Reskinned A Door From An Old Donor!

After fighting with the driver's door for more time than I care to admit, I finally caved and purchased a donor door that I have had my eye on for some time. It was rust-free and aside from a couple of very minor marks, dent-free.

So why didn't I just bite the bullet and buy it instead of messing around with all of the body work? Because the donor door is from a 4-door hardtop, so there are no window frames. That means I either have to move my window frames, or I have to reskin the original door.

Since my doors are very solid, and the only rust I have in any of the doors is a small hole in the corner of the door skin, and because it looks like there are a lot of ways to have things go wrong moving the frame, I opted to reskin.

Now I'll start by saying I didn't take pictures of this door, but I will be doing the DS rear door as well, and will document the work I do to that one. It will be a little harder due to the shape, so it will be a better subject. Anyhow, here's what was involved!

After looking over both doors about a dozen times to make sure measurements, body line, mount points and all other essential details were the same, I dug in. Remove the donor panel FIRST. If anything goes horribly wrong, I still have my original door. Using a hammer, two different sized screwdrivers, a pair of pliers and a drill with my Eastwood weld-cutter I cut out the welds, and carefully peeled back the bottom and one side of the door edge to about 90°. The other end I lifted, but only enough to pop it loose.

In some areas the lip is quite wide and will lift easily. In others, there is maybe 1/4" width wrapped around the edge, and those were the most challenging to peel back. My biggest concern was distorting the metal on the front side of the panel when I lifted the edge. I can safely say this is unavoidable. It didn't happen in all places and it wasn't severe in any, but it did require a small amount of filler to true up the edge when reinstalled.

As it turns out, this was not to be the biggest concern after all. When you take sheet metal and put a 180° tight radius bend in it, it work hardens the metal at the bend. When you attempt to take that bend out, or when you attempt to put it back in again, you can (and likely will) split the seam.

In my case, 3/4 of the bottom and roughly a third of one end split and separated. This required welding the seam. Now I'm no expert welder, but since I didn't notice the issue until after I permanently removed the original door skin, I didn't have much choice but to make it work. Using low heat I just worked moving around a lot so as to not distort the panel and just gave it a little zap until I dotted everything together. A little work with the grinder, and it was stitched up. This really wasn't that hard, just time consuming and a bit stressful.

The unfortunate part of having to do this (beyond the extra work of having to weld it up) was it all had to be clamped up which meant I had some additional putty work to do at the edge. Still, when all is said and done, the door looks so much better than the other panel ever could have, with considerably less filler. Actually probably less that you would need for your typical door of this age. As an added bonus, I didn't have to remove/transfer the door tag to a new door and the rivets remain unaltered. Not a huge deal for me, but that might be more of a consideration if your vehicle is rare or you would like to preserve provenance.

When I do the next door, I promise lots of pictures and more details on how it was done. Hopefully it will provide you with enough info to do this yourself if you have been on the fence about tackling something like this.

Refinished Mercury console and starting clean-up in the third row seat well...

While I continue to work on the body on finish up the interior trim, I have some new pics!

First is the "correct" '67 Mercury console that I located after restoring the '68 Galaxy console. It was definitely the way to go since it houses the controls for the power windows and power locks. And, I decided to go white with the console as I think it will set off against the black carpet better than the black console would. The controls still need to be cleaned up and transferred to the white housing. This was originally red...

Next up a a couple pics of the third row/cargo area. Lots of cleanup in there, but no rust holes. After a lot of wire-wheeling, I applied two coats of Rust-Fix, a coat of zinc primer, a coat of Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator, and a final coat of Extreme Chassis Black. Let's hope rust is never an issue there. Oh yeah, I also added in the seat belt brackets so the kiddies will have seat belts to keep them safe. (Note: Sorry, no pic of the finished black available yet. On my to-do list.)

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!