Interior Trim and The Third Row Area ...

The long weekend has provided me with some extra time and extra help. Tim stopped over to help bang out some dents on the passenger rear quarter. The job is impossible on my own, so it is good to have his help. Older bodywork here included drilling about a dozen holes to pull out a dent. Those were welded up after we straightened things out considerably.

Next I moved on to cleaning up the cargo are (third row seat bay) where there was a bit of rust in the pan area with some heavy pitting. An hour's worth of wire wheeling with the angle grinder, sanding, and two coats of extend prepped it for primer. Next step, after cleanup, is a healthy brushed on coat of Eastwood Products Extreme Chassis Black. I'm opting to do this instead of bedliner or the white interior paint. My hope is it will strike a balance between function and looks.

Lastly, I have been hard at work at refinishing all of the interior trim. It has all been pulled, and more than half has been completed. It will (and does) look significantly better when done. Only a few more pieces to go and that will be ready for reinstallation.

Next Up:

• Finish rust repairs on corner of doors and at rockers
• Finish body work
• Paint lower dash (while still in car - eep!)
• Pull steering column and paint

More pics soon!

Body Work Time!

With the headers completed, it is time to turn my attention to the body and prep for paint. Stripping out all of the old body work has been a HUGE chore. The Bondo was more than an inch think in places. I even found it where there was no damage to the panel.

Clearing away the Bondo also revealed where the wagon has been hit in both quarters previously, worse so on the passenger's side. All of that is being straightened out to minimize the amount of filler that has to go back in.

There is some rust to repair, but overall not too bad. 3 out of four doors have the obligatory hole in the corner where the drain plugged, trapping dirt and water, and eventually leading to rust. Both rockers at the back suffered the same fate for the same reason. This has also caused damage to the inner wheelhouse which will also need repair. In one of the photos you can see a close-up of where I have removed the entire corner.

I am fabbing a new inner and outer at this location, and likely will for the other side, too. You can also see that this door has had the corner repaired already. "New" metal (from the roof of a Fairlane I parted out) has been welded in where the rusty metal had been removed. A little filler, and it will blend right in to the rest of the door.

A lot of the paint has been removed, and there is a lot left to go, but each time I work on it now, I feel the project moving forward. I can almost picture it done now!

Headers Are Finished!

After many hours of work, the headers are finished!

These were quite the challenge to take on as I have never done anything at all like this, and it was tough at first. Double, triple and quadruple checking everything as still getting things wrong and having to go back and redo them. But, as time went by, they definitely got easier.

They aren't perfect, or show pieces, but they are beautiful to me. Here are the pictures!

Because I wasn't as concerned about maximzing performance as I was about having something that worked well, I opted to weld the pipes on the inside. They will no doubt outperform the factory truck manifolds that were on the car when I purchased it, and I have a lot more clearance around the bolts for installation.

I also found it was easier to weld up the collector if I cut the end off and did it from the inside. A LOT easier. Since I wasn't worried about dressing the welds and wanted to keep that homemade look, it was a super easy decision.

I also stripped, cleaned up, primed and painted the inside tailgate panel. It looks much better. Still see signs of some of the old dents that I just couldn't work out, but so much better.

This was the first of the large panels (including the third row seats) that I need to refinish. The seats I think I will end up having soda blasted as it will be a ton of work to strip those down. I'll have to pull the out again and decide for certain.

I also had a chance to work on the body a little bit. Still trying to get the body line on the driver's side right. not easy with all of the dings and dents on the body line itself.

So, I took a break for that and start stripping the passenger's side. The doors look pretty good, but the rear quarter was tagged at some point in the past. Ugh! The body work was awful. They at least tried to pull the dents out some. Why pull them when they could have easily bumped them from the inside without drilling holes I'll never know.

And the same is true for the body line at the lower area of the quarter panel. They created it out of Bondo. Nearly an inch think in places. Best part: It wasn't necessary. They built it up without rhyme or reason. There was so much Bondo, that after 45 minutes I still haven't cleared it all from the quarter. Once I get that out, I can finally get a look at what I'm really facing.

Anyhow, time to call it a night!

Started The Bodywork!

Just set things into high gear and got a great jump on the bodywork today, and there are plenty of dents to address! It looks like someone drove this drunk down a street with cars parked up and down it, or they were playing tag, because both sides of the wagon are dented up front to back. But, with a little help from my friend Tim, and a bunch of hammering on sheet metal, I am almost ready to start putting down a layer of filler to true up the panels.

