2manyhobbies

I never considered the reason to use heavier metal is to help control distortion, makes a lot of sense. I have some 16ga so I may just start using that for the patch panels and see how it goes. I have not really had to assess how much distortion I get from welding yet, doing the floor braces is going to be a different game than welding on say the fender. When I get to that point we can all re-assess my welding ability as I am sure I will be doing too! I have not done any "finish" body work in ~20 years when I worked on a 69' ElCamino - that body was in excellent condition and only required dent repair. As soon as I finish the floors I am going to move onto the Hood / Fenders, pull the engine and transmission and get some work that I can do in the shop for these cold winter days. The fenders have a couple rust spots behind the wheels and the inner fenders have a couple spots that need to be patched. The engine needs to be rebuilt - that is an interesting story in itself! Brad

Thanks guys for the report on the gauge of the metal. I was thinking of buying a sheet of 18ga for the body work, sounds like it is on the thin side compared to what you are using. The floor pans have a coating on them that is keeping them from rusting - is it aluminum? (they came from classic parts 4 u) I am progressing slowly - Since my last post I have completed the rocker panel restoration on the passenger side, fabricated the floor braces, and installed them. I am in the process of fitting the under front seat pan now. Funny thing - I ran out of shielding gas and vacation at the same time! Brad

Hi Mozzie I am working on a very similar car: a 64' that was originally desert beige with a deluxe fawn interior! Yours appears to be in much better condition though. Please keep us posted on your work around the rear window, I have to do the same repair! Brad

Stephen - Nice looking squareback there! Its great to hear that your son, at 18, is learning the "hands on" portion of the car hobby (or any hands on skills for that matter.) DevilDog - I appreciated you documenting your rebuild, when I started looking through this site, your thread was one that I followed to help with information. Update - There was a little rework to be done yesterday, it seems as though when I was fabricating the inner rocker I unintentionally pulled the transition piece up. I didnt notice it until I was fitting the forward floorboard in place, looking back you can see it in the pictures - the line on the bottom of the inner rocker is not straight. Also the forward floorboard support did not fit as well as I would have liked so I remade it with a step in it. After the re-make and re-work I stopped work after I got the forward floorboard support in place. Now that the re-work is complete I should be able to get the rockers finished today, and move onto the front floor brace. That was the piece after I re-made it. Fits much better now. What gauge sheet metal have you guys been using for the body work patch panels? Somewhere around 20ga?? Thanks Brad

Stephen - Thank you for the compliments, and the pictures. Hats off to your restoration project - it is looking great. You are a couple steps ahead of me, I still have to finish the floors on the passenger side. Is that a Squareback I see sitting on the lift?? You went the route I should have, taking the body off the chassis! I seriously thought about this, but in the end decided I didn't have the facilities to do that. My goal here is to have a nice driver that is good looking, reliable, and enjoyable. To that end some things are not going to be stock, I have the parts for a disc / dual master cylinder conversion, and am adding a posi. Earlier in this post I stated my goal was to drive the Riviera to the ROA International Meet, but I have yet to put my money where my mouth is by making a reservation ! Thanks again for the pictures, Brad

Here is a picture of the rocker sectioned! There is an outer rocker, a panel in the middle, and the inner rocker (what the floor braces attach to.) In this photo you can see the outer rocker (from the inside of the car), the intermediate rocker panel (farthest to the right.) Obviously this has been cut away for rust repair. I will have to take a picture showing all three panels and the patching process. I was busy cutting away, and remaking the rust repair panels today - there is still some work to do on the panels, but I thought I would take a picture anyways. The longest panel is the inner rocker panel. The front section is shaped and tapered to support the front floor pan. The panel in front of the inner rocker is the transition piece that supports the floor pan up to the front floor brace. The panel marked "ready 4 holes" is the intermediate rocker panel repair piece. The other rounded piece is a rust repair for the area behind the front floor pan support. The last piece is a patch for the outer rocker panel flange. As I am assembling them I will take pictures. Brad

Thank you! It is good to hear that others find this helpful. I am making the passenger inner rocker this morning, maybe I will take a picture or two. The interesting part will be the shaping of the piece that goes under the front floor board! Brad

