Nose Job - First Surgery

I've decided to add a tilt-nose conversion to my car so that getting to all the under-hood parts is a little more manageable.  It will increase access to the engine bay from this. . .

To this!

The first step is to check that all the body panels are fitting properly and/or that you know they will fit.  The rear body was attached and the door skins installed to check the gaps.

As you can see, the passenger door fits pretty well at the strike side.  I decided to tweak it a bit, however to get the gaps even tighter.

The driver side did not.  There were large gaps.  I've already ground down the edge of the door to accept a fiberglass extensions.

This is what they look like now.

Passenger

Driver

Next I set the nose in place to check the front gaps.  They are a little harder to gauge as there is some warping to the fiberglass which keeps the nose assembly from staying put on both sides.  However, they appear to have too much gap.  I will adjust the final gap later once the tilt mechanism is complete.

The first step of the actual face-lift procedure is to permanently attach the original "hood".  I secured the hood from the bottom side with temporary screws.  I'll remove them and add a bridge of new fiberglass over the transition later.

Then I ground down a lip on the top surface of both the hood and the body and fiberglassed the hood into place.  Bondo and primer complete the transition.  I've cut a new opening in the "scoop" so that it is actually functional.  I'll mount a screen behind it later.

The next step is to reinforce the fiberglass nose so that it can withstand all that moving around without breaking.  It is designed to be supported by the metal unibody frame, so it needs some new bulkheads and other supports to be rigid enough to handle the new stresses.

I cut new baffles out of cardboard for each side to fit in the front of the nose beside the headlight buckets.  This is the most critical upgrade as it is where the hinges will be mounted and the weight of the entire nose supported when it is done.

(Note that I notched around the auxiliary light sockets - I've got a new set of aftermarket fog lights that will be going in there later.

The patterns were then transferred to 1/4" foam core, and coated with two layers of fiberglass matt, which provides a temporary non-structural framework for the fiberglass.  I had to brace the tall side of the assemblies until the fiberglass dried.

Cruisin'

Wow!  It's been a while since my last post!  Over two years!

I've done some work since then, but only in very small bits and pieces until the last week or so.

I purchased an electronic ignition module and got it installed.

Of course one of the little posts had to drop down into the distributor requiring the removal of the distributor, turning the engine back over to 6 degrees of dead center, and aligning the distributor again. . .

I also installed a new aftermarket cruise control system.






















The system uses a  pulse generator which connects to the speedometer cable.  It is a fairly bulky attachment (+/- 4" long) and I had to shorten the original cable sheath a bit to get it to fit in under the steering gear assembly.  The good news is that it works!  The bad news is that now my speedometer doesn't (apparently the install somehow over-stressed the hairspring).

As a safety feature, the system requires a cut-off switch for both the brake and the clutch.  The brake attaches to existing brake light wires, but the clutch required installation of a new contact switch (above right).

There are not many options for mounting the throttle linkage connection because of the low clearance in under the hood, and the configuration of the throttle linkage arms.  I finally settled on the location shown.  It is relatively unobtrusive, and appears to work well.

Even so, it was very tight getting a nut in between the existing linkage rod seat and the bottom of the radiator overflow strut.

The control module fits nicely in the driver's side bulkhead just in front of the firewall.

The cabin controls replace the original turn signal bar.  I chose this particular model system because it has one of the most convenient and unobtrusive controls.  (unlike the factory AC knobs in the background - that's a separate project coming later. . .)

I also installed my new replacement mirrors:

Cr@*ck!

The good news is that I've finished all the rear fiberglass repairs. . .

. . . and got it back on the chasis (sort of).

Then there's the bad news, and the really bad news.

The bad news is that the fiberglass body doesn't fit on the metal chasis. 

The passenger side all fits like it's supposed to, but the drivers side (surprise!) is riding too far forward by about 1/2".  It is binding between the metal frame and the body panel at the drivers side rear door pillar.  The rocker length is exactly the same on both sides, and there is the necessary room between the chasis and body panel at the bottom, but the top corner is binding.  I've triple-checked all the measurements, and the fiberglass appears to be the same on both sides.  So apparently the chasis frame is out of whack.  This is not a complete surprise as that area had been mangled and reworked in the past, but I would have expected the result to be too short, not too long.

Oh well . . . It appears that if I take the body back off, cut the metal pillar, and weld it back together, the fiberglass body will slide back into position where it should be.

Which is just as well, I guess, since both mufflers are riding higher than before, and the body needs to be cut back some around them anyway.

The really bad news is that in the process of working on the fiberglass one evening the body jumped off the sawhorses and fell to the floor, cracking the windshield. 

