Thread: 55 Wagon Progress

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Wow you continue to dazzle us with your repairs!

Yes, the desires for perfection in your work and your innovations on how to achieve it plus your willingness to share the process with all of us never ceases to amaze me! Not only does the front side of your repairs always look flawless but you make the back side look flawless, too!!! You raise the bar every time. Perhaps, if I spent many years under your tutelage, I could also master such perfection but in the meantime, you certainly help me raise the standard of what I find acceptable for my capabilities. So, thanks again, Robert!!

Originally Posted by randyr

Yes, the desires for perfection in your work and your innovations on how to achieve it plus your willingness to share the process with all of us never ceases to amaze me! Not only does the front side of your repairs always look flawless but you make the back side look flawless, too!!! You raise the bar every time. Perhaps, if I spent many years under your tutelage, I could also master such perfection but in the meantime, you certainly help me raise the standard of what I find acceptable for my capabilities. So, thanks again, Robert!!

What he said. Always look forward to your posts, and especially the purpose built tools for massaging metal.

Thanks for the comments guys. I'd say most of you have these fancy tools in stock, you just didn't know it!


We have primer! Sprayed the SPI epoxy tonight, later this week we'll spray the doors and outside of the fenders and hood. Then we can assemble the front end and block across the adjacent panels..

One of our projects for tonight was to make a stand to hold the doors for painting. I have some heavy duty "tripods" on casters that have a 2" ID pipe on top with a setscrew, which works well for changing out various fixtures for painting, as shown below on the left....





My thoughts were to make a similar "tree" to hold the doors, using the hinge mounts. Here's the prototype design...





Here's our CAD layout this evening (cardboard aided design). As the flat bar is a bit cheaper than the pipe, we altered the pattern slightly...





While Kyle was working on the parts for the door "tree", I turned my attention to one of the doors that still needed some finesse. One of the problem areas on the 55 wagon is that apparently GM did not have sufficient quantity of passenger doors specific to the wagon for the assembly line, so the quick fix was to install doors from the 2 door sedan. The downside was that the rear of the door tapers off where the sedans roof starts to drop off to the back window. With the belt line trim details aligned, note what appears to be a sagging rear edge with a widening gap to the upper door opening.... Most people don't notice this detail..











For comparison, the driver's door aligns well to the trim lines...





To fix the passenger door, we plan on a sectioning and a lift kit, adding a wider patch in the B post of the door to make up the difference.











This may just work yet.. Hope so, there's a big gap there..








New section fabbed and fitted...











Bottom seam welded in place...








Yeah, this will be much better...





One seam down, one to go...





....and Kyle tackled his first welding project this evening..








until next time, Merry Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas to you and your family as well!

Wow, I never noticed that, but man, was that way off! That is a lot better, great work!!!!

Your painting fixtures are way cool too! Thanks for sharing them! I also literally laughed at your CAD meaning! Mine's about the same. I'll have to use this on my friend who works in a fab shop and uses all the cool stuff daily! I call him a cheater!

Merry Christmas MP&C! Thanks for the gifts you share with us all year too!

Originally Posted by 34_40

Merry Christmas MP&C! Thanks for the gifts you share with us all year too!

Exactly!

What he said.

I enjoy your posts, and am envious of your skills and knowledge.

Thank-you very much.

Merry Christmas!

Took a while to catch up here ,, this thread will definitely help with my 37 when the time comes .. Thanks for such detail in your repairs ..

.

Thanks for all the comments fellas!

Had some time this evening so worked a bit more on the wagon..


Finished up the door paint fixture.. will be adding some ballast to the base..











Just to compare the driver's door and fitment / body line alignment to what we had to modify on the passenger side:





Paint stick gap width at the top rear, all body lines straight across, about as close as you can get to what should be there.





Also needed to finish the slotted holes for the trim under the door's window.





We'll use a carbide ball nose in the Dremel...








Straightedge spanned across two slots for a more precise scribed line..

Those carbide cutters leave some BAD slivers around I always wear gloves when using them

My hands are usually a magnet for those slivers, surprisingly they left me alone this time. Must have filled up the inside of the door!


Today Kyle worked on another paint fixture for the wagon, one to hold the front fenders, while I started on adding the weatherstrip and drain holes in the bottom of the driver's door. I had made new bottoms and hadn't gotten around to these holes just yet. I did save the old bottoms to use as patterns.





The old was merely laid over the new and traced to get the horizontal alignment of the drain holes and weatherstrip holes. Then a more accurate measurement located the vertical dimension of the drain holes...








After drilling, a couple of twirls by hand of a 3/8 bit worked nicely to de-bur the holes, inside and out..





The end of the old section was cut out and trimmed to be able to use it as a scribing template..











Using our same Dremel set up from the top slots.....














Kyle is getting the hang of this welding stuff.....














While he started media blasting the core support, I finished up the passenger door's "un-chop"











Outside done, now for the inside piece...











Fitted:








And that will do it for today....

Working on the inner part of the door's un-chopping today..





Tacked...























Then I got on a roll, here's the welded and finished product...























Much better fit..

Very nice!

Thanks! I also took delivery on the ballast material today for the door paint stand. Without this it didn't care for the one door added at a time, and wanted to do a nose dive. This should work well!