We got the windows, hardware and trim removed from all 4 doors, and in the next couple of days I will be sending my dew wipes from the doors and the tailgate out to be redone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this goes smoothly. If so, I will be set for about $150 which is pretty awesome.

The rear tire is off the car because, unfortunately at some point, someone thought it would be a good idea to flatten out the lip of the wheel well with a set of pliers. I straightened it out as best as I could, but I couldn't true the underside up 100%. I guess if it has to be off, that is the place to do it. The wheel well trim is quite rough, but I picked a decent set up some time back. I will have to see if thwy are a correct fir now since they are off a full-size Merc, but not a wagon. I hope so, because finding even those was almost impossible.

I also got to spend a little time yesterday working on the second header and have the first tube's run tacked up. That's the hardest part, but now that it is done, I can run the other three around it down to the collector. Should be interesting since I will need to work around the steering.

More to come soon...

Door Panel Restoration...

OK, so this is a bit more of an overhaul than a true restoration, but the first panel is done and it looks sooooo much better than before.

This first picture shows the complete panel with a spare used that is very similar in condition to where the completed panel started.

What a difference! But these aren't going to be perfect. The vinyl is 46 years old and has cracks, chips and other imperfections, and this isn't going to be show care, so I'm cleaning these up only so far, and I drew the line at actually repairing the vinyl.

I started by giving the panel a good wash. From an appearance standpoint, it really didn't have much an affect, but was critical to prep for the dye. I opted to use my old standby, Simple Green, to clean the panel.

Next, I carefully removed the backerboard. It was warped (like almost all of this age) and starting to deteriorate. The lower section of the panel was glued down to the backerboard where the lines are. I carefully separated it using a putty knife, and that seemed to work reasonably well. The staples at the edges came out easily, but the vinyl at the edge is very brittle, so care when working with it for all processes was important.

The last step in removing the backerboard with popping it free of the top steel panel. 22 holes were punched through and the points were stamped flat. I used a long, wide-bladed screwdriver to pop these free. It did damage the board at the holes, but left plenty intact for use as a template.

Once off, I had to decide what to use for the new backerboard. I knew I didn't want to use fiberboard of any kind, so I did some looking. Home Depot had a plastic panel smooth on one side, and pebbled on the other that was slightly thinner than the original board and $25 a 4' x 8' sheet. One sheet is all that is needed.

Probably the biggest impact on the appearance was redying the panel. It was already cleaned, so now I had to remove the old "chrome" finish on the thin rule trim. A little quality time with a flat razor blade and it all came off. Then I taped it off. Using SEM Color Coat in medium heavy coats, the dye covered nicely after just two coats without plugging the pattern, running or sagging.

I carefully traced the old panel onto the new material taking care to flatten it out as I worked, and then cut out the perimeter using tin snips. I could have used a saw, but with a little care I could trim out the panel and make a much smaller mess without having to clear an area and set up with tools. I suspect from the way the material cut it is made with fiberglass. It did score and crack pretty easily and cleanly.

Next, I measured out and drilled the holes for where the panel attaches to the metal cap. 20 of the 22 were in line and evenly space. The last two had roughly 1/8" and 1/4" run out. I drilled the holes to be almost exactly the size of the part that would poke through them. They fit very tightly. To keep from cracking the board, I placed a small deepwell socket over the hole and gently (relatively speaking) tapped them down. Then, using a punch, I flattened the tips back over then panel where I could. As tight as the holes were, I have little fear of the panel popping loose.

Here is a close up of the two holes that were out of line from the others.

The holes for the door handles and window cranks I actually waited to drill out until after I mounted the panel. It seems like I was doing it out of order, but it helped me make certain the holes weren't off. They were 1" dia, so I used a paddle bit which made clean holes with a support board behind the to prevent tear-out.

The holes for the door clips were drilled, and then square cuts were made by scoring and snapping small areas out. They aren't as pretty as the factory, but they work well, and the door clips aren't loose.

Next, using double stick foam tape, I cut thin strips and applied it to the back of the vinyl where it glued originally. We'll see how it holds up over time. The edges got the same treatment with a slightly wider slice and seems to hold quite well. If it holds until they are hung, great!

The last thing I needed to complete was the trim. It needed to math the factory chrome trim, but without having to be removed, and it had to be affordable. After trying a couple of options, I ended up with a sealant tape. The chrome isn't quite a bright as some other options, but it performs much better for my purposes, and is a close match on brightness.

I cut 7/16" strips that I laid after supplying a small amount of water to the trim with a spray bottle first. this makes it easier to reposition if need be without trashing the tape.

The end result? I'm happy. I just need to get started on the next three...