Thank you for the compliments Jeff! I believe that is exactly what happened to this car, the interior was soaking wet when I picked up the car. One the flip side, the body panels are actually in pretty good shape! I have now finished the floor pans on the drivers side and have moved onto the passenger side. I was looking at one of your old threads yesterday trying to understand the shape of the passenger rocker panel, mine are so rusted that the front piece is gone. There is going to be a little more reconstructive work on the braces and the rockers here. The pictures of everyone projects have really helped me with my project, sometimes simple clues from the pictures make the path much clearer. SloSteve actually crawled under his car and took some pictures for me! Brad

I have not updated the thread lately, but I have been working on the car a little. I got the braces put into place, the seat mounting points in place, the under-seat pan installed, and the front pan put into place (still have to finish the welding and tidy that up.) I added a couple pictures of the braces in place and the pans. Some good advice I got from a fellow was leave the floor pans in place when I was making the braces, that way I would have a reference point. I mounted the seat in the car to make sure I got the mounting points for the seat in the right place. I actually have more of the welding done on the front pan - it is mostly done and the welds ground down. There was one small repair needed to the front floor pan brace, but I did that when I had the front pan cut out. I decided to patch the rear pan instead of replacing it - it is actually in pretty good shape with the exception of the edge you can see in the picture and a spot in the corner. After I finish the patches in the rear pan the next step is the under the rear seat pan! I will have some time off over the holidays and it is supposed to be fairly warm so, hopefully, I can get more accomplished. Brad

As promised here is a short explanation on how I made the more complicated floor brace. Remember, I am a rank novice when it comes to sheet metal work, so I welcome any experience, suggestions, or different methods I could employ to make life easier, or better finished products. Before I begin I want to share a site that has been helpful in understanding how to get started doing the metal shaping: Lazzemetalshaping is his ID on YouTube. Lazze is a metal shaping instructor who has been gracious enough to make several videos with very helpful explanations. He also has a web site, tools for sale, and instruction. An example of one video is where he reviews how to use the shrinker and stretcher properly, how to tweak it to perform better and just general information from his years of experience. A good example of something I took away from a video was to partially form the corner and weld the two pieces together at the transition, this makes the weld easier to hide, and less prone to warping since the bend is a stronger part of the piece! Things like that are helpful! Now back to our regularly scheduled program... So I started by getting a beer and studying the part. It became obvious that both sides are different heights, the bottom has a bend, and the side rails have to have bends in them to accommodate the dip in the floor for the seat, I had to make this in several pieces. I decided that I would make the side rails as two pieces, the bottom as one piece, and the tabs at the end as a "weld on" since the flat pattern for the welded tabs would make the piece of metal needed to fab the sides much wider. The first step was to make the patterns. I did the hardest side first. Using tape I laid it over the outside of the bends on the sides, at the transition points so that I would have an accurate length of the pattern. Using a red pencil I marked the edges of the sheet metal on the tape, and the middle of the radius. Then I took one long piece and put it on the opposite side to measure where the transition points would be on the flat pattern. What I didn't show here is that the small "width measurement" pieces of tape were taken off the old piece and placed across the long piece of tape at the marked points to give the width measurements of the flat pattern. After I cut the flat pattern I bent it on a 90º angle 3/4" away from the edge of the pattern, that 3/4" gave me the lip that sits under the floorboard. I used my long piece of tape again to mark the transition points on the metal piece (you can see the marks in the picture below.) After the part was an angle with some shapes I started using the shrinker and stretcher that I picked up from Harbor Freight. The shrinker and stretcher were used to give the side rails their shape. If you look at the picture below you can see the bite marks from the stretcher. Basically the stretcher would be used for outside bends and the shrinker for inside bends. I repeated this for the opposite side. Here is something I learned on this piece: fit all three pieces to the car individually first! This will make the final fitting much easier - I did not do that on this brace, but I did it on my second one, and it fit much better! Also on the next brace I made the bottom piece first, this allowed me to fit that to the car, then fit the sides to the bottom piece and the car at the same time. Unfortunately I did not take a a lot of pictures after I formed the bottom and welded the sides on, I got kind of wrapped up in the project and stopped the documentation process. The bottom piece was pretty easy, I followed the same basic process, then used a hammer and anvil to put a radius on the sides where the sides would be welded on... remember the tips and tricks from Lazze? After the sides were tack welded on I went back to the anvil for some final "fitting" to help close and gaps between the three pieces, that is where the distortion from the shrinker and stretcher were quite obvious. There was some trimming to get the edges to fit, but this was the first piece I made. After fitting it was back to the welder, then the grinder, then the welder then the grinder... you get the picture. I got a great tip from someone I work with who restores old Datsun's (anyone who plays with 40 year old Japanese cars knows how to cope with rust): Leave as much of the "old pieces" in tact as possible while working, they can serve as a pattern, or a datum for the new pieces to be fitted to. For example, I cut the spot welds on the braces and left the pans in place to help ensure I got the elevation correct when welding in the new braces. It was just one more piece that helps (or hopefully helped) get the braces back in the right spot. Also having a great network, like the folks here (thank you for the pictures Steve), to help fill in the pieces when the pieces are not there! Key tools I used in the project: - Ticonderoga Carmine Red Pencil 425T - I know this sounds stupid, but soft red pencils work well for metal working and wood working and I thought it was important enough to share. I used to use a regular pencil until I bought a tool box that had a well loved red pencil in it, and I wondered why the fellow had a red pencil in his tool box. After I used it I didn't need an explanation. I like the pencils over the sharpies because of the finer line. - Set of three tin snips left, right and center - I only used the left and right though - Set of body hammers from harbor freight - Shrinker stretcher set from harbor freight - Woodward fab throatless shear (great tool, had this for ~3 years) Hopefully this makes sense and will help someone, if there are any points that I can help clarify please let me know. If you have suggestions, by all means, post'em! I am by no means an expert, and still learning too Brad

