Spot-Welding Part 1

I've spent the last two days working on the firewall and the inside of the drivers side welding. I've gone through nearly one pound of innershield wire with the spot welding and that's actually quite a bit given how much I've completed.

Below you can see the passenger side of the firewall.  I have filled all of the holes finally and gotten rid of the remaining sheet metal screws holding panels in place. 

Here's the drivers side of the firewall with the remaining holes filled.  In addition, I've also filled the location on the lower left where the E-Brake cable went through the firewall.  We'll be using some blocks instead of the E-Brake :)  This is much cleaner and it will also clean-up the underside of the car.

Here's the inside view of the drivers side of the car.  As you can see based on the stripes of bare steel there are 3 braces providing support to the floor pan.    I've been spacing the spot welds no more than about 1" apart so there should be plenty of structural support.



This shows the inside rear view of the drivers side.  As you can see from the picture there are a few structural pieces missing from the inside.   These were torched by the previous owner in order to make room for the tubs.  I'm going to try to fabricate some sections of steel that should also provide more structure to the shell.  However, I wanted to get all of the spot welding completed on the inside before I took on that project.   The inner/outer wheel wells were a bit difficult to get a good weld so I also add some small strips of weld about 5" apart around the radius so it shouldn't go any where.

This is the view from the outside of the car and you can see everywhere that's bare metal has been hit by spot welds.  If I were to guess based on what I completed the last two days it's probably somewhere around 400-450 spot welds.  The fun has just begun, I am only about 15-20% through the spot-welding. I have two more rolls of innershield so hopefully that will last me through this week.

Body mock-up

Today I went through and assembled a portion of the front of the car to ensure that the frame that was created would work without additional modifications.  As you can see from the front view the radiator core support fits well and so do the fenders. I was a bit concerned since the reference points from the Chevelle frame diagram that I had really don't match those on a Oldsmobile.  however after shortening the frame about 3-1/2" and then replacing the front frame section the overall frame works just fine except for one issue.  The issue is the front body mounting holes at the firewall which appear to be about 3/8" to 1/2" lower than a Chevelle from my measurements. During the mock-up below I added about 5/16" to 3/8" of washers to help make up the gap and it appears to have worked out well.

From the front view below you can see where filling the firewall has cleaned up the engine compartment.  The only problem was that I covered one of the fender bolt holes.  This was easily remedied with a drill and a few minutes work.

The front side view below shows that for the most part everything appears to align but what you don't see is the large gap between the door and quarter panel.  After I finish the welding on the body shell I'll then be purchasing new doors, fenders and radiator support.  My plan is to still use the original SS hood so when the car is finished the hood and roof will be the only original exterior sheet metal left on the car.  

This view shows the drivers interior kick-panel that I had to rebuild.  After replacing the rocker panel the lower firewall section was pretty rotted and thus I ended up replacing a large section of the inner structure. I did the same on the passenger side as well but the drivers side was much worse.

Welding the Frame

This weekend was spent working on the frame which to be honest was something I was both avoiding due to the complexity and eager to finally finish. Finishing this part of the build really puts me on the other side of the project where things can finally start going back together.

The picture below shows the frame that originally came from a 1966 Oldsmobile with the shell of on the frame.  As you can see the frame "horns" (the area from the front of the A-Arm) they have a contour outwards where the Chevelle frame is straight.  

The first step in the process was to strip the frame down.  The rear was quite easy, just four bolts that hold the control arms on was required in the rear. The front as was a bit more work but it easier since I didn't have to worry about saving any of the hardware this time.  In all it took about 3 hours to get the entire frame stripped down to the point where i could start working on the frame horns.

The picture below shows the frame after I cut off the Oldsmobile frame horns and then the Chevelle ones leaning on the frame.  When I cut the frame horns off there was a lot of material from the firewall and carpet from some of the previous owners (i.e. mice), they were completely full of stuffing.

The next step as A LOT of grinding and fitting.  I spent probably 5-6 hours trimming both the frame and the Chevelle horns, which took most of the day on Saturday.  However, it's critical to make sure that you do take your time doing this to make sure you get a nice fit.   It's hard to tell from the pictures below but the end result was much better than I expected.  I ended up taking some sand bags out and putting them on the frame to ensure that things didn't move during welding.

Here's the view from the bottom of the frame during welding.  Once I was able to finish welding the sections back together I went back and added a few gussets to help provide some strength where there were larger gaps after putting things back together.

The picture below shows the end result which I thing came out quite well.   Something worth noting is that since the frame came from a Oldsmobile the actual dimensions from the Chevelle forum I found didn't match exactly based on the alignment holes.  However, overall everything appears to measure correctly.

The next step is to bolt the body back to the frame and then assemble the front end of the vehicle to make sure that everything fits correctly.  After that is completed I'll then take it apart again and do the final welding of the body shell as well as box the frame.

I have 3 more days of work this week then the remainder of the year for vacation time so I'll be able to make plenty of progress the remainder of 2011.

Finishing the body shell

This is the first post for 2011, finally!  Needless to say many other projects have gotten in the way as well as a lack of vacation time, until now.  I spent the last week in the garage finishing several of the details on the body shell so that I can get it to a point where I can begin spot welding it together. 

