After watching the resto on this lincoln my "little" problems on my KM are kinda ridiculous. As to the picture, that was when i heard you were a Mac guy. :))

Barry, how do you think these patches will stand up to ice cold and colder weather?

JD

Have you used this process before?
What kind of surface prep was done on the back of the panel?

It's quite a project and I am sure it will stun us all upon completion!

I doubt the car will be used in the cold but I don't see how these patches are any different than bondo patches installed for the last 50 years.

I wire brushed what I could and beveled all of the edges so the patch would have more purchase. I did metal prep the area, too

1-9-2008 More reassembly

I've decided to reassemble and prime the rear of he car while I ponder whether to make new center doors or try to make these work.

My friend Dan lives a mile from my shop and has graciously allowed me to use his sandblasting booth to clean all my hinges.

I used the paint stripper first and then blasted off the remains. I'm now convinced that the white layer of paint was Imron or some other super hard paint. The sandblaster hardly touched it.





I sealed all the seams with POR-15 and primed the inner door.



Installed the door and adjusted it in the opening. Most of the doors show evidence of "final fit" sledgehammer marks on the bottom of the doors. Now that the door is aligned I can finish the bodywork on this side of the car.

1-17-2008

Slight distraction. My friend Scott is having the engine from his Lincoln rebuilt. He is refinishing all the bolt-ons and needed to degrease them. Another friend, Doug, gave me a cabinet parts washer about a year ago. I offered it and Scott came by to check it out. I always thought it was filled with cleaning fluid. Not, it was full of rusty nasty water and the motor only hummed when I flipped the switch.

I found everything clogged with some nasty stuff that had petrified eons ago. Scott took the cabinet without the pump, just as a place to contain the mess of degreasing. After several hours of sandblasting and degreasing I have all the components ready to be painted and reassembled.





I recently acquired some new friends and some willing helpers. My friend Shawn works for Ford but has a Packard. We met at a concours I'm on the board of and we hit it off right away. His son James is 16 and has a passion for cars. He really liked my trailer and asked a bunch of questions. I really enjoyed the conversation.

I told Shawn about my Mark II and that discussion led to the Lincoln club I belong to. He asked if there was anything he could do for the club. He was aware of all the auto sponsorship of the concours events drying up in recent years and asked, outside of cash donations, what he could do.

Shawn contacted me about a week later and offered to make arrangements to grant members of our club the Ford X-plan. We are the first automotive club to be offered this discount. Actual employees get slightly better pricing but the deal is hard to beat.

He also made an amazing offer to help me work on the limo. Apparently he has no current projects and wanted simply to keep his and James hand in it. I am grateful for the help and the friendship.





Now that they helped me take the massive front bumper off I was able to strip the paint off of the rest of the car. I had just read an article about using a plastic bag over stripper to keep it moist. It didn't seem to make a difference.



Oh, oh! another wad of body filler. Funny though, it was hardly necessary. They filled two holes from the original Star location and installed one on the hood. they installed nuts and bolts in the holes, ground down most of the screw head and bondo'd over the whole thing.



Looks good in gun metal gray.



The roof section they added had to go. It was wavy, wobbly and weak. Some places had 1/4 of bondo and others had none.



Major hack work. Will have to be redone

>

Ground out all the spot welds and exposed more hackery.



[img]http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/8/web/752000-752999/752157_162_full.jpg[/img]

[img]http://memimage.cardomain.net/member_images/8/web/752000-752999/752157_163_full.jpg[/img]

Actually, this gives me an opportunity to improve this car by installing a large moon roof where the splice is. The new roof section will be thicker and stronger as will the new side rails.

1-20-2008

I moved to the front of the car and removed the lower windshield trim and air intake panel. I found that this car had been parked under a pine tree for a long time.

I used a fine piece of welding wire to cut the butyl strip and popped it out. This made it very simple to remove the dash pad. Found some interesting things in the defroster vents. Mostly pens and bottle openers.

I removed as much of the adhesive as I could scrape away and then hit the metal with a wire wheel. I immediately found out that there was very little metal left at the lead edge of the roof. Water stayed trapped under the split vinyl top and ate it away. It was much worse on the driver's side.






A die grinder with a 1/16' blade took the rotted top off in no time. Since the outer skin of the car, while fully welded, adds little to the structure of the car. I almost expected to see gaps open as I cut along the edge of the roof. None appeared. The outer skin was not in tension at all.



The back side looks better than the top, but not much. The metal is paper thin.



When I find my donor '68 or '69 it will be a simple matter of cutting the top off, removing all the metal that's welded to the outer skin and re-spotwelding the replacement in place.

