Door A Explodah

I dunno why, I glanced at the hinge area of the door. There was some flaky loose bubbly paint there… Gee. Picked at it with my finger and the paint came away pretty easily – in big chunks? Got a screwdriver and scratched it a bit… and it went through the metal. Made a sort of sickly scrunch sound. Like putting a screwdriver into some gravel? Awww… I’ll take the door off and have a look?

Door off, onto sawhorses in the driveway. Scratch a bit more with screwdriver… oh man. I’m going to be sick. Paper bag time. Breathe… gee. I’m going to need a new door. Wondering if I can find a matching color I find some used for $100-$150 but then the shipping is $250+. $400 for a new door? Hmm. For $400, at my beginner welder hourly rate of $0.25/hour, that’s 1600 hours of welding. I could probably build a whole new truck out of mig blobs in 1600 hours. I put the door back in the truck. I gotta think about this…

Next day I have another look. Gee. This doesn’t look SO bad. Its just metal. I can grind the bad stuff away and replace. Pretty clear though that the POR-15 from previous owner did nothing but hide the problem for a few years… can’t hide from the screwdriver of truth though…

I take the door back off, get out the grinder. And the mask. And the face shield. Pretty much complete welding attire to protect from the brown cloud that’s about the envelope the area.

Most of the outer skin is just gone after grinding. Some of the second layer is gone too. But there’s a ton of good metal around. This is no big deal? I’m generous with the grinder to get to nice thick metal. I am a bit concerned that what I rebuild needs to fit like the old door. The area I need to be most careful about is where the rubber seal hangs on the door. Need to follow the original lines. Otherwise the door won’t door.

Tin snips and jigsaw, I cut out metal, hammer and bend, freehand repair pieces, then glue them into place with my mig.

Having nobody to show me how this is done I get to experiment with a bunch of different techniques. The metal is nice and thick and the rust is gone I have no trouble with burn through. Lovely to have a big chunk of metal as a heat sink. The inner layer is soon filled. The other trick is lots of small blobs of metal. Zap-zap-zap. Pointillist style. Like Seurat? Gotta be careful though because its easy to have holes between the points. So sometimes after I’ve got the surface where I want it I’ll draw a bead across, melt it all a bit, then grind it back with grinder.

After I’m satisfied with inner layer I spray it all with zinc primer, then start on the outer layer. I’ve got 16g metal so that’s what I use. Even though the door is thick metal, the 16g is much thicker. I cut pieces to rougly the right shape, then grind down until they fit like my eye says they should. Weld one edge into place, then hammer the piece until another edge is in place. Eventually the piece is welded flush. Pretty neat!

End of the day I hose it all down with zinc primer. Tomorrow I’ll be done!

This was a pretty interesting process, build up with mig, then grind down. In one section I had too many pin holes, I needed more heat. So finally I cranked slowly across the whole area real slow, drew a huge fat bead. That did the trick.

What this process taught me is that no matter what, I can just grind all this muck away in the future and do it again. If there’s corrosion, if it starts to come apart, etc, if it looks at me funny… I can grind it away and do it again. I’m empowered!

Last little bit went real slow. I used a bright light to see any pits or holes, fill them with weld blob, then grind down. Weld it all, grind it all, find more pits, repeat. But finally it was good enough. Hosed it all down with vht suspension paint:

This maybe took me 10 hours of work? I reinstalled the door. It is lovely to see, smooth to the touch. The black paint isn’t really notable.

Most frustrating thing though… this is the best most complex work I’ve done and its pretty much invisible to anyone. I gotta open the door and point them into the hinge area and even then it isn’t really clear how much new metal is there.

Anyway. Now the driver’s door is looking at me funny. Looks like a lesser version of the same issue. Wonder how much easier it will go with my new skillz?

Bubbling Paint on the A Pillar (and other assorted rust bubbles)

For a while I’ve been casting sidelong glances at the top of my a pillar. Paint there is sort of bubbling. A bit.

Try not to think about it because its so horrible. What if whole a-pillar is just a giant bar of rust? Is that a fatal problem?

Today I got out the step ladder and went at that rust bubble with a screwdriver.

