theastronaut

Before/After pics of the El Camino underhood restoration we just finished. This car had been painted and has new interior, but nothing had ever been done under the hood. We took the front clip off and stripped it to the firewall and bare frame rails. Susupension was rebuilt as well.

With most all of the new panel fabrication finished, I pulled everything back out to wash with PPG DX579 and DX520. This cleans any light surface/fingerprint rust off from handling the parts while their bare metal and preps them for epoxy. Forgot to get an after pic, this is before washing. The smaller parts were blasted before epoxy. The center seam will be butt-welded down the length so it will apear as one piece. To butt-weld a seal like this it'll need to be plannished like I did the quarter panel seam to eliminate any distortion. I can't reach both sides so I'll need someone to hold the dolly on the other side. I marked both sides with the same layout so we can both stay in the same place. I've started welding in the floors and inner rocker, same process as the other side.

Sill working on it, just been slack on posting progress pics. Most of what I've done lately is boring/repetative stuff copied from the other side, so I haven't documented it like I normally would have. I've also been busy with other projects in the shop; those sometimes take time away from the Packard. We're finishing up an underhood restoration of a matching numbers '72 El Camino, and recently finished a '51 Farmall Cub tractor full restoration. I'll include a few pictures of those project as well. Appreciate the continued interest! Thanks Brad!

Our shop can cut flat glass, we're located in Anderson SC. We also have the equiptment to buff the edges to a gloss finish. Nearly all shops that cut flat glass leave the edge with a sanded finish of varying roughness.

Thanks Gary! I appreciate the comment Scott! Thanks! I started fitting the middle and rear floor pan sections last week. The edges needed trimming, indentions were added for the body mount bolts/washers, the outside rear corner was trimmed to fit around the inner fenderwell, and I also started drilling for plug welds. I also offset the end of the rocker to make the B-pillar bottom fit flush. This seam will be leaded over once it's welded in. With the rocker offset finished I can extend that end of the rocker rearward 8-10", and that will finish the rocker.

I reworked the front of the rocker to fit the A-pillar this morning. Initial fit: Scribed, and trimmed to fit the shape of the hinge pillar. Making paper templates. New rocker end fabbed. Fit, welded, and smoothed.

I used to keep a piece of scrap steel bent 90* to show people what the shrinker/stretcher would do. Was fun to watch their reaction.

Roughed in the rockers, used the bead roller to make the curved 90* edges first. I need to smooth the sharp edges on the dies, they leave marks in the metal that I dont' like. It also distorts the edge some, requiring some time on the shrinker/stretcher to make the edge straight again. Halves matched up and clamped in place. Tacked together, then the seam was lightly planninshed on a T-post dolly to true the edges. Fully welded/smoothed.

Thanks Gary!

Started on the A-pillar cover, needs final trimming and matching the hole sizes still. Also started on the B-pillar bottom. I half-rounded the mating edges on both pieces and ground the edges for a tight gap. Then did a few tacks to keep it in alignment. Instead of doing a tack at a time I did a series of tacks in a row, only slightly letting off the trigger between tacks and overlapping. Seemed to make a slightly shorter weld bead and good penetration. After smoothing the welds.

Thanks Durant28!

The rear fenderwell brace is finished. Made the edges fit together evenly, tacked it to hold the pieces in alignment, then welded it fully. After smoothing the welds.

Appreciate the comments!! Started on getting the passenger side inner rocker in the proper location, and the inner A-pillar located. Made templates for the rear fenderwell brace. I'll get them cut out and welded up after lunch.

Built the passenger side inner A-pillar bottom today. Started by making a tape template, and fineline tape to cleanly mark the center edges where the new pieces will be welded. Cut out new pieces from 16 gauge steel. Shaped. Two halves welded, and started smoothing the welds with a cutoff wheel. Welds smoothed with a cutoff wheel, then 36 grit. Final smoothing with 80 grit on the 3" grinder, then 60 grit on a 3" DA sander. Corners of the opening were squared up with a file. And finished.

By checking the shape of the panel, and also judging by how tight or loose the panel felt- if it was wanting to oil can or not. The nice thing about doing each tack is that you're going to do another tack overlapping the last, so if you over-stretch a spot the next weld will shrink that spot again. You're not trying to get it perfect while welding, you'll still have some finishing to do once it's all welded. This gets it much closer to start with though.

Appreciate it! He's posted on a few different forums, and I like reading differnt posts of the same build since different forums have people asking him different questions. Thanks! The purpose of planishing the welds is to reverse the shrinking that happens when you weld. On any panel, but especially a crowned panel like the quarter, welding (shrinking) will cause a low spot. If I had welded the whole panel end to end without planishing it would be warped (shrunk) along the weld seam, even only doing one spot at a time and allowing it to cool between welds. That would take quite a bit of planishing to get the weld seam stretched back into shape. Heat shrinking the metal around the weld seam might get any "oil canning" out but on a crowned panel shrinking will make low spots- you lose the contour of the panel. It's easier and quicker to planish/stretch each tack weld as you go, and it's easier to control how much you're stretching the metal back into shape. You're not really moving the metal in or out, since you use the "hammer on dolly" method to "squeeze" the metal outward to stretch the weld bead. Since both panels had the correct shape to begin with, stretching only the weld area will correct the shape of the panel. Most guys heat shrink around the welded area to "fix" the warpage but you can't really fix a problem caused by shrinkage by shrinking it more. That's like the guy who said, "I cut it three times and it's still to short"!