Great work Barry. That's great about the X-plan for your club. I work for a ocmpany that's a Ford and GM supplier, and get both X-plan type discounts. When I bought my 04 Thunderbird it was good for around another $3,800 off the list price (along with the $6,000 dealer cash back Ford was doing then).

The X-plan is a no haggle pricing schedule. The price is set by Ford and the dealership is guaranteed a reasonable profit. That's not necessarily true when you negotiate a last nickel deal. Sometimes the health of a dealership is affected by "great deals".

We are losing American car dealers like crazy around here. Unfortunately, when they go away we also lose the expertise that keeps some of old cars on the road.:(

Hi Barry
I was just watching on Speed this weekend where a late 1960s Chevelle had a similar problem with the top. It had a vinyl roof that basically retained the moisture. It was amazing. You could see right through the sheet metal. It was just like a sift. They cut off the entire top and replaced it. Structure and all. Would that not be a better idea for you than to try to reskin it? Seeing that you're looking to use a donor car anyway.

Not at all West. Since the Lincoln of that era is unit body I'd want to disturb the underlying structure as little as possible. Wasn't the Chevelle a BOF car?

The outer skin on a slab-side is all show, including the roof. The sheet metal adds nothing to the structure. The roof is the last piece to go on so I just have to grind out the spot welds to create a flat clean surface for the new welds.

I will have to remove at the "A" and "B" pillar to preserve the underlying structure until I can remove all the metal but the top skin. Tedious, yes, right thing to do in this case, yes, IMO.

1-25-2008 "Peeling it like an onion"

Someone once posted that a slab-side Lincoln could be "peeled like an onion", removing successive layers of sheet metal to get to hidden rust within.

After actually attempting that on a small scale the contention has proven to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. There are so many spot welds, some as close as 1/2" apart that there is literally nothing left of the metal to salvage.

Now, if that writer had made the contention that the sheet metal could be separated in successive layers if new panels were to be installed, I would agree with that, but to say that the car could be put back together using the same sheet metal is simply the fantasy of the writer.

It's a good thing that they used so many spot welds because about 10% were not effective.



You can see the sub structure of the roof that makes the actual roof panel simply icing on the cake. The bits and pieces of metal on the wood panel are all that's left of three feet of roof edge. There was barely 1/4" in between the 1/2" long spot welds. Certainly not enough to reattach the roof with any integrity. I certainly question the credibility of the writer that made the claim.



The topic of dipping these cars in a primer bath came up recently and that thread answered a question I had about this car. At the upper right and upper left of the windshield opening there were small phillips-head screws in holes. These screws were covered over with the hard sealant used in various places on the car. They didn't screw two pieces of metal together, as one would have thought. The screws simply filled the holes.

Turns out, that's exactly what the holes were for. They simply filled holes that were left open during the body dipping process. These holes were to vent the huge air bubble that would have formed under the roof panel. Even with the vent hole a large bubble kept the underside of the roof panel from being primed.

1-29-2008

Installed front door shell in middle door position. Can not figure out why the original fabricator replaced the door skin.

Still looking for a parts car. No urgency, still have lots to do without it.



Ground out the rusted metal from the door frame and found fairly clean metal underneath. When this area rusted through water seeped into the lower levels of the body and wept out the existing drain holes.



Fabricated some patch panels. Will braze in place tonight.

1-30-2008

Instead of brazing the patches were welded using wire from my MIG and the gas torch.



Now here's an oddity for you.

When I'm grinding metal on the car I get a straight line on the roof in metal shavings. The shavings line up perfectly with the brazed joint in the roof and sail panel joint. The metal panels are steel but the joint is brass.

Brass is non-ferrous so it can't be magnetic. How could there be a magnetic field between two pieces of steel if they're physically connected at the rear window opening?

1-4-2008 Final repairs to rotted out door frame.

The barrier that trapped the water in the lower area was rotted away and needed to be replaced.

It was handy that I had another door frame 4 feet away. I covered the piece with duct tape and marked out a pattern.



I transferred the pattern to a piece of scrap sheet metal and rough shaped it with the bandsaw.



I ground the piece to fit the opening.



Dropped it into the damaged door frame, making sure the drainage hole stayed open.



Torch welded the new piece in place.



Coated the area with POR-15 allowing it to flow out of the drain hole, permanently sealing the area.

3-12-2008 Back to work after much needed vacation.

I removed the grill that covers the air intake in front of the windshield. I found bags of pine needles and other debris. It had apparently been turned into a rodent condo at one time.

I observed that there were three cuts in the sheet metal on the cowling. Apparently someone felt it necessary to cut this metal and bend it out of the way to access the hydraulic motor for the wipers. I don't understand this as I was able to get it out easily.



After removing all the paint in the area I had Shawn do some more welding for me. Sorry about the lousy picture.



I'll treat the inside of this area to a coating of black POR-15.