I didn’t take a picture before I started but it was just blue paint that had bubbled a bit. But it was also a bit soft to the fingers. So it was paint over something that wasn’t solid.

I scratched the paint off with a flathead screwdriver, then kept scratching at all the softness, the bubbling brown rust, until I’d explored the limits of the badness.

Unfortunately the rust extended to under the windshield seal, which means I can’t fix it with the mig unless I remove the windshield.

Here is right after I started to scratch:

After I’d scratched and ground it clean, then painted with ZeroRust.

I drove the car to my local awsome glass shop. They said… um… this isn’t exactly a… ‘rotisserie restoration’… the windshield will probably break if we remove it… prolly you should put in a temp fix and do the welding when the windshield needs replacement.

Just as I got home my wife got home from her moms, she handed me a half used pack of JBWeld Steel Stick. Age Unknown…

So I tore off a chunk, worked it for a minute and then jammed it in the rust hole, pressed it way up into the hole using a screwdriver. Kept pushing until it was jammed hard with whatever epoxy that is. My goal was to press out any voids.

When I was done it looked like an old hornets nest.

Then nearby were some other small bubbles in the paint… sure enough these were hidden rust holes. I gave it the same treatment except I could grind all the metal clean with my angle grinder, cleaned the underneath as well as I could, then hosed it down with some coats of zinc paint. And then I repeated that work on 2 other rust holes.

After a few hours the zinc was dry enough to weld. Because there was no seal nearby I filled the holes with zaps from the mig welder. Then grind the welds down. Pretty nice.

The main thing is to give it two small zaps, then wait until the metal is warm to the touch. Generally a minute between zaps. This keeps the heat way down, avoids warping the metal or catching the car on fyre.

Just starting to weld up a larger hole. Lots of time to take pictures while waiting for the metal to cool…

Right before I close up the welds with the final blobs I give the hole a generous blast of zinc paint. Maybe help to seal up the backside of the new metal.

Finally grind the welds down most of the way, then paint with VHT Epoxy Suspension Paint. To cover the welds I used 4 very light coats with 10 minutes between. The jbweld was thirsty though, it took 3 heavy coats, just kept sucking up the paint, which I think is fine.

Started raining last night.

I am wondering how to help reseal that windshield rubber until that distant day when the windshield comes out. Supposed to use urethane glue to hold rubber onto the metal and glass…

Tail Repair, Tailgate

Leaning into the back of the truck I put some pressure on the tailgate and noticed it creaking. Bounced it a bit with my weight and the entire bottom seam was flexing. The entire bottom seam was rusted out.

That cannot stand!

First I ground away all the bad metal. And the sealant. And then it was really true that there was no bottom seam at all.

I welded in a bunch of tiny scrap pieces. Went well, took a few hours.

Then noticed nasty stuff on the outside. Oh well, might as well fix it.

Finally back on the truck with mismatched paint:

Whhaaaa! A Hefty Pair of those Nasty Rocker Panel Ends

Can’t fit THAT on the album cover.

I was going to ignore the rocker perforation but wife had an opinion this once… “Well… You can’t leave it like that.”

Uh… honey? I’m tired? I feel like I’m getting done with this welding stuff. This manual labor is starting to make me hurt.

Ok, well we’ll see I guess.

I started on the passenger side at about 2pm after welding all morning. And somehow everything went right. Got it done in about 2.5 hours. Pretty fast I think.

Yeah, in hindsite this does look aweful. But no water into the cabin. How bad can that be?

Ground away all the bad metal and realized there was enough good metal that I could do this bottom part with a single piece. I went with the tried and true “weld some of it in, then hammer and grind it to fit” technique. And that worked great just this once.

I was pretty happy with how quickly that came together. So the next day I plan to zap the driver’s side, which has slightly worse rust:

Well it turned out there were some significant differences. Enough metal had gone by-by that I had to make multiple complex pieces. And that took a lot of time. The upper bit went well but it was a u-shaped piece that needed to curve in 2 dimensions. I fit the piece and then cut darts out of it so it could bend. This took 3 hours.

Then ground away the bad metal in the rocker. The backside and inside of the rocker are rusted and need to be cut away and replaced with new metal.

