Taillight Repair

After practicing a bit with the welder, I decided to put the torch on the car this weekend.  I picked about as inconspicuous a place as I could find: the openings around the taillights.  The part I decided to work on first was the little square there on the bottom.  I started to work on it with a brass brush to find good metal, and it turned into a bigger spot than I had thought, so I decided to cut the rust out and make a patch.  While i was in there, I cut out the rusty metal in the trunk, too, so I'll be patching that up pretty soon. 

For the patch, I just used a piece of scrap that I had cut out of the trunk and bent it in my vise.  It came out pretty good.  The weld still needs to be ground down on the outside corner, because I can't quite get the angle grinder in close enough.  I'll have to get a carbide burr for my die grinder.  But really, when the car is put back together, this is all under seam sealer and behind the bumper, so it doesn't really matter.

Still working on the trunk floor

Not really any pictures to share today. It looks pretty much like it did last week. I'm still working on cleaning up where the trunk floor came out. It's exceedingly slow going. I'm getting kind of tired of drilling out spot welds. I'm getting really good at it, but it's a pain.

I'm also a little concerned that I'm not going to get the new trunk floor to line up just right. The repop one I bought isn't quite identical to the one that came out, so I've had to make some modifications, both to the car and to the floor, so I'm pretty committed at this point. As I was removing the old floor, I uncovered a lot more rust, so I've been grinding it as best as I can. It's on a support at the back edge of the trunk. I bought some Metal Ready rust converting primer and some POR-15 rust preventive paint I'm going to put under there when I put the floor back in.

In other news, the welder came this week. I haven't really done much with it, but I did burn up some sheet metal. I'm clearly going to need to practice a bit before I put that torch on my car. I read that I need thinner welding wire, that the stuff I have requires too much heat to melt, so I'm off to the welding supply tomorrow.

Trunk floor pt 1.

The first real project I decided to get into was replacing the trunk floor.  It was in really rough shape, all corroded out from the generations of rodents living in the convertible well and trunk drops.  This picture doesn't do it justice.  Much of the damage is hidden because somebody at some point filled a lot of it in with Bondo and then covered the whole thing in truck bed liner.  It was completely rusted through over both supports.  Fortunately, replacements are readily available.  I ordered one from an online outfit called Adeal's.  It looks like they're all the same, but Adeal's had the lowest shipping.  Anyway, I ordered the full floor kit.  It comes as a complete kit with a floor, braces and fuel tank straps.  All you have to do is cut the old floor out and weld in the new one.  What could be easier?

So I set about cutting the floor out.  After a little time with a Sawzall, a cut off tool, an angle grinder, a sheet metal nibbler, and a spot weld cutter, I finally got the floor out and the braces underneath removed.  The best tools by far for cutting out the floor are the angle grinder and the spot weld cutter.  While I was at it, I went ahead and cut off the old exhaust pipes.  They were so rusted out that they turned to powder as soon as I hit them with the Sawzall.  I salvaged the chrome trumpet tips, though.  Oddly enough, they're in halfway decent shape, and I think they're salvageable.  The chrome even looks pretty good.  Here's a picture of a trunk with no floor.  Also a decent shot of the posi.  You can see in the lower right of the picture the results of a very poor repair work to the passenger side quarter and drop.  I knew it was there, but I hadn't gotten a real good look at it until this point.

Here's a picture of the area.  It's a little hard to see, but in addition to the obvious rust problem, there's a line of sheet metal screws sticking through the quarter.  I guess some previous owner flanged the existing quarter, and screwed in a patch.  The "new" drop was just a piece of sheet metal, folded over the existing drop and riveted to the trunk floor.  Needless to say, that has to go.  I did a little looking around and found a company that reproduces that trunk drop piece.  Mill Supply.  Pretty interesting website. I may have to order some pieces for my truck too, at some point.  As long as I'm at it, there are other areas that are going to need replacing that aren't covered by the trunk floor.  Both tail light have areas right behind them where the rust has gone all the way through the trunk floor.  Also, and I don't know what you call the area, but forward of the trunk along the wheel housing was also rusted through, so I'll need to patch that on both sides as well.  Unfortunately, I haven't found a source for those pieces, so for now, the trunk floor is out, and the next step is fabricating and welding in patches.

My garage

So after moving it a couple of times, here's the car in its current home.  It's a little tight, but it's tenable.  My workshop is actually an adjacent bay in the garage, so it's not quite as tight as it looks.  Also, it's easy enough to roll out into the driveway if I need to.  I have a trailer winch mounted to the back wall of the garage that allows me to just crank it back in.

The Car

So the basics on the car:

• 1969 442 convertible - it is an actual 442.  It is not a clone. 
• Built in Lansing, Michigan
• 4-speed Muncie "Rock Crusher" transmission. 
• 400 cubic inch engine.
• Non-numbers matched car. 
• Non-AC car.
• Glade Green paint, gold top/interior.

The Backstory

I decided to set up a blog so people (mostly my dad) can see how work goes on the 442.  By way of background, 3 years ago I bought a 1969 Oldsmobile 442 convertible from a guy outside of Enterprise, Alabama.  Or really, I bought most of a 1969 Oldsmobile 442 convertible.  It was already largely disassembled, with the components in boxes inside the car.  The guy I bought it from restored Camaros as a profession, and said he got the 442 in trade along with a Camaro and just wasn't interested in dealing with it.  So my Dad and I borrowed my father-in-law's truck (thanks Gerry), loaded the 442 onto a trailer and brought it back to St Pete. 

Once I got it home and started tearing it apart, I found it to be in much worse shape than I had expected.  I have decided that this car spent probably decades in a junkyard somewhere in Georgia.  It was full of clay, rifle shells, mud dauber nests and pecan shells.  Generations of mice had been living in the upholstery, and their waste had corroded through the trunk floor.  I am 99% sure that the firewall came from 2 different cars, and the passenger side quarterpanel seems to be riveted on.  Honestly, I got discouraged with the state of the car, and then a lot of other stuff happened including 2 children and a move, so I've basically let it sit in the garage for the past 3 years.  Finally I decided it was time to either get to work on it or to let it go.  I cleaned up the garage and took a good look at what I have.  It would probably be more prudent to just let this car go and find one in better shape to work on, but I have a hard time letting a real 442 go to the junkyard.  It has the potential, so I am going to see if I can't bring this beast back from the dead.  Hopefully I will remember to update this blog as I go.