Battery Tray, Redux

I ordered a battery tray to replace the one I dorked up with my inverse polarity warp drive / welder. Getting the old one out was not fun.  Installing the new one was not fun.  But it was very satisfying to be done with it.

 

 

 

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Fender Fixes

I replaced the driver's side inner fender.  By this point I also have installed the outer rocker panel.  Bending that lip over to wrap around the bottom of the floor pan was a real pain.  I'm so lucky to get to do it again later.

 

 

 

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Still Fits...

I hung the driver's side door... still looks pretty good.

 

 

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Finishing the Foot Well

Now that the floor pan's in place, time to close it all up.

Here you can see those lovely clecos again and the replacement lower hinge all welded in tidily.  That floor pan looks nice, if I do say so myself.

 

 

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Halfway There on 5 Percent of the Work

I welded in the driver's side floor pan.  Only one half to go and I'll be 5 percent done.  Okay, maybe 10 percent.

 

   

My spot welds are improving, but not beautiful... I'll go with well-attached and make pretty later.

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CLECO-Vision

With the inner sill tack welded in place, I got the floor pan all lined up.

My computer nerd/airplane geek dentist (Matt Ford) mentioned these little spring-loaded temporary rivets called clecos that he uses to hold panels in place for riveting.  I bought a couple of dozen and the super special pliers to install and remove them, and man are they great.  You can see how useful they are in this picture where the floor pan is held in place and ready for welding.  There is no way I could have clipped or held that big panel in place otherwise.

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More Fitments

More checking if things will fit and attachment of the first piece of sheet metal.  It's not pretty.  but it is solid and I'm ok with that since I won't see it anyhow.

  

  

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Will it Fit? Oh, Yeah.

You know me by now.  I'm gonna make it fit.  But I wanted to see what things would look like with everything in place... and it fit!

 

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Small Progress

Things do clean up nicely when you persuade them with an air sander and a cut off wheel.

 

This, however, has to go. And so it does.

 

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Spot Weld Hell

Just a note on spot welds.  I hate them. I'm glad they're there, but getting them out is a pain in the you know what.  UNLESS... you have a spot weld drill!  Then it's only a major inconvenience.

I bought a half dozen 1/4" spot weld drill bits and used my trusty Craftsman single-speed drill from the 1960's I bought from a friend of my wife's (along with lots of other awesome garage tools and toys... Thanks, Joe.)  Here's a small sample of how many spot welds there are for just half of the floor pan.  Just count the dots.

By the time I finish this, I estimate I'll have drilled out a thousand spot welds.  Of course, then you have to plug weld to attach the new parts.  I get really good at that, eventually.

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