Here I had to make a pretty complex piece with a cereal box.

I mean look at that thing… and then folded, welded, folded again, welded more. Complicated. And this is just the end of the rocker tube.

Trace the piece on the sheet, then cut it out with jigsaw. Thank goodness I have that bosch jigsaw, best tool ever. Cuts like a damn laser.

Was tough going to weld that piece in. Not a lot of room for the torch. Welded the seam on the outside, then welded it on the inside.

Then I zapped the inside of the rocker as much as possible with zinc paint.

Then fold the panel shut and weld that seam. See what a complex shape that is! I’m impressed.

Then make the outer wheelwell lining.

Weld into place with darts, then hammer the tabs over and weld the seams.

Then grinding:

Yes, insanely strong.

This one side ended up taking all day.

 

A Yucky Little Hole Is Fixed

One of the land cruiser logo stud holes had rusted through an perforated all around. About a 2.5×2.5″ section.

This went really easy.

Im getting lots better about controlling the heat. Pretty much only do short tacks now. Let the weld cool before I put down another one.

I even checked from the back in bright sun and no pinholes. I chalk this up to my using more heat and hitting the metal in shorter bursts. Got better penetration, no pinholes. Awesome!

Lots More Welder-ing On That Truck

Have been really busy fixing rust.

First was the passenger side rear quarter panel. Its just that little bit of rust above the mud flap?

Well, I cut in a bit large in case I found anything interesting.

Yeah… that’s not good. I need to see better, get better access…

That is the wire that tells the car that the rear passenger door is open. It goes through a big giant piece of something yummy. Some rust stuff? Filler? JBWeld? I have no idea. I pryed it loose with a screwdriver and found the underside was in really great shape! But the wire was solidly embedded into it. I cut the wire and spliced in a new one.

Then got to work grinding away and replacing bad metal.

This job went much easier than the driver’s side because the quarter panel still had its base and back side. It was good to cut away a big area for access and I was able to weld the piece back in when I was done.

Again the 16g sheet makes for some really strong wheel well arches. I left the bad metal in place to use as a form, cut it away once it was time to weld in its replacement.

The final piece of wheel arch here was sort of tricky. Had to do some Vice Origami(tm). Was surprisingly difficult to get a piece curved in 2 directions and with funny angled sides. And I screwed it up a little.

See once its welded in there is a triangle gap. Darn!

That is the last time I’m freehanding a complex metal piece. Cereal box template from now on!

So I fill that triangle with a piece I had laying around:

Once its all snug and welded in place I grind the extra away. Simple!

That double-curved boxed section is incredibly solid. Like wow.

Then weld in a new piece and get to grinding.

And finally… I hit it with filler. Ouch!

Nope, this isn’t a pro job, that’s for sure.

But it is strong!

 

 

Finally a welded patch done mostly well

I talked to the maker of my MIG, they pointed me to a place in north Carolina that sells parts for it. Got a new wire sleeve and a new nozzle for $17. Sweet!

That’s good news. The better news is that the old nozzle was about 1cm too short, so wasn’t getting good gas coverage of the weld. AND the wire sleeve was sticking, it was just a plastic straw, this new one has a coiled wire housing, much stiffer and should work better.

And the best news is that both these things have massively improved my ability to weld. Live and learn.

So today I took issue with the second patch that I’d made:

Since it wasn’t raining or snowing I made a move on it. Ground it away and found the rust soup I expected. So I got out the ‘ol grinder and cut out all the old metal. And then cut it in a nice rectangle so it’d be easy to make a piece.

Then I cut out a conservatively larger piece of 16g and then sat by the hole and ground it down until it fit.

Here I screwed up. Believe it or not the metal you add with the mig wants to go in the groove between the metal. So when I mig’d this tight fiting piece along the bottom it pressed up against the top and so then it dint’ fit any mores.

You can see now that there’s a diagonal bend in the panel from the patch to the upper right… Meh.

Something else I noticed, this was good metal to good metal and the tack welds were so solid. And it was really easy to fill the whole thing. When I was done with grinding there was just a single hole to redo. Much better than welding to bad/thin metal where attempting to fix a hole means blowthrough and more hole.