I'm pretty sure spares can be purchased.  I'm pretty sure they're really expensive.  I'm also pretty sure you can't just FedEx those things.  In Texas you can still pass inspection with cracked glass so long as your wipers still work.  So. . . I'm thinking I can progress as-is for now, and once the car is legal again and proven itself around town, I'll need to go on a road trip to pick up a new one.

Throwin' Glass and Slingin' Putty

This week the repairs on the rear body continue.  First I added a second layer of fiberglass to the layer created last week.  Then, with a solid framework to build on, I began to reshape the exterior of the panel.  I made several templates of the undamaged side to use as a go-by.



As you can see the shape of the panel was considerably different than the other side.

After considerable filler and sanding, it's nearing the correct shape again.

Unfortunately, one of the required adjustments was still structural.  The pillar at the door needed to be cut loose and offset a half inch toward the outside.  This put strain on the newly repaired strut.  So, it needs to be repaired yet again. . .



 Once the lower repair is completed, the aluminum strut can be reattached, and the cause of the problem will finally and permanently be eliminated.





Loosing a Few Pounds

It would seem I've avoided the remaining fiberglass work as long as possible.  The rear of the car has been hidden under a blue tarp in the back yard since the initial demantling several years ago.  It has several of the kind of knicks and tears at the wheel wells and around the muffler cut-outs that one would expect.  It also has stress fractures around the rear hatch hinges and at one rear corner that are due mostly to being a 40 year old peice of fiberglass. However, the portion that consumed my weekend was the drivers side rear fender which (on the surface) doesn't seem too bad.

From the several layers of exposed fiberglass and bondo, and the various shades of primer and paint, it is obvious that there has been major work here in the past, but the shape appears to match the other side of the car and have all the right lines and curves. . .

Until you look at the back side of the panel . . .

For comparison, here is the passenger side. 

The black line in each photo is where the metal chasis mates with the fiberglass, and the grey part is that part of the body exposed to the wheel well.  Aside from the various bits of recycled blue plywood, cardboard, and metal riveted, screwed or otherwise attached to the panel in the upper photo, note that there is a very distinct reveal in the lower photo (near the bottom of the panel) that is missing in the upper photo.

Step one was to remove all the bits and appurtances and determine how bad the original break was.  This is where things started to head south.  After excavating approximately 3/8" into the back side of the panel through what was obviously field-applied fiberglass and body filler I encountered this:

Chicken wire! When fully exposed it looked like this:

Over a foot tall and at least that wide again at the top!  The question remained "where is the original fiberglass?"  So I kept grinding. 

I never did find it - which means someone refabricated this entire section of the body from scratch! 

As mentioned before, from the outside it looked accurate, but now knowing what I was seing I started to notice the small differences.  For instance, the reveal around the wheel arch seemed to be a thicker profile (it had to be to compensate for all that additional filler), and the reveal where the door panel overlaps the fender was only half the depth it should have been (no wonder the door wouldn't close!). 

After all the exploratory surgery was done, I ended up with a thin sheet of pure bondo that nevertheless still had roughly the correct shape on the exterior.

These are the piles of stuff that was removed.  (Well most of it.  There's probably that much dust again laying all over my shop now. . .)

This is what it looked like with a new layer of fiberglass installed.  The blue bits are painters tape showing through where my exploratory surgery got a bit too close to the surface or where rivets/screws pulled through from the original repair.  The large blue patch at bottom right is a piece of tape pulling the end cap into the correct position.

Time for a cold beer to give the new work time to set. . .  Which is when I got the second nasty surprise. 

This repair is by far the largest piece I've had to do to date, which means it's the largest batch of resin I've had to mix.  Apparently I got the percentages off by a bit.  Apparently a large bit.  After 4 hours it still was barely setting at all!  A consultation to my favorite search engine provided the consensus that the mix was probably a bit shy on activator, and it would eventually set.

 

Recommendations were to apply heat.  A propane torch appeared to do little except set fire to the surface if held too closely or too long a time in one spot, so that was quickly abandoned.  So (in spite the fact that it's summer, and 90 degrees F outside) I placed a space heater in front of the panel and waited another hour; which had no effect other than to raise the temperature of the shop to about 100 degrees F.  In disgust I closed down the shop for the night.

The next morning, there was still no progress, so I proceeded with sanding the rest of the rear body.  I also patched a structural tear on the same side where the window pillar joins the roof:

Before

After

After much sanding, the car is starting to look an almost uniform color.  (The dark bits are shadow lines).  I've still got some sanding to do at the front drainage tray, at the rear, and of course at the problem area.  I've also still got to patch up all those smaller blemishes noted earlier.  Still, a marked improvement! 



You'll note that the body is now back outside. The last tip for helping stubborn fiberglass resin to set is to expose the piece to direct sunlight where the UV rays can assist the heat in activating the curing process. Would you believe it worked? When I left for work this morning it was as sticky as ever, but when I got home, it was hard and dry!