks or so and get a new tail pan as well, instead of spending hours trying to salvage what I had.

There's no salvaging this

The corner patches make up the area below and to the inside of each tail light. The start at the seam that runs down from the tail light and continue inward to where it meets the tail pan.
These replacement patches were nowhere near a good match to the original contours of the car, so I decided to only cut and use a portion of each one to just repair the actual rusted areas. This would also mean less cutting and forming, which is always a good thing.
Once I had the corner sections cut out, and the corresponding replacement pieces cut, I took a better look at the insides. Besides the outer panel, which is part of the exterior of the car, there is an inner panel that forms the sides of the trunk, and which continues around the inner trunk to meet the rear tail pan.

Surprise! The inner panel is just as bad

Again, there was too much metal rusted away to be able to fudge an easy patch. However, I realized that, with a little persuasion, the remaining pieces of the new corner patches could be formed to create a reasonable patch.
Yesterday, I spent the morning slowly cutting, forming, cutting and forming until I had a reasonably good facsimile of the original inner trunk panel below the right tail light. In doing so I was able to eliminate about 90% of the rust holes, with the few remaining small enough to fill with seam sealer.

Making the most of the leftover pieces of the outer patch panel

After welding in the inner piece, I then fitted the outer patch until both fit together pretty nice. A few dozen spot welds later, and I now have a very solid corner to reattach the trunk floor and tail pan to. Today I'll tackle the other side, which--hopefully--should go faster now that I have a plan.

The finished product. A good two weekend's worth of work!

Pillar Talk

The A pillars on both sides of the car are rusted pretty badly. On the BelAir, the stainless "beauty"

The reality hiding under the stainless

trim that covers the pillar makes for some real ugliness underneath, because water and dirt washes down between the trim and the pillar, causing corrosion early on in the life of the car. The lower models fared better since they didn't have this extra piece of stainless.
It seems like just about every square inch of the tri-fives is being reproduced these days, including the pillars. However, the reproduction is one large piece from the rocker to the roof, and is expensive. Especially if one only needs the upper section, which I do. So, option two is to find a donor car.
As much as I hate the idea of contributing to the demolition of a classic Chevy, there are still some out there that would never be restorable but still have some good parts left on them. In my case, I stumbled upon a fellow from Missouri who was selling '57 pillars on eBay.
I wasn't aware that the '57 is slightly different from the '55, but the Missouri man was honest and told me so. However, he did happen to have some '55 pillars, although they were a bit rough (according to him). He sent me some pictures, I gave them the thumbs up, and a week later I was in possession of two fairly solid pillars for my car--and $250 bucks lighter in the pocket.

Donor piece cleaned and ready to be disassembled

Yesterday, I set to work on the passenger side pillar. First, I sandblasted the donor piece to see how badly it was rusted and to be able to see the spot welds. There were a few small holes in the bottom of the new pillar, but all in all much better than mine.
I first drilled out the spot welds on the outer layer, which is what I needed most. Once I gained confidence working on the donor piece, it was a breeze to grind and cut off the old rusty parts on my car. With the inner layer exposed, I could see how much of the donor piece I needed and cut that off, using it as a template to cut out the rot on my car. I probably should've done that in the opposite order, because I really could've cut out more on my car, but I was able to make it work.
This morning was spent cleaning and grinding for a couple of hours before I was comfortable that whatever I covered up would hold up over time.
I was surprised to note that the replacement outer piece, as well as the section of inner sheet metal that I took off the donor, were slightly different in contour from my car. Nothing that caused a problem, fortunately. I guess different factories had slightly different stamps.
The welding went pretty good. there's a few small gaps and irregularities, but they will be filled with

Outer piece removed from the donor pillar

seam sealer and metal filler. For now, I put a coat of primer on everything to keep from rusting while I wait for cooler weather so I can get to sandblasting the body. It's just too hot right now to suit up in sandblasting gear for any length of time.

Rusty pieces from the old pillar

Bottom of the pillar--a common spot for rust

The new pieces welded in. Not pretty, but it'll work!