Here is after the first grind. The gap is mostly solid metal. Success.

Welded the holes and ground again. Solid!

Then hit it all with primer and it started to rain.

Wish the weather was better. Anyway. Planning to paint it soon… Gotta wait for a warm day I think. Right now its raining and sleeting.

 

 

Redeeming A Previous Welding Crime

Got sick of looking at this horrific patch I applied when I first started welding on the truck. I literally cut out a square of 24g and slapped it over a rust hole, then welded the edges. It just never stopped looking grotty. And after a month I figured it warn’t going to get better on its own…

Square patch in the upper right… its gotta go!

So… I got out the grinder and took out the welds. And found a soup of rust and misery just hiding back there to terrify me.

I don’t know what I expected to happen. I guess this was just a total lack of clear thinking. The black stuff is dynamat.

So then its clear that problem is worse than I thought, that I need to just disappear a bunch of bad metal.

Put on the cutting disk and take it away.

The thing is, there’s no point being precious about a little rust hole. Its just a huge waste of time to try and save it. Cut it all away and put in good metal. Much much easier and will be durable.

The trick is to get the new piece to fit nicely. Here I made a boo-boo and didn’t trace a nice square rectangle, I got sloppy with the angle grinder and cut out a trapezoid. So then I put on a grinding disc and made it back into a rectangle, or at least something with straight edges.

Then I cut out some 16g with the jig saw and ground it and the hole until they agreed about the shape.

Then magnets to hold the piece into place.

Interesting thing, tack the bottom edge where its flush. Then hammer the rest of the edges until they’re flush too. Just slowly coerce the thing to be flush. Once a point is flush then tack it.

This doesn’t look great but its fine. I tack the bottom edge where its flush, then the top edge can be pushed into place. No big deal.

Once the first tacks are done the magnets go away, just tack around the new metal.

Then I grind the tacks smooth, and finally I weld the seam, a butt weld. Weld about an inch at a time and let it cool. Once I’ve got a whole lap done I grind it all down.

Because I’m a terrible welder there are 10 places with holes in my welds. I weld these holes up, then grind them down to find one more hole.

Unfortunately its now snowing hard so I need to stop. I hit it all with metal etch primer and put everything away until later.

Because I used 16g the new metal is really damn strong. Looks good inside and out. Next sunny day I’ll grind the welds down smooth and paint again. This is much better and more permanent than the old patch technique. And now I’m not afraid of cutting metal away. I’m glad this was a nice flat section.

Cheers!

Spare Tire Holder

I’ve had the spare tire holder sitting in my garage since I got the truck, just sitting in a corner gathering cob-webs with all the other spare bits I’d obtained from the previous owner. No idea where it goes, how to install. Why didn’t he install it?

Once when I had some POR15 left over I painted the rusty thing with it a glossy black, why not. Just was careful not to get it into the winder mechanism.

POR15 on the spare tire holder in Feb 2013.

When I was at TorFab I hit up Tor for the install Beta and he gave me the bad news: Normally the rear frame of the truck is an open “C”, the C facing inside. My frame is custom and the “C” has been closed with a welded plate. The spare tire holder bolts to the frame, to the bottom side of the top of the “C”. Since I don’t have a “C” anymore I’ll need to find an alternative.

Now I’m preparing for the big trip I do want a spare tire but don’t want to take up a bunch of space with it, I need to get that spare tire holder installed.

Come up with a plan, I’ll bolt it on with hefty bolts!

First, cut off the ends so the span fits between the frame rails.

Angle grinder made short work of this.

Really amazing how quickly a cutting disk can do this. Metal? Sheesh!

Then bolt some angle iron onto the frame, bolt the tire holder to that?

Go to the Home Despot, buy 3/8″ angle iron, buy stainless bolts, washers and nuts.

Cut angle iron and then paint it all with VHT epoxy paint.

3/8″ steel angle cut to size with the super tool!

Stuff waiting to dry in the sun.

Angle grinder can cut these in about 15 seconds.

The whole ensemble after painting with VHT epoxy.

3/8″ stainless bolts, washers and nuts.

Next evening the paint is pretty dry, not dry enough to paint again but dry enough to go under the truck.

Order is important here.

