Time to finish up the last of the body work and move on to paint work! YES!
The Last Two Rust Spots
Sometime ago I noticed these rusted areas, and everytime I was repairing rust spots, I kept forgetting these two. Finally they are repaired.
A Couple of Small Repairs
On both sides of the hood, where the stainless molding is mounted, there were several surface rust spots that were still quite rough, so I filled the areas with EasySand and blocked them out. The other was the passenger front fender. When I first took the car apart, I noted that the front fenders were really in pretty decent shape, then I knocked the passenger side fender (of course) over and put a dent in it near the head light opening. So now it is finally repaired.
Repar and Fill Trim Holes in the Tail Gate
Sometme before the wagon met it’s fate in the ocean, the hinge pins on the tail gate had rusted and finally broke, of course no one bothered to fix the problem, the just kept forcing the tail gate open and closed. The finally managed to bend the corners of the tail gate, plus the skin in the corners had taken a lot of rust abuse as well. I replaced the rusted sheet metal and hammered the corners until they were straight again. I then filled the trim holes with weld. I had decided that it would look better without all of the stock trim and badging, plus it was all in terrible shape and would cost a fortune to repair and replate or replace with NOS.
Back Together Again!
I remounted the tail and lift gates so that I could align and level them with the rest of the body. The rebuilt hinges worked great, and everything fit as it should. Nice to see it with all of it’s sheet metal back together.
Repairing The Roof
Well, I have put this off for as long as I possibly could, but now it’s time to fix the roof. I started by guide coating the entire back part of the roof, I then blocked it down with 80 grit paper using one of the long blocks. It quickly showed where the problem was on the driver side. I also uncovered some damage on the passenger side as well. The drill here was to use a slapper and either a dolly or the beater bag to lift up all of the low spots until they were standing somewhat proud. Then use the shrinking disk and cold water to heat and cool the metal until it shrank back into shape. By the time I was done, I had the back half of the roof where it was properly crowned side to side and back to front, the dents had been removed and the oil canning seemed under control.
I was concerned that with such a large panel that when I took it down to the dreaded valley with 120°F temps that it might start oil canning again. I got the bright idea to reinforce the roof by using panel adheasive to attach an 18ga piece of sheet metal to the underside of the roof. To hold it in place while it cured I used small self tapping screws to hold the panel to the underside of the roof while everything cured. I removed the screws and then used the TIG to fill the small holes in the roof. I had Michelle in the back of the wagon with the copper backer tool which helped reduce any extra shrinkage. When I finished, I ground down the welds and hammered them flat. I guide coated the roof to check for low/high spots and found it to the point where a thin coat of filler would get it straight.
Filling the Low Spots
After dealing with the roof, I guide coated the rest of the car and again blocked it down with 80 grit to show any major high or low spots. Luckily not much in the way of high spots, but several smaller low spots that I filled with EverCoat filler and then blocked straight.
Filling a Few More Holes
It finally struck me that I had not filled the trim holes in the hood and grill shell, duh. So I got to drag the welder out again use my copper heat spreader. After some grinding and a bit of EverCoat things were back as the should be.
Rear Splash Pan
Another long term issue handled. I finally found a guy on eBay that had a STATION WAGON splash pan for sale. I bought it immediately and when it arrived I put it aside since I was still screwing with the doors. After tripping over it several times I picked it up and tried it on the wagon. Well, for the most part the driver side piece was in pretty good shape, I had a small tear that needed some welding but everything else fit well. The passenger side (Yet again) was another story. It was severly bent and had several rust throughs. I finally got it straight enough to install and then I repaired the rust spots. It took a fair amount of Kitty Hair and EverCoat to get it back in shape, but it was still easier than cutting down a car pan, that had about the same amount of rust. Then I noticed that I had forgot to repair the bottom of the tail fins where the splash pan mounted. I noticed this when I intially took the car apart, but it never made it to the punch list… wonder what else fell off the list???