Thank you all very much for the compliments! I have a couple pictures of how I "reverse engineered" the braces I will post them a little later. I am always happy to share how I go about doing things, and I'm still learning so feedback is always appreciated. So far, this has been a fun project, much bigger than I originally intended, but fun. This is a stretch, but my goal is to be able to drive it to Williamsburg in June! After the floors are done the engine needs to come out (that's another story), while it is out I will do the fenders engine bay, steering and suspension. Happy Thanksgiving, and thank you all again for the compliments. Brad

So I started thinking about how to recess the seat bolt plate, and I thought it would be difficult to form the corner with the hammer, so I made up a small die of sorts to use in the press.

Yea, after I saw Steve's cross members I had the same thoughts, Its going to take several hours to get mine fixed, and they still wont be as nice! The pictures were helpful in figuring out the reverse bend and filler piece for the side. This brace fits into the car much better than the other, more complicated piece. The picture below is the second piece I made, the front - front brace . I am going to weld them into the car tomorrow and place the seat bracket plates after the cross members are fit into position. After that I will replace the pans on the drivers side (front, under seat, part of the back pan, and under rear seat), then move to the pass side.

Thanks for the compliments! Steve, Thank you for the pictures, I am working on the front brace today, so the pictures were perfectly timed! Hopefully I will have it done this evening, I will post a pic when I finish. I still need to recess the braces for the seat blot brackets... I am going to prime the inside, and use SEW copper weld thru primer for the plug welds. Brad

Here is the new rear-front seat brace I made. This is the first time I have done anything like this so it is a learning process! There is nothing left of the front bracket, that is why I was asking for help! Brad

I have / had the same problem, I already replaced the inner rocker.

I have not posted on the forums, but I have been looking through the old threads! Recently I bought a 64' that needs some restoration, pretty much needs everything, body is in decent shape, but the floors need work. I joined the riv owners group to help with the process. I know that there have been many threads on the replacement of floor pans (which I have to do), but before I get into the pan replacement I wanted (need) to re-fab the seat supports that go under the floor pan. Right now I am working on the front seat, back brace - I have enough of that one to use as a pattern, but I am missing so much of the front brace I do not have anything to use as a pattern. I wanted to see if someone would take a couple pictures of the front - front seat brace so that what I make will look *some what* like the original. Thanks for the help, Brad

Hello everyone from near Durham, NC. I just bought my first classic Buick, a 1964 Riviera. It is a very original car, just needs everything lol! Brad