The first area was the trunk and trunk to quarter filler panels.  Lesson learned: spend the money and get the quality sheet metal!  Trying to fit all of the aftermarket panels together without any factory sheet metal is more than a challenge.  The entire back-half of the car has been reconstructed including quarters, one-piece trunk, window to trunk panel, inner & outer wheel well, trunk floor, tail panel, and the wonderful trunk to quarter fill panels.  I spent the better part of 8 hours attempting to get them to fit an be consistent.  In addition as you can see in the picture below I had to assemble the entire back-half so that I could ensure everything was aligned and fit well.  I also finished the trunk latch support.

Then next area I focused on was the firewall.  I decided long ago I was going to recreate the car as a heater/radio delete car with manual transmission, steering and brakes (rotor/pads of course).  So I went ahead and filled the blower and heater core holes in the firewall.  With the heater core gone this will make a nice place to mount the MSD ignition and/or fuel meter block/gauge.

After finishing the outside of the firewall my attention turned to the inside.  This car had a lot of rot at the bottom of the passenger front window to firewall.  I had to rebuild a majority of the inside of the corner that runs from the bottom of the window to the top door hinge.

In addition to reconstructing the inside corner the outside also need a lot of help.  I had to replace the bottom 4-5" of the inner "A" pillar on the inside and the surface that the glass sits on.   The final area that needed to be replaced was the top (grey in the picture) flat surface and a long section that sits below the window fill panel.   The previous owner used just about every type of filler compound in this area to avoid having to do the sheet metal work.  This honestly took about 5-6 hours to fix and will require just a little surface filler to make it smooth. 

Finally the last project I completed this week was to finish the rear rotisserie by adding the large bottle jack to ensure I could raise the car high enough to turn it 90 degrees.  The following pictures show that all of the hard work that went into the rotisserie was well worth it!  I can literally look at the bottom of the car and do all of the spot welding and grinding. I need to make one more modification to the rotisserie so that the pivot points don't walk when rotating which I saw after flipping the car.

Decoding the Fisher Body Tag

I spent a bit of time this weekend decoding the body tag on the firewall and discovered several things.  As the body tag reads from top left to right:

01A = Body was built the first week of January (1966)
66 = 1966 model
13817 = Chevelle SS Sport Coupe
FL1 = Assembled in Flint, MI
2870 = Fisher Body Unit ID, this is the number assigned to the body, not to be confused with the VIN #
763-3 = Black Viynl Bucket Seats
M-M = Upper/Lower Aztec Bronze Metallic Paint
4F = RPO-Z19 Convienance Group

So based on the details I was able to confirm that based on the number of cars built in January in Flint that a reastic build date should have been January 5, 1966. 

As you can see from the body tag the color of the car is red

The two pictures above illustrate the correct aztec bronze metallic color and the one I'll be using for the car next year.   Based on my reading the color will change based on the type and amount of sunlight but overall I expect it to look much closer to the first image above.



And now the trunk floor

The next step was adding the final large piece to the body which now comes in a one piece floor section.  I was able to get the entire floor with all of the braces pre-welded.  This piece actually required very little modification to fit.  

This is the view from the drives side of the car.  As you can see I've got sheet metal screws holding the floor pan and trunk floor together at this point.  I'm going to finish the remaining body alignment and then take the body off the frame and weld all of the panels together. You can tell from this view there are two cross braces that were cut with a torch by the previous owners in order to get the larger tiers inside the car. I'm going to have to rebuild them once I get the remaining part of the car realigned.

Here's the view from the passenger door, much of the same, just a lot of new sheet metal and screws!

Here's a view of the new trunk from the rear of the car.  With the design of the inner wheel wells getting the trunk to fit really isn't a problem.  I was able to get a nice gap on the drivers side.  I still need to fit the lower quarter to trunk floor panel on the passenger side then pull it all together with screws to finish the remaining section of the trunk.

This is the view from the rear of the car.  I've replaced the tail panel and filler panel from the rear window to trunk in this picture.  The only exterior sheet metal that is left now is the roof of the car.  You can also see the frame that I modified to fit the car by removing a section.  Once I get the body off the car I have a bit more work to do in order to get the frame back into shape.  The frame was hit slightly in the rear and it's just bent enough to notice.  Overall it's about 3/4 of an inch lower than the drivers side. 

Next is to get the trunk lid and align all of the panels in the rear so that the extensions for the rear tail lights fit well in addition to the trunk gaps.

New frame, rearend is next....

I spent the weekend after Labor Day driving to Poughkeepsie, NY to pickup another frame for the car. I made the decision after all of the work that has gone into the car to replace the body panels that I really wasn't too keen to cut it up again.  The frame came from a 1966 Oldsmobile so in the end there's going to be some work to do but overall it was in good shape.  I had to take about 3 1/4 inches from the rear and I've got to replace the front horns on the frame due to the different style used for the Olds.

However, I was able to use the 10-bolt rearend for the control arm brackets so started by cutting off the spring brackets and control arm brackets. Then began to remove the ladder bar and coilover brackets from the 12 bolt.

Here you can see the before picture. Probably the only good thing the previous owner did with the suspension was not to cut-up the original rearend. I was able to get the brackets off fairly easy so it made the switch quite easily.

This is the finished product in the car.  The original Olds 10-bolt was about 1 inch wider so fitment wasn't a problem. I welded the brackets on with my welder but I'm going to have to get them burned in with a much heavier welder after I get the rearend sandblasted.  This project went quite well and I was able to complete the swap in a weekend.  The hardest part was actually cutting them off the original 10-bolt without mangling the brackets.  A torch would have made the job much easier.