Ugh.

I took a bunch of pictures for posterity (and to see just how bad the damage really was).  These are from my favorite vantage point--laying the car on its side and working standing up.  The body shell is really not that heavy, and I could easily dead lift it.  Once on its side, it was quite stable.  Don't worry... it gets better, eventually.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sand.  Why does it always have to be sand.

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Out Comes the Floor

Having gotten over the shock, and removing about 5 pounds of sand, I decided it was time to go for the gold.  In other words, take it all off!  I figured I could remove the entire driver's side floor without any serious structural problems.  I mean, I already had those.

I don't have pics of the dismemberment, but you can see where I ended up.

 

 

And here's what came out, like an impacted tooth.  Dad had welded a steel plate in for reinforcement between the (missing) original floor and the patch panel.  That was a tough job!

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Let the Autopsy Begin

Time to get serious and see what's inside this thing.  I knew that my dad had done a lot of patch work, and what he did held up fine for a while, but I figured it wasn't as tight as it needed to be.  And I was right.

Looks OK, right?

   

Not so OK after all.  There's almost nothing holding the bottom door hinge to the car!

This is not pretty.

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First Attempt

I figured, no time like the present to fire up that beautiful Hobart.  I started with the battery tray that was completely trashed.  And I managed to trash it worse.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong... I'm not really that much of a dummah (previous post notwithstanding).  It turns out I had the polarity wrong; it shipped set up for flux core wire and I was using gas.  It worked for Scotty, and reversing the polarity worked for me, too.

I guess I'll be buying a battery tray.

 

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The (Re) Beginning

OK, so it really was Christmas before I got back to things.  I put things back together as they were, and here's where I start.

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Parts Time!

Four. Years.  That's how long it was before I would touch the Midget again (other than to move it around the garage on casters).  Things got cooking when my lovely, dear, sweet, caring, generous wife set up a fund for me for Christmas 2011 to save "car money" so I could get the show back on the road, so to speak.

Finally I had money to buy parts.  I began to have time to work on the car.  So... Christmas came for me in August!  I ordered a bucketload of sheet metal from Victoria British, and here it is!

 

These big boxes came with a prize inside.

  

  

That's a lot of stuff!  I wonder where it all goes.

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Whoa.

What I got back from the media blaster was pretty scary.  I decided to lay it all out on the driveway, sort of as an 'exploded view'.  When I saw what I had, I thought exploding it would be a kindness.  For the first time, I began to realize just what I had gotten myself in to.  But while I could have found a nice straight body in AZ for a couple of grand, it wouldn't be the same car... and I wanted this car back on the road.

Enter... The Chamber of Horrors!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

And the worst is yet to come.

MWAHAHAHAHA

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Off to Meet a Stripper

Made you look.

You know you thought it.  Didn't you.

Cleaning things up with a sander was definitely not going to cut it.  Later in the year, I scraped enough moolah together to ship everything off to a media blaster in the Valley, and they cleaned it up good.  I even got about 30 pounds of media back as a bonus (which I would find over the next few years in all sorts of odd places, like inside of body panels that were supposed to be sealed).

Here she is, off to the stripper.  What I got back will astound and scare you.  It sure scared me.  And that wasn't even the least of the scary.

 

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Buy a Nice Welding Helmet

Needless to say, one should always use a welding helmet when welding.  I was goofing around with my dad's old MIG welder and thought "Oh, these sunglasses will be fine for a quick job".  I had welding goggles, even but it was inconvenient to grab them.

Dummah.

I ended up with flash burn and had to go to the ER for what was essentially a bad case of sun blindness.  Welding kicks out lots of UV, folks... don't mess around with it.  I was lucky and suffered no permanent damage.  To my eyes, that is.  Mentally... well, we won't go there.

I bought a nice full face auto-darkening large viewport solar powered helmet.  I still have it.  It works great... just set it outside for a little while and it charges the battery, and the charge lasts for weeks.

I also picked up a Hobart Handler 140 (made by Miller) MIG welder, refurbished, for about $400.  That thing is AWESOME.

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