NHvette

Well, I've promised these for a few days - finally got around to it.

Thanks to all those who begged me to "don't go away mad - just go away". :jester
I was just pulling everyone's chain. It gets boring here in the off season.


So without further delay ....

Here is a shot of the drivers side WS frame, prior to any repairs:




Note the obvious hole on the windshield mounting surface. Also, there is a
good hole that is visible on the piece that overlaps the pillar. Last, there are
pinholes on the horizontal surface above the big hole and in the vertical
surface below the big hole. One more hole that cannot be seen here is on the
upper edge, where the corner piece meets the bottom crossmember.
All of this rot seemed to begin inside the WS frame.

I debated this for weeks, and finally decided to fix these areas by welding
the areas closed. I started on the outside edge of each hole, and burned
enough thin metal away until the bead would hold. Let it cool and lay another
bead around the edge - until the hole is closed up. this leaves lots of weld to
grind back, but I didn't feel that fabricating a filler piece was worthwhile.

Here it is after laying on the first set of welds:




Well, my welding skills have yet to improve much, but I'm getting damn good
at grinding !! Weld for 10 minutes - grind for 60.

Here is a shot after grinding the first pass of welds:




You can see that the hole has been reduced - but needs more build-up.
After a second round, it looked like this :



I say this side is ready for POR-15 and a skim coat of POR putty to fill in the
voids. Likewise, the small hole that was not visible in the 'before' picture and
the drivers side pillar are looking fine:






Now for the passenger side, which was similar but different (no before pic here).

First pass with the welder looks like this:



First grinding leaves me here:



Second pass completed here:



The passenger side had some rot on the outside edge (gutter).
This is after the first pass:



Finally, the passenger corner and pillar are ready for POR treatment:






Well, the pictures of the painting should be ready by early next week.
I've been busy prepping the old '75 firewall for mounting.

Damn - ever notice that once you clean one piece, you need to clean 'em all. :smash:

Anyway, stay tuned - this birdcage is gonna look NICE by next week.

:seeya


[Modified by NHvette, 6:20 PM 1/14/2003]

97Z

Hey dave, Most of those Pics did'nt work, But the ones I did see were NICE.

NHvette

I've experienced similar 'outages'.
I come back later and they all load up - so sorry for anyone who doesn't get
to see them.

All the pics can be found at http://nhvette.homeunix.com/70vette_pix.htm

zwede

Right click->Show picture worked for me.

I had similar rust issues on my '71. Actually had more rust than that and mine's a Texas car! Frame has barely any rust on it, but it got the w-shield frame.

I made patch panels and seam welded them in. I also set the car on fire not once, but TWICE! Amazingly enough the fire burned two towels but didn't damage the car at all.

NHvette

Yeah Markus, the patch panels for the little rot-through that I had - did not make
sense to me. Plus, they would be in that corner where there are three or four
angles that are compounded together. Tough pieces to fab from sheet shock.

Two fires ? Yikes :eek: :mad
No fires here, yet.

mpro71vette

Looking Good Dave!! :thumbs: :thumbs: :thumbs:

MikeC

Dave you make it look easy.

I'll be starting mine next spring..... mine is too rotted to worry about fixing it so I have another door pillar and windshield frame in waiting.