The Doors

Here is typical work needed to repair the rustouts in a door. Here is one outside corner. First I made a cardboard template that defines the door edges, so that after I cut the rust off, I can have some idea of where the door edges were. Basically the whole corner of the door gets cut off. I apply POR-15 rust converter to every inside surface I can. This stops the rusting process by chemical conversion.

Here is the new outer patch welded in place. I had to form the body lines, the drop crease, by hand. This will get filler to finish it off.

Above is the other lower corner of the same door. Same process: make a template, cut out the rust, POR-15 the inside, form a new patch, weld it in.

And it looks like this.

This was a little hiccup. I had the 2 lower corner patches in place, so I rehung the door on the car to check the fit. Unfortunately, despite my template, the edge near the door wasnt right, it was too long. I marked it with a marker to show how much had to be trimmed. Off comes the door again, and I trimmed the door and remade the edge. This is why we trial fit things, if I had found this out later, it would have been even worse to fix.

Above is one inside lower corner after patching. I even put strips of metal along the edges to replicate the folded over part of the outer door skin. Looks factory.

After filler and sanding. You can see the "folded edges" I made.

Here is the other inside corner after patching. WHOA! (I dont know why I dont have 'before' photos for these, sometimes I get so caught up I forget). Anyway, I have to make each individual piece, make sure it is the right shape, angle, and curve, and then tack weld it all together. This was a lot of work, but like all things that are a lot of work, it was very satisfying.

Same area after grinding. I have the 'folded edges' tacked in. Still have to seam weld the edge and finish grind it.

After filler and sanding. Came out perfect! If there is a downside to this work, it is that under normal circumstances, no one will ever see it. It is on the bottom inside of the doors after all. And if they do see it, it will be so well done that they will not suspect that it was repaired. It should look like factory issue.

I dont mind if nobody ever knows it, I will know it, and thats enough.

Yes I really did this

This was either the coolest thing Ive ever done, or the dumbest. Maybe both.

I am doing a body swap. Im taking the cab off of a 72 C30 and putting it onto an S10 chassis I have laying around.

All I could keep thinking of was "Jenga", although this technically was not a Jenga.

Stacked the blocks high enough to roll the existing chassis out. Had to clear the motor. The cab is approximately 5 feet off the ground here.

Here is the body resting on the S10 chassis. Getting the body back down safely was, well, Ill be honest, scary as hell. Lot of block stacking and unstacking.

This might be a future project, although I dont know what direction it will take right now. Im just glad to have the cab back down out of the sky without a major catastrophe.