Cruzin Illusions Secret Build for Dad

Well I took on a job today that I was looking forward to and not looking forward to. Replacing the area around the battery apron. Nothing like forming a piece to fit in a curved convex place. It took me about 14 hours today to somewhat complete the job. I still need to grind and sand the welds on one section on the bottom. I was getting pretty frusterated so my brother came over to lend a hand this evening and things seem to go better.

First I cut out the rusted/damaged area







I then took a portion of the fender apron from a early mustang and cut out the battery tray area. It did not fit well at all. I would have been almost better off starting with a blank sheet of metal. After some reshaping, cutting and welding, reforming the the forward flange, etc... I had a piece that sorta fit.



If you try doing it this way make sure you get the battery mounting holes where they are suppose to be. It took a couple of measurements and it was fine.

 

Next I tack welded in the piece and formed it as I went along.







I started grinding and sanding the welds till they were flat







This is when things went a little bad. To get the corner to come out right I sanded quit a bit. It got a little thin so I had to cut out a portion of the original corner and replace it. I was not happy about having to do that but I wanted to do it right.

My brother came over to see how things were going and lent a hand

 

Here are some pictures of what we ended up with tonight. We drilled the drail hole for the battery tray and finished sand the patch piece I welded in. It is not a finished as I wanted it to be, but I was very cautious not to sand to much. So there will be a small amount of Metal All that I will have to put in. For this being my first body work, besided 3/16" plate for Jeeps, I am trying to learn what is good enough. I keep having this grand idea that I can make everything perfect and have no filler.









Next will be the floor pans and toe boards.

 

Great work so far, this sort of stuff helps out everyone on the board, thanks and good luck!

 

Nice work!

I will second the thought that having this posted helps. I will have to do a similiar repair and seeing this post goes a little further than I have visualized so far.

Doing floorboards myself now ... wish my welding looked this good.

 

You take a micro torch and heat the area (about 6 inches around the dent) in a circle and keep getting closer to the center of the dent. You then hold the heat there for a few seconds. Then you take your body file and smooth the area out. I couldn't believe how well it worked till I seen it. It usually pulls the dent out to where it is just a little high and you knock off the high spot with the metal file.

 

Really looks like it is coming along nicely.

 

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Thanks, great tip, I will be trying this out on a few spare panels first and then hopefully graduating to the real deal.

 

I am hoping that if I close my eyes and wish really, really, really, hard that one day I will have the space, the time, the money and the energy to tackle a project of this caliber. I now if I had the tools, time and money I would be one of those freaking perfectionist people that doesn't let any detail go unfinished.. I just have never had the space and the money to get all the PROPER tools to do a job like this 100% correct. one of these day I will though....

You are my hero for having all the right stuff to do a job like this. It would be a dream come true if I had a shop and tools and stuff where I could do nothing but restore cars like the one you are doing back to their former glory and sell them as 20-30-40 year old new cars. There is a shop near my house that does something similar but I don't think they do all their own work. I think they buy a lot of the cars already restored

 

My shop is my 3 car garage. I have to pull our rock crawling jeep out so I can move the car to the middle of the garage. My storage space is my basement. It's wall to wall maverick parts. I have built a few show cars, but nothing to this caliper. The cars I have built were staight and solid to begin with. This is my first shot at body work.

 

Nice work ... when I saw the original pics of your car I thought for sure it wouldn't have required quite so much work ... you doing a heck of a job though!

 

I missed the original posting of this thread - this kind of stuff >really< gets my radar; there is NOTHING as sweet as tearing a car down to a shell and redoing it. Takes me back to restoring my (ex) 1957 Chevy years back - it was a huge task, but I loved it.

You should be proud of what you are doing and have already done!!

Chris