1) Drill holes in angle iron brackets using drill press.

2) Estimate where the brackets go on the frame, mark where holes go.

3) Drill holes in frame.

4) Thread bolts from backside of frame into brackets (with washers), and tighten a bit.

5) Put spare tire holder onto brackets.

6) Drill through bracket and tire holder span

7) Attach bolts from span to bracket

8) Tighten the crap out of everything.

9) Paint it all with Fluidfilm AR, especially the winder mechanism.

A bit tricky to get the bolts through the frame from the inside, I hold the bolts with a socket. Needed to enlist my son and his little hands to help

Once everything is bolted together its VERY strong. Dang.

Home crafted spare tire bracket – bracket, stage right.

My home crafted spare tire bracket… bracket.

Putting the wheel on:

I realize I don’t know how to work the winder. There is a slot but I’m not sure what is supposed to be used to turn it, or if its even reachable with the tow hitch.

Under the drivers seat there is a post jack, behind it on the drivers side passenger footwell are a pair of clips and a rod with hook on the end. The hook fits into the spare tire mechanism, but the that piece is too short to reach out from under the car… I dig around in my spare bits and on the floor is another rod! With a  square attachment. I assume there is supposed to be a crank thing but its not to be… I use vice grips and crank the wheel up. No problem. Super secure. I’ll check the bolts after a few days.

Fluidfilm AR on spare tire holder. Stuff is pretty solid, like frozen snot.

Very Good Tool – Makita Variable Speed Angle Grinder – 9564CV

Oh my gosh, where has this been all my life? I bought it to grind off the old shock tube before taking it to TorFab. $130 at Grainger with super-company discount. I just bought it because I needed it and didn’t have time to shop. Man did I luck out, this thing is a gem. I think in intrinsic goodness its up there with my Bosch Jigsaw. This thing cuts through metal like butter. Simply amazing what those discs can tolerate, spinning pieces of molten metal away. With a wire-wheel it takes off rust like there’s no tomorrow. Wear eye protection though! Model I got is the Makita 9564CV. The good:

• Soft start – the motor winds up slowly, comes up to speed gently instead of torqueing your arm when you switch it on
• Really damn powerful – when grinding you can really lean on it, motor maintains the speed electronically. 13 amps!
• Variable speed – cutting you want high speed, grinding and flapper wheel you’ll want it spinning slower.
• Narrow head – fits into tight area in the frame
• On off switch – the switch is excellent. Requires a positive motion to turn it on, but entire switch is a trigger, if you tap it the machine switches off. I was worried that it might be hard to turn off but its not, and I’ve never accidentally switched it off either.

The bad

• Weight – it is heavy, especially if your trying to use it one handed from a half-situp.
• The guard – the spark guard is a cheap little round piece of metal. Pretty flimsy compared to the rest of the unit. Its sort of tough to adjust.
• No spin brake – ideally when I switch it off it would stop instantly, or in a hurry so I can put it down. this unit spins for a while.
• I sort of wish it was reversible. In tight locations there’s only one way to get the disc into play and that can result in one being showered in sparks and burning grit. I wish it was reversible so I could send the sparks the other way. For now dress appropriately!

UPDATE 4/8/2015:

WORD OF WARNING: PADLOCKS ARE USELESS.

Had a trunk locked with padlocks, lost the keys… these are home depot master locks, $15 for two, so nothing real special.

First I tried the old compound bolt cutters that I inherited from my grandfather. Not enough leverage I managed to create a bit of a scratch in one, but that was with gut busting force. The lock held up really well.

So… I’ve got this angle grinder… it can certainly do it but probably a lot of time and work… I expect this will be easier than cutting open a geode but not by much. I put on the earmuffs, eye protection, thick work suit… Ok kids, stand way back and plug your ears… Start up the disc and apply gentle pressure…

bzzzt…

Lock is cut in about 3 seconds.

For the next lock I apply more pressure and I’m through in about 0.5 seconds, almost like the lock wasn’t there. I could have cut faster but was afraid of cutting into the trunk.

So… padlocks… they’re for looks. Nothing is safe from the angle grinder. Should have figured if it could cut quartz it could cut everything else with ease.