After drilling a drainage hole for the area behind this patch Shawn tack welded the patch and proceeded to complete the welding on the dogleg and the rear quarter.





Let the leading begin! It's much simpler than I thought. I've used lead in art glass projects and the processes are the same.

Lead will only stick properly to clean metal. After using a flux on the area to be "tinned" the sheet metal and lead stick is heated to a point where lead will adhere to the surface of the steel. A quick wipe with a rag will reveal any spots that didn't tin. These areas must be redone.

Shawn brought a number of wood leading tools with him. I was surprised when he asked if I had any used motor oil. We wanted to use it to bathe the tool surface in to keep it from burning.

Using the tool and the torch I was able to melt enough lead to cover the repaired area. It looked pretty ugly when I was done and I was concerned that the dirty oil had embedded itself in the softened lead I had pushed in place.

I went at it with a body file and took it down to the proper height. It was a lot of work but very satisfying to see the repair take shape.





Before:



After:



I believe that this will be the final design. It solves a number of problems by getting rid of the center door. There is a lot of stress at the attachment point of the front "B" pillar and the roof. This is due to the lack of a rigid structure below. By welding the center door frame in place and covering it with a continuous piece of sheet metal the center of the car will be much stronger.

It will also allow me to use the space for entertainment and luxury items befitting a proper limousine.

Good job on restoring your ride sir.

_________________________

Aftermarket car parts are good for your ride!

Barry a better option than waste oil is melted bees wax , if it does get imbedded in the lead it won;t come back to haunt you later

Back to the project:

Had my crew drag it home today. I'm amazed at how clean it is. It has every panel I'll need to complete the limo.





Only surface rust on the inside of the fenders and doors.







Adam, from Mob Steel, gave me every trim and spare part they could find for the car.





Seems almost a shame to cut this baby apart. Let the fun begin.

[size:150]DECONSTRUCTING A SLAB-SIDE LINCOLN[/color]

In order to salvage the roof and sail panels as a unit I needed to detach it from the space-frame of the unit body. Grinding out hundreds of spot welds to detach the panels would have left me with holes in the flanges sometimes less than 1" apart, so I removed the roof from the inside. By using this method I will be able to remove up to 4 layers of sheet metal, leaving the flange edges intact.

A BOF car often has only one layer of sheet metal for the roof panel to attach to but the unit body Lincolns have two, boxed for strength. I started by removing the inner box. This allowed me access to the outer shell of the boxed support where I cut another line, freeing the roof and sail panels from the sub structure.

Lincoln advertised that these cars were dipped and electro-statically charged the cars for better primer adhesion. Maybe the dip tank wasn't working the day this car went down the line but I think the claim is BS. After taking two of these apart I see no sign of dipping. Here's the inside of a boxed area. Even with an air bubble at the top of this assembly there would have been some primer inside this area.



I cut away one of the "A" pillars to put some stress on the rest of the roof. The grinding wheel kept getting pinched under the stress of the car's structure changing. The pillar is made of three pieces of 1/16" steel reinforced with 1/8" metal at the intersection of the pillars and room.



After burning through about a dozen 4" x 1/16" cutting blades I had the roof assembly free. It appears to me that the roof, sail panels and rear window opening were a sub-assembly that included the front trunk gasket groove. It appears to be a sub assembly because there are machine-made bronze welds and bronze filled locating holes. It was apparently made on a buck.

I spent a lot of time making repairs around the rear window of the limo. The results weren't bad but swapping out for perfect sheet metal is the way to go. It will be a slow process preparing the pieces for a swap, but the end results will be superior.

The next step is to remove the flanges of the sub-assembly leaving a perfect edge on the roof panel. Because the roof panel was spot welded to boxed members that were welded together there will be lots of hidden spot welds. It'll be very tedious but I'll end up with a perfect replacement panel. Cutting it into front and rear portions is is the only thing that concerns me now.

Good to see the project started up again.

I wondered what happened to your Lincoln. Glad to see it back again. Did it take that long to find a pars car ?

I wanted to find a parts car that was so rough that I didn't mind taking it off the road. This parts car wasn't rough at all. It was a restoration of a very clean car in progress. Something went wrong with the paint and it didn't adhere properly and started peeling. Instead of stripping and repainting it the owner found another car and transferred a bunch of parts to it, leaving this a shell.

Fortunately, it had everything I needed, and more.

From an armchair quarterback's viewpoint, it looks like it might have almost been easier to make your cuts at the windshield post and through the floor boards and replace the entire rear section, as opposed to separating all the outer and inner panels, then fitting each back into place.

It's a unit body car. The outer sheet metal is not structural. Disrupting the inner sheet metal would have weakened the car.

It's not tough work, just dirty and time consuming.