A temporary coat of primer

Tubing troubles

Since I decided  to put a Turbo 350 transmission in place of the original powerglide, the cooling lines to the radiator don't match up. I probably could've purchased some prefab lines, but I've had good luck bending my brake lines so I decided to make my own transmission cooling lines. Keeping in line with the whole do -it-yourself theme. What could go wrong?
Plenty!

Radiator mounted, but no fan blade

My lovely wife is out of town this week, so I have the evenings all to myself. With the God-awful temperatures we've been having, I can't do anything in the afternoons anyway, so I thought it would be nice to spend the evenings in the shop happily making my cooling lines, listening to the radio and quaffing a beer or two.
First, I had to purchase my parts. I stopped in at my local NAPA store and ordered a 25' roll of 5/16" tubing and associated fittings. It was going to take a couple of days for the parts to come in, so in the meantime I busied myself with getting the radiator support and radiator mounted. For some reason, I couldn't slide the radiator down between the support and the fan blade. I thought I might have it in backwards, but no, that wasn't possible. I knew the radiator had come out of the car decades ago, so why wouldn't it go back in?
I took the support off and laid it on the floor, thinking I could put the whole thing together and mount it in place. To my surprise, when I set the assembly up on the frame, the fan blade prevented the support from aligning with the mounting holes. Finally, a light bulb went off and I realized that the fan spacer on the water pump was too long. This is not the original engine! I took the fan blade off and victory! Now I have to find a shorter fan spacer.

The correct tubing, finally!

Feeling rejuvenated, I picked up my tubing Thursday afternoon, bought a pizza, and headed for the shop. It didn't take long to realize that the tubing, which was nicely packaged in a wrapper with the 5/16" measurement printed on it, was in fact 3/8" tubing. Another roadblock!
So, Friday morning I went back to NAPA and swapped the tubing out for the correct size. Flush with more confidence, I returned to the scene of the crime Friday night to get the job done! The new tubing was clamped into the flaring block for the first fitting. All good. I took my handy little el cheapo tubing bender, made more for 3/16" brake lines than this bigger stuff, and made my first bend. Snap! The bender broke! Shot down again!
I went home and did some reading on what other benders were available out there. It seems that the most popular is one that requires two hands to operate, with one half of the tool wrapping the tubing around the bending block. The other option was a pliers-type which got some positive comments, and looked more manageable, especially with one hand. O'Reilly had one on their shelf, so I committed to picking it up Saturday afternoon.

Bender one--broken

Picked up the new tool this afternoon and headed back to the shop. My confidence was beginning to wane, but hope springs eternal. I unwrapped the pliers and, wisely tried them out on the other end of the roll. These pliers have a roller that supposedly works for either 5/16" or 3/8" tubing. It does not! 
Maybe I was using it wrong, but the wider groove allows the narrower tubing to kink, and the outer rollers of the tool actually dented the outer side of the tubing. A total bomb!
Back to the store, this time Autozone. They had only one tool on their rack. The unwieldy two-handed tool. It was actually cheaper than the pliers, as well as being my last option.
I returned to the shop felling really deflated. It didn't help that it was still 95 degrees outside and the 6PM sun was blazing in the shop. Undaunted, and determined to get this project at least started, I made my first bend. The tool was a little difficult to manage, by made beautiful bends.
Totally focused now, I bent and fitted, fitted and bent, until I had a reasonably nice line from one fitting on the radiator, to one fitting on the tranny. It took about an hour.

Bender two--total junk!

I thought it would work best to pull it out and use it as a template for the other line, which runs the
same route for 80% of the way. Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as I hoped, but still, after another hour, I had a somewhat decent second line. On the home stretch!
With the second line in place, all I had left to do was put one final bend at the end where it meets the transmission. It worked well bending in in place on the first line, so I went at it again. One more snafu!
I wasn't paying attention, and laid the tubing in the 3/8" groove instead of the 5/16" groove. I
 realized it a second too late, which means I put a kink in the line. It's a small kink, and no one but me will ever know, so I left it. Odyssey over!

Bender three--finally, one that works!

New lines connected up

Not too bad for a rookie

Kink? What kink?

