Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Gettin' out junk in tha trunk.

So this was the final welding frontier. The trunk. Or...what's left of it. When we finally pulled the dozens of old car parts out of the trunk, this is what was left - a nasty, rotted out trunk, with a big piece of flatstock sheet metal over the gaping hole. Luckily, the cross braces that go underneith the trunk were still in tact, so at the sandblaster, we simply blasted around the area that was going to be cut out. I chopped out the nasty cancer, and proceded to weld in the pickup truck bed replacement panels I picked up. The nasty, nasty spot was the back edge of the trunk. This spot was rotted all the way through to the back metal near the bumper. The whole thing needed to be cut out, and re-done. Luckily, I was on vacation this week, so this post covers two days of hacking, welding, measuring, cutting, and re-welding. My back still hurts from bending over into the trunk. -TH



Ahhh. Much better. Looks like a new trunk! I used a large piece of cardboard as a template to cut the metal to a perfect size to fit around the edge I cut out. Worked perfectly. Once the whole thing is done, I'll cover the weld in seam-sealer, and use pickup truck bedliner on the whole thing. Now...for the back ugly stuff... -TH



Here, you're looking at the back latching mechanism for the trunk, and the metal area around it. The metal has already been cut out from the rear of the car, and the piece that overlapped the rusty metal you see here, and went into the trunk. There's actually 3 pieces of metal that come together right at the rear of the car, and are spot-welded at the factory. The rusty piece you see here, the back of the car, which makes a 90 degree bend under the car, and the trunk floor, which sits on top. I cut away the cancer, and then split the spot welds with an air chisel. (Thank you air chisel, you always make life so much easier). -TH



Here's the back half of the car, you can see the rear cut away. Thin panels will need to be stiched in here, and have a 90 degree bend on them at the bottom, where they can be tacked to the underside. -TH



In the back, I had to remove the 60 year old rubber bushings that insulated the trunk floor to the rear of the frame. I'm not sure what I'll replace these with, but I'm sure I can fab something up easily from new parts. These had to be removed to put the new metal in. They, of course, had to be cut off. I didn't even attempt to turn them with a wrench. -TH



The rear and rear edges is where things had to get creative. The sloping side of the trunk here was all rotted out, as was the rear section where the corrugated new metal ends. The whole thing needed to be fabbed up, and stiched together. -TH

Here's the rear of the car, in progress. This is a tough piece as the back of the car has a slight roundness to it. This so far has been alot of tacking, hammering into shape, and tacking again. Suprisingly, it's coming together good. The back seams that run vertically from the trunk down on both sides will be welded shut and smoothed down (the one on the left is already welded). -TH

Here is the underside of the rear pieces. You can see the 90 degree bend, and stiched to the underside. Luckily, we sandblasted alot of the scale off this area, otherwise it wouldn't have welded at all. -TH