Well, if you want it to look factory, you need to make a spot weld reproducer. My own personal one I made with vise grips and panel bonding adhesive. I took old tips from our spot welder at work and glued them to a pair of vise grips and I clamp the new panel in between each plug weld hole before I weld it on. Then, when you grind the plug weld carefully, it looks like you have nice spot welds. You can do both sides. We have a nice 480 volt water cooled spot welder at work, but I used to use this trick on quarter panels on nicer cars.....had some old tips from a Saitek unit at another shop I worked at. I hate pulling a weatherstrip and seeing smooth metal...or filler.
That's a good idea... we actually obtained a small spot welder that does a nice job of creating just enough "dimple" and a clean weld, but in the areas where the plug welds will occur, that would be a great way to reproduce them. S71 Update: Tonight, the guys were busy cleaning up the original chassis, grinding sloppy factory welds, adding new welds where needed, and planning for the addition of new steel to strengthen the frame. http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/479/43/
We finished the initial chassis boxing and shot the chassis last night. Back to black! http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/483/43/
The follow up to the spot welding blog... here's some techniques on plug welding and using a commercially available electrical resistance spot welder on restoration projects. http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/487/79/
I looked for this channel on directv a while back and couldn't find it. I live in Vegas, is it not one here or am I just dumb? Or bothou:
Here's the trunk floor, wheel house, and rear tail panel install on the S71 Olds. The sheetmetal work is nearly finished, as all we have left is the quarter panel repairs and the upper dash repair, and those are coming soon! http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/490/43/
No, you're not dumb. We've moved the show from TV to the web. It's a much better way for us to reach the people who care about this stuff and it allows them to watch when they want to. Funny thing is that we're reaching more people now than when we were on TV... and now we have the rights to stream all our stuff on the web. We couldn't do that on TV.
We finally tackled the quarter panels on the "S71" Olds project. We were a little hesitant on this one, as the original panels were very nice save for some rusty edges, so we elected to just replace the edges with some quarter skins. http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/496/43/
The dashboards all seem to rust on GM "A" bodies, and the "S71" Olds was no different. We elected to replace the rusty dash with a piece taken from a rust-free parts car. http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/499/43/
Having trouble seeing the website now. On a side note, I drove to Kingman Az today and on the way back saw a decent 69 cutlass for sale. It tooked pretty solid, had a few spots on the front fenders. Needed a full resto. Place wanted 7 grand!!!! I didn't get to see it up close as it was behind a fence but damn that is a lot of money for a car that needs everything. Not a 442.
Man, that's alot of cash for a stock Cutlass that need everything. As for the vin, we're swapping it from the new old dash to the replacement panel. This gets to be a touchy issue, as there are legalities as well as "correct" ways of doing it. You're not supposed to be able to use the original style rivets, be they "rosettes" or others. I've seen people use the rivet heads and glue the tags on. We're not 100% concerned with the correctness of the dash, but we want the proper tag on the car. We also found other stampings of the vin on the body and on the chassis, so it will all match, but we don't want a hassle from a law enforcement official if it appears to have been altered. How's that for a non answer?
vids worked today I haven't had to worry about replacing a vin tag but always assumed that if the metal was good around it you could just cut it out and weld it in the new panel. That is what I would do, a bit more work I know.
seeing that quarter lip video got me thinking about changing the lips on my 68 cutlass. I love the body lines of the 68-69 cutlass the best but I don't know if I like the wheel openings the best. Too many lines I think. I think those 70-72 lips look better.
if you don't have the trim for the openings they look even worse. But, stand 20 feet in front of one of those cars and look down the sides....awesome.
The S71's body came back from the media blaster, and it only revealed a couple small surprises, namely a couple small holes in the floor. You can see the difference between plastic media blasting and glass bead here, as both were used on this car. http://v8tvshow.com/content/view/536/43/
