Breaks My Heart

As an electrician by trade, I make a couple of trips each year to the Dominican Republic to do mission work for our church. When we stay in the capitol we always stay in the same small hotel. Last year, as I was enjoying the view of the ocean from my balcony, I looked down across the street and noticed, of all things, a '56 Chevy parked in a fenced complex under the trees. From my sixth floor vantage point, it looked pretty nice. And it looked quite out of place in the congested city.
Last week, at the beginning of another trip I again was staying in the hotel overnight, and noticed in the morning that the car was still there, but the tires were now flat. I also noticed that the gate was open to the parking lot. So, I grabbed a cup of thick Dominican coffee and took a little stroll across the street to take a look. For any lover of the tri-five Chevys it was a heartbreaking inspection.
The car had clearly been sitting there for a
long time. And over that time, sitting just one block from the salty ocean breeze, the bane of all classic cars, rust, had eaten a substantial portion of the car away. Mind you, I have no problem seeing an old car in a boneyard that had given up it's life long ago, but here was a perfectly good car that was--is--slowly rusting away due to neglect. Both of the rear roof pillars had rusted through and the roof has actually collapsed onto the car.
I wanted to lift the hood to see if the original engine was still there, but I was afraid that the whole thing would collapse.
As you can see from the photos, there's no rescuing this poor old girl. Really sad.

Pillar Talk Part 2

It's been 10 months since I've had a chance to work on "Old Yeller".
Last December I created a distraction for myself by buying an old house and restoring it. I knew that if I allowed myself to be distracted by car work, I would never get the house done (which would result in one very unhappy wife!) The house project wrapped up last month, but then we had a little visit from someone named "Irma" who has caused a lot of damage to our property, necessitating even more time away from my project.

Replacement welded in place

Today, the weather has roared into town for the day with fierce winds and rain, so my dear wife encouraged my to take the day and go to my happy place.
The last thing I was working on was the driver's side "A" pillar. I had already removed the outer piece from the old donor pillar, so a quick trip into the sandblasting cabinet got it cleaned up and ready to install.
Likewise, I had cut away most of the rusted outer piece on my car, so it didn't take long to grind away the few remaining spot welds. Time was spent this morning carefully trimming and fitting the replacement piece into the car before finally welding it in.

A few small holes but much better than before

This side has a few spots where rust had completely penetrated the metal, but it's still way better than the old pillar. My plan is to pump a good amount of seam sealer
into the pinholes to inhibit any future rusting, as well as to create a solid backing for a skim coat of body filler. Hopefully the project is up and running again!

The hiatus is almost over

This is the first time I've logged on here since last November.
Although the project has stopped momentarily, it doesn't mean I've lost interest. I purchased an investment property in early December that needed extensive renovation, so all other distractions and projects have been put aside. As much as I desperately want to get out in my shop and work on Old Yeller, I know myself too well. That means  I'd redirect my focus and lose sight of my foremost responsibility, which is getting this house done and rented!
Some small things have happened in the past seven months, though. I started the re-upholstering of the seats with the kit I purchased from Happy Days Interiors. I'll do a post on that shortly.
I also redesigned the layout in my shop to accommodate a car lift, which I picked up off of eBay for a really low price. Unfortunately, it needs more work to get operational than I anticipated, but I think I can make it work. That will bring the shop up to a new level of functionality.
I should be back on the car by the end of August. In the meantime, any loyal followers who are still hanging around, thank you for your patience!

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!