Bits and pieces

One of the many joys I derive from working on this old car is taking old rusty, bent or broken parts and rehabilitating them, making them look and function like new again.
I've been working this week on mounting the radiator frame and radiator, to allow completion of the transmission cooling lines, water hoses and basically tightening up all of the loose ends in the engine area before I cover it up for a while, to turn my attention to the body.
In the meantime, here's a few pics of some of the little parts and pieces that have enjoyed a second lease on life. Looking at completed things like these are what inspire me to keep going in the dregs of summer heat.

Oh my, it's hot!

The heat has beaten me down.
I got a flurry of work done before I left on vacation on June 22. Namely, got the underside of the trunk lid sandblasted and primed, knowing that it might sit for a few weeks before I could get back on it. I was right.
Since I've returned, we've had an unbearable heat wave here in central Florida. By the time I get some free time every day, the sun has come across and is blasting right into my shop, making it like a furnace. It's pretty much impossible to do any metal work or painting when one is dripping sweat everywhere.
In the meantime, I've continued to search for a decent turbo 350 transmission for the car. They seem to pop up in batches on Craigslist, but for the last couple of months there have been no good selections.

All clean and ready to install

Two weekends ago, I went to look at one about 40 miles from my house. A bit of a drive, but worth it if it was a good find. It turned out that the seller even had paperwork showing that it had been rebuilt, but it had also been siting in his garage for many, many years, so I was leery of it. It was also missing some external components. I made him an offer that I felt was within my risk tolerance, which he declined.

Adapter mounts from Danchuk

The same weekend, another tranny popped up in the same town, so three days later I drove back to almost the same neighborhood to look at it. It turned out that the guy had pulled it from an Impala, fairly recently, but didn't know anything about the history. An outer inspection showed that the vacuum modulator was fairly new, the seals looked like replacements, and the torque converter was also newer. The pump also looked like it had been replaced. I can't say for sure why, but I felt better about taking a gamble on this one, so a deal was made for $250 and I brought it home.
I spent last weekend washing it off, replacing the front and rear seals, filter and pan gasket. The fluid in the pan looked really good, and there was a minimal amount of gunk in the bottom of the pan. I'm a gambling man by heart, so I'm gonna hook it up and hope for the best. Unfortunately, I won't know what I really have until that day in the future when I finally pull the shifter into drive.

Bolted in and ready for the future

Praying for cooler weather!

Fender resto part 2

Driver's side done, time for the other side

Although work has slowed down due to business and family obligations, not to mention the Florida summer finally rearing it's steamy head, I've still been chipping away.
Lately, I've turned my attention to the passenger fender. Overall, the fender is in better shape than the driver's side. The headlight brow was gone, of course. There's less heavy pitting, which was a pain to resolve on the other fender. The lower quarter, however, was a little worse, requiring some fabrication to create a new edge.
When I cut the lower quarter rust away, I found the inner brace pretty pitted, but it seemed pretty sturdy so I decided to clean it up and work with it. The back edge of the fender was gone as well, but the inner brace made a good template to cut a new piece of sheet metal for the edge.

Rust cut out. Inner brace looks worse than it is.

I don't have a brake, or any way to bend a good edge on metal, so I ended up lightly tapping the edge with a body hammer until I created something of a rolled edge. I then welded my little strip of edge metal to the inner brace, and then welded the lower patch panel to the rolled edge. Once I ground my welds down, it looked pretty much like one piece of sheet metal.
The headlight brow was a piece of cake after that. I also had to replace the inner headlight brow sheet metal, but since I'd done this on the first side, it went quick and smoothly.

New edge and patch panel

I've laid down a layer of all metal bondo and begun the first stage of sanding. I hope by next weekend the fender will be prepped for paint with a smooth top coat of filler primer. I probably won't paint it yellow until I get the hood and trunk ready, to avoid wasting paint.

And the finished product

Now to focus on the headlight brow

More cutting...

More welding....

And more grinding. Ready for primer

Postus Interruptus

Had lots of family commitments over the past couple of weeks that have slowed the work progress down. I've stil been making headway and hope to post a new entry in the next couple of days.