Cab Door Bottom Repair

This is a more a picture than word post on how I repaired my cab door bottom. The rust has been hidden under a layer of filler and rattle can primer, and has kept well since I first covered it up 20 years ago.

Here's the repair patch lined up on the outer skin of the door. And the rust hole that I didn't notice until the door was off.

Before I could patch the outer skin I needed to do something about the big hole. I carefully ground the folded lip off the bottom of the door skin.
 

With a cardboard template I cut a bending block out off hard wood lamite block.
 

Then cut a 15mm lip to bend over the block for the patch.

Then hit it a lot

I cut and chain drilled the rusted skin out tidying the edges with a die grinder.

Then stuck it in my sand blaster, there was a little leak of blasting dust as I couldn't quite get the door fully closed.

I treated the rest of the pitting with the rust blast treatment and a wire wheel.

 
Before I cut the patch to size I stretched the end to fit the profile of the corner curve,

I didn't leave enough material to fill the whole of the lip but figured it is going to be well tucked away and forgotten about.

Satisfied with the curve I treated the metal, punched the drain hole back in place then trimmed the patch to fit the hole.

Welded it in and cleaned it up just like that, (actually 3 day work and two patch attempts)

Once the inner skin was repaired I could cut away the outer, to reveal more rust.

Back into the sand blaster and another treatment of rust blast.

Any holes were plugged and cleaned up.

Applied a decent coat of rose blush lip stick.

Then tried out my new over priced panel clamps that get stuck in the gaps if the metal warps from the heat of a tack weld. Another tool I should have brought at the start of the restoration.

A tack weld, or two

Then a lot more tack welds, Still finding it hard to stay patient enough between welds to keep the panel cool.

I had to trim the lip a little so it did not foul once bent over.

I took the door to collage and panel beat the dents and warps out, using the skin File to find the high and low spots.

Then primed and back on the van job done. Next...

Rust Blast Treatment

Here is a few photos from using a rust treatment called Rust Blast from KBS Coatings, they had a stall at Volks World so thought I'd give it a try.

I started using the brush on liquid while I was fitting the rear arch panel. This part of the panel that needed treatment had been left bare metal for about 10 years while the van sat in the garage.

The instructions states you need to keep the metal wet for 20 minuts for light rust and 40 for heavy rust, this wasen't the case for me, It took a good few hours to get the lighter rust off with out any abrasion, probably something I could do quicker with a grinder and wire wheel.

Eventually the panel started to show some progress but with a lot of help from some scotch brite pad.

The results do look good but just take four times as long as it said on the tin. The Rust Blast is ment to leave a zink layer which gives it a grayish tinge.

The last bits of rust left were the pitted arears, when you apply the Rust Blast the corrosion in the pits turn a darker coulor and show up so making it easiery to see whats rust is left. These final bits I removed with a whire wheel, this dug deep into the pitted areas untill the material was shining and rust free.

Rear Wheel Arch Repair

Here is another repair I did when I first started getting the van back together many (many) years ago. Looking back I'm not happy with what I did. The panel was buckled and the curve was more of a fold, the lip at the bottom of the sill was too low compared to the one on the cargo sill. I tried to bend it further up but this just formed another crease.

So I decided to cut it out and start again with an Autocraft repair panel.

Trouble is that when I levelled the bottom of the panel with the bottom of the cargo door sill the panel came up short front and back, or more front or all back what ever way you look at it. The way I had cut the old patch out didn't make it easy to fit the new one either. The panel needed to be fitted lower or streched out longer. Not sure if this is because I welded my cargo door sills too high?

So with a bit of fabrication I cut and re-folded the forward edge but could not widen it as much as I needed to as I'd previously cut too much off so I got it lined up as best I could. I like my magnetic orange arrows.

With the cargo doors fitted I used a long spirit level (as seen in other posts) clamped to the doors to make sure I got the panel sitting flush and straight along the length of the van.

When I tacked the panel into position it warped in the centre butting the edges together. I took a cutting disc to the tack welds where the panels touched, this relieved the pressure and buckle between the two panels and got the skin flat again.

I still needed to line up the curve of the arch with the shorter repair panel, I did this with a gas torch and persuasion hammer. You can also see some hot spots on the upper panel where I heated the part of the skin that had been streached from the previour repair. I heated each spot to cherry red, when it started to deform I quickly blocked and hammered it flat, then again quickly whacked on a wet rag to shrink the metal. You really need three hands to do this.

I seam welded the front and top edge and dragged out my spot welder to get a few spot welds to hold the panel to the front inner wheel arch support and to spot the lower lip to the inner sill. I shrunk one last spot along the top seam weld. The repair now looks a lot better than the previous attempt.

Panel Beating Cab Door

With only a few more panels and parts left to repair, my focus has now turned to preparing the body for paint. Having only rarely lifted a hammer in anger I decided last summer to try and get on a restoration course at college to learn how to hit the van to get the dents out! After reading VolksWorld's article on their test car I decided to give North West London College a try.

Attending the college evening classes they gave me the heads up on panel beating by starting with a mini front wing. With the basics under my belt I though I'd try my luck at getting the dent out of my front door. I filed and polished up the block and hammer until both were smooth, otherwise I'd press these imperfections into the doorskin which would be rather counterproductive even by my standards. So then I got to work getting the worst of the dent out.

I pushed and beat the dent from the inside to start, then using the block on the inside started to persuade the rest of the dent through. This is hard to explain with just pictures, something I'm still trying to get right. When you get a decent strike between the hammer and the block there's a satisfying "ting" which squashes the skin and raises it up depending how hard you hit it.

With a little of the dent raised I filed over the area with a bastard file taking off the paint and showing the high areas, this let me work on the lower points.

With a bit more beating and filing you can see the skin looking smoother but the low points started to spread.

I then used a rattle can of guide coat paint to replace the paint I'd removed from filing, this stuff dries in 30 sec.

With another file over the top it reveled the a final few low spots that needed beating to get the area smooth.

This took about 2 hours, the hardest part is not hitting the panel too hard thus making it stretch and bulge. I also had to make sure that I didn't mistakenly hit the dents around their edge and end up chasing it across the panel.

Then a final coat of filler primer to protect It for now. It doesn't look too bad and not a pot of filler was opened. A coat of gloss paint should tell how good my handy work turned out.

I have just awarded myself the Panel Beater (Stage 1) badge.

It's Been A Cold And Slow Winter

We all know how cold it has been this winter so getting into the garage has not been high on the agenda. I did get myself a heater for the van but was still not brave enough to dig through the snow.

There has been another reason to keep me from working on the van and that's the new addition to the familly. A 3 months old golden labrador, she is small enough to hide under the van with variour parts from the garage floor in her mouth refusing to come out because it's too much fun; for her.

She is also good enought to inspect my panel work with her teeth, so hard to get any thing done when a cute puppy just wants to lick your ears all the time. She is rubbish at welding though, the mask keep falling off her snout.