Time for the Body

I restarted this restoration project around January 1 of 2016. Although it doesn't look like it from what sits in my shop, I remind myself that a lot has happened in the past 11 months, even with delays here and there.
I'm to the point where there's not much peripheral stuff left to do. Many components have been either restored and boxed up for later, or trashed and replaced with something new. There's still the hood to restore, and I haven't finished the passenger front fender, but by and large, there's only one thing left to really tackle. The body.

The body the last time it was on a cradle...in 1999

I've been pecking away at the body here and there all year. Repair of the passenger A pillar in the summer provided a distraction from other areas, and I just finished two months of work on the trunk and rear underbelly.

17 years later....not much seems to have changed!

Over the last weekend, I began toying with the notion that I might, just might, be able to get the body cleaned and painted by the one year anniversary and install it permanently on the frame. After a good hard look, both at my task ahead and the holiday/work schedule, I think I'll have to give up on that idea.
Last weekend I rolled Old Yeller out into the sunshine once again and devoted my Sunday to sandblasting. Unfortunately, my blaster was acting up, so I didn't get as far as I had hoped. At least I got a good start, though. The driver's side is more or less completely derusted, and I've even spread a little metal body filler on top of a coat of etching primer.

Next weekend's task....the passenger side

I wrote out  list of daily tasks to complete over the work week with the goal of finishing the sandblasting next weekend. Today was a really difficult work day, though, and I wasn't able to get anything done this afternoon. Tomorrow will be the same, so my schedule has already gone out the window.

Things look a little more encouraging from this angle

Nonetheless, I think I can still have the majority of the blasting done by Sunday, especially since I did some badly needed servicing on my blaster, so it should operate better for me.
I still have the driver's A pillar to repair, along with some minor rust holes along the rear window channel. Then it's down to body filler and sanding. Which sometimes is even less fun than the sandblasting.

Bringing up the Rear Part 3

I realize that it's been over two months since I've posted, and while progress has slowed a bit, there is still forward movement.
A combination of miserably hot Florida afternoons and an unusually busy work load resulted in nothing happening in the afternoons, and what work did occur was only on Sunday mornings. Nevertheless, the trunk is basically done, and along the way I've managed to do a little reupholstering as well.
I confess the trunk project has languished, but I tried to hit at least a little bit each day. As of today it's finally ready for a coat of primer over the etching primer, then a final coating of Harvest Gold. The biggest task was finishing off my welds and working the body filler on the underside and in the trunk. Even though these areas will seldom, if ever, be seen, I like knowing that I've done the best job possible.

Finally! Aligning the tail pan for welding

In addition, I've made an extra effort to seal every seam, nook and cranny with seam sealer to try and mitigate any future rust problems should water ever get in the trunk.
Speaking of, I find it interesting that Chevrolet, and probably all manufacturers of the era, installed drain tubes in the lower gutters of the front and rear windows to drain off any water that accumulated due to leaking windows. Hopefully, I'll do a good enough job so that never happens.
The last area under the car that needed sandblasting was tackled last weekend. I resolved to not stop until it was completely done, because, frankly, I'm sick of crawling around under this car!

Welding done. Almost finished with the trunk!

With the left rear fender well cleaned up, I again applied liberal amounts of seam sealer before giving the whole area a good coat of Rust Seal. When done, the underside of the car will be painted Harvest Gold, with the fender wells black. It's not the way it came from the factory, but I saw a '55 of the same color painted that way about 20 years ago and it stuck with me. It should look really good!

While waiting for the heat to subside, and to keep my motivation, I've also been doing a little reupholstering. I purchase a complete interior from Happy Days Interiors out of California. They sell Ciadella kits at really good prices. What's better, their customer service is outstanding.
I tackled the rear seat back first, as that is the easiest piece. After wrapping the frame of the seat with burlap, I applied multiple layers of batting until I was satisfied that I had a good enough base. I then stretched the new cover over the whole assembly, and it fit pretty darned good. Except...there was a stitching flaw right in the middle of the seat.
I contacted Happy Days, who sent me a return label. They wouldn't send me a replacement until the received the defective item, so I worried that the process could take quite a while. However, withing two weeks of sending the bad cover back, I received the replacement, which was perfect. Thank you, Happy Days!

Seat back round two. Not bad for a rookie!

Prepping the rear seat base...

...for the new seat cover.

Next job is the front seat base. What a difference!

This morning, I did the finishing touches on the trunk, welding in the trunk latch bracket and cleaning out the whole area. I plan to shoot the primer tomorrow or Tuesday, and hopefully the finish coat next weekend.

Latch and brackets in place, ready for a finish coat of Harvest Gold

There is a rather large distraction coming up on Thursday, and I'm not talking about Thanksgiving. The annual Turkey Run is back, and I've got a nice little shopping list ready and a wad of cash. I'll spend the day after Thanksgiving walking off the overeating from the day before.

Bringing up the Rear Part 2

After fabricating and installing the inner patch on the driver's side of the trunk, I discovered that there is an aftermarket panel for that area. However, after reading about the difficulties some folks had trying to make the piece fit properly, I think I'm glad I saved the $80 or so.
Over the past week I've been working on getting the replacement portion of the trunk deck installed. I also found a good used replacement for the spare tire well, which came this week.
The deck went in pretty good, despite my rushing ahead and not triple checking my fit before welding.

New section of deck in place, compared to the old rotted section. A big difference!

I realized, after I had welded in the passenger corner of the deck, but thankfully before I had welded the whole thing in, that I hadn't paid attention to the alignment of the piece relative to the placement of the tail pan. It was correct on the driver's side, but a good half inch lower on the passenger side. I had a good opportunity to find out how good my spot welds were after spending two hours one afternoon grinding and cutting to break the corner free and realign it.

From below. Things are looking MUCH better!

After getting myself back on track, I turned my focus to the other rotted areas of the trunk floor. A large portion of the driver's side of the trunk looked like swiss cheese, a lot of it being in the channels that form the support of the floor. However, the old section of trunk that I cut out just happened to have the same contours, and those areas were still very solid. Recycle!

Recycling the old sheet metal

The extra patching took the better part of the week, working one area, one piece at a time. By Saturday, I was pretty satisfied with the amount of rust holes that I'd eliminated. The remaining pin holes could be filled in with metal fill or even seam sealer. A couple of hours grinding down my sloppy, but solid, welds, and I felt satisfied enough to shoot a coat of etching primer down.

Bit by bit, getting rid of the rust

No more swiss cheese!

Sunday morning, before it got too ungodly hot, I pulled out the sandblaster again and settled in under the car. 60 years of rust, dirt and undercoating were blasted away in an hour.
I mixed up a batch of primer and gave the underside and the trunk floor a good coating, and that's where I'm at now. Next step is to fill in and smooth out my welding with some metal fill, and then I'll finally attack the tail pan. Hopefully, but the end of next weekend, that'll all be done. Hopefully.

Finally seeing some light at the end of the trunk

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.