Got the passenger side quarter panel and B-pillar bottom cut out and cleaned up. There was a turn signal stalk and a few other random pieces of metal brazed onto the B-pillar to help strengthen the rusted out section. I'll get it outside when the weather clears up and use the spot blaster to finish stripping the B-pillar.

Same thread I posted, different forum. I always look forward to updates on the '55 project.

Front lower cowl side welded in. For the quarter panel, I modified a set of panel clamps for a tighter gap between the panels. The "divider" piece was originally ~.045", which I ground down to around .020". I also tried Robert/MP&C's tack/planish/grind/overlap technique since I was able to access the back side of the panel. Great technique that really helps to reduce shrinking/warpage and keep the shape of the panel while welding. It'll only need minimal work to get it ready for bodywork. For those not familiar with Robert (MP&C on forums), here's a link to check out his work. Very talented metal shaper and he's great at posting his techniques. http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=564201

Appreciate it Roger!

Yes, instead of hand fabricating every piece going back in I could have only had to trim/fit donor sections to weld in. The floor was cut out already when I started the project so we've had to find another car for pictures and measurements so I could make templates for the missing sections. Many of the sections I'm replacing are in bad enough shape that I can't make dimensionally correct templates to make new pieces that fit 100%, so some of the new pieces need tweaking to fit before they can be welded in. So a solid donor car would have been a huge help.

I have nearly the whole left side welded in; everything except one rear body mount brace against the inner fenderwell, the outer quarter panel, and lower front cowl panel. Lots of final fitting/trimming/reshaping to get it all fit together well. This is where good patterns would have helped a lot, but the original parts were in such rough shape it was impossible to make 100% correct patterns. There were 308 plug welds so far. Next step is to fit the outer quarter and cowl panel, then lead all the door jamb seams.

I need help determinig the location of the rear floor pan braces. I assume that a Coupe would have the same pans and bracing. Can anyone photograph these braces so I have a reference to go by? The ones in question are the two longer braces that stretch from the rearmost cross brace to the back of the rear floor pans. I have a picture from a '39 2 door sedan, but if I place the braces in the same location on the Convertible they come up short.

It's going to make reassembly so much easier and quicker. Thanks! It's amazing that it was holding together still. I think that most of the rust problems come from the metal not being sealed very well when the car was built. I haven't noticed any seam sealer, other than lead over seams in the door jambs. A lot of the major rust is in the seams, were two layers overlap. I imagine that laquer primer was used on the floor pans and inner structure which does very little to seal the metal. If there were any moisture to ever come in contact with the floor padding then it wouldn't take long for rust to form.

One thing nobody likes to do is attempt to reassemble a car that another person took apart. Parts are usually scattered out, hardware is misplaced, labled wrong, or completly missing. Even if everything is there you still didn't take it apart yourself to really see how it was assembled. Since I wasn't familiar at all with Packards I was thinking that this could be a huge problem with the build when we first considered the job... thankfully I couldn't have been more wrong. The owner completly documented the car before and while it was being dissasembled. All of the parts are in boxes that are labeled with the contents, and inside each box are all of the needed parts and hardware for that respective part of the car. There are full size color pictures in each box of how the parts go together- no guesswork involved. Many of the parts are already restored, with new hardware included, ready to bolt on and go. This will save countless hours once we start the reassembly. It's already been helpful with the few things we've needed while doing the metalwork. The owner definitely wins the "best customer ever" award for having everything organized to this level of detail. I needed to make sure that the seat mounting brackets were in the correct location before welding in the floor pans. So I pulled out the seat frame and "seats" box, and found already-stripped/painted seat tracks, new hardware, and clear pictures of how they're assembled. Had it together quickly since I didn't have to hunt for random parts scattered in boxes. I also double checked the location and height of the floor braces. All of the body mounts are shimmed with the same amount of spacers to keep the body braces level with the frame. This will make it easier to mount the body for the final time- no guessing with how many shims go in each location. It's all solid mounted with no rubber bushings at this point, hopefully this will help the body to remain in the correct alignment once the bracing is cut out. The driver side seat bracket had alignment holes through the floor braces on both ends so I went ahead and welded it to the cross braces. The passenger side didn't have any way to locate it so I bolted the seat tracks and seat frame in the car and positioned the right side with clamps to hold the passenger seat bracket. Tested the tracks to make sure they weren't in a bind, then welded the passenger brace in and coated the top side of the braces with POR15. Took a little extra time to fit it all up but there won't be any surprises later once the seat is upholstered and ready to bolt in. I've started re-fitting the panels so I can mark the spot weld locations. I like to prime the panels, then mark and grind the primer off only where the spot weld will be. This keeps more of the seams protected from rust in the future. Used the patterns I made earlier to mark the location of the convertible top ram bracket.