Progress Thread The "grátis" 1966 Coupe - final sheet metal repairs

SOON.

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I managed to get a folding shade tent from my father-in-law so I can get back to work on the car. It's simply been too hot to work outside under the unrelenting sun.

This also arrived over the weekend. It's definitely a thicker gauge than the original. Feels as thick as the material used for the torque boxes. @horse sence Should I go ahead and install this before I remove the old trunk floors? If it's self-locating it might help keep everything aligned while I work on the back end?

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I managed to get a folding shade tent from my father-in-law so I can get back to work on the car. It's simply been too hot to work outside under the unrelenting sun.

This also arrived over the weekend. It's definitely a thicker gauge than the original. Feels as thick as the material used for the torque boxes. @horse sence Should I go ahead and install this before I remove the old trunk floors? If it's self-locating it might help keep everything aligned while I work on the back end?

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Yes put it in before you remove the trunk floors ,just dont weld to the old trunk floor
 
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I truly am getting closer to getting back to work on this thing. I swear. My weekends will be mostly free starting the 14th (hopefully temperatures will also be much lower by then). I also have two weeks of time off scheduled in mid-October after my fitness test and the college class I'm doing are done. The wife is pregnant with our fourth and final child due in early-November. I have a couple of months to hopefully get the sheetmetal repairs completed before I'll probably have to call it quits to help her deal with the new arrival.

That said, I made a purchase I've been wanting for a while. Reversible! No more sparks in my face!

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Long time no see.

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Having completed tiling the tub in the master bathroom, I got back to work on the '66 today (finally).

I started with the brace, then marked what I wanted to remove and got to cutting.

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And I got the inner rocker about as straight as is going to get. Not bad. I'll use the new outer rocker to help pull it back into shape. At the very least, it's flat.

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A question for @horse sence , My current goals are (in no particular order):
  • Finish the rocker and weld in the floor pan
  • Rust proof and reinstall the cowl
  • Install the trunk brace and new floors
  • Install a new passenger quarter skin
  • Install a new tail panel
  • Install new fender aprons and radiator support
For how many of the things in that list should I leave the car on jacks 100% level? I'm kind of looking forward to getting the car on a cart so I can move it if I need to.
 
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So I'm running into an issue with the new rocker panel. It has a much different profile and is wider than the original by about 3/16".

I'm not sure if there is any way to correct this other than sectioning the whole piece to narrow it? I'm not too concerned with the variation in the width of the top since that will be covered by the door sill. I'll address it if I can, though.

The very bottom lines up fine with the original. I looks like there will be a considerable gap between the inner and outer rocker once the outside is clamped together.

How would you fix this, @horse sence ?

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At least I can say that the inner rocker is nice and straight when it's clamped to the outer.

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So I've decided that what I'm going to do first is cut along the inside of the top of the door sill hump (inboard of where the door sill screws go). I'm going to hammer the bend flat so that it will be the same width as the hump on the original rocker, and bend the inside portion of the outer rocker/remove material as needed to join the two pieces back up. At that point, I'll section more out the outboard flat portion of the door sill if I need to to make the outer section flush with the original.

Sounds complicated, but I'll take some pictures tomorrow that will hopefully make it all clear.
 
So I've decided that what I'm going to do first is cut along the inside of the top of the door sill hump (inboard of where the door sill screws go). I'm going to hammer the bend flat so that it will be the same width as the hump on the original rocker, and bend the inside portion of the outer rocker/remove material as needed to join the two pieces back up. At that point, I'll section more out the outboard flat portion of the door sill if I need to to make the outer section flush with the original.

Sounds complicated, but I'll take some pictures tomorrow that will hopefully make it all clear.
It’s too bad you don’t have access to a metal break, though with all of the crazy angles it probably would be pretty difficult to fit it in there.
 
It’s too bad you don’t have access to a metal break, though with all of the crazy angles it probably would be pretty difficult to fit it in there.
I was thinking the exact same thing. I used one for an afternoon once when I was taking a prep course for my A&P. Nifty tool to have.

Slip a piece of rocker inside and screw it down let it hang over enough to slip the patch rocker over and screw the patch to that ,that may help flush the surface between the old rocker and the patch
I did insert some pieces for reinforcement that I cut from the rest of the new rocker after taking those pictures (kind of like your rocker patch on one of your fastback conversions). I don’t think screwing it down completely would fix the gaps, though. Might help just to better see where I need to remove material, though.
 
Here goes nothin'.

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Not a bad result. I didn't have as much time today. I'll finish fitting this tomorrow. May have to trim a bit more. I think the most difficult part will be setting it up so it welds up as straight as possible.

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I think it's time to weld. It's not perfect, and it'll probably need some filler to be completely flat, but it'll do for a home brew, non-show car.

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I might be tempted to just leave it like this were I more of a redneck.
 
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I cut the front end a little too short, so I used a thin strip of metal left over from trimming to fill the gap rather than just using the welder. Worked pretty well.

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Some of the plug welds didn't penetrate the inner rocker. I had to play with my voltage settings a bit. I'll remedy the ones that didn't take tomorrow. I'm being cautious (slow) on this, so I was only able to get it all welded up tonight. I'll grind everything down and start on the floor tomorrow.

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For reference, here is what the bottom of the inner rocker looked like before.

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It's (more or less) straight as an arrow now.

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While I'm more than pleased with the result, I don't ever want to do this again. At least not unless it's in a nicely appointed shop. :O_o:
 
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