Thread: '56 hit by a deer this morning...

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The driver fender has issues as well. It was hit pretty hard at some point in it's life and the is about an 1/8th inch of bondo in the middle of the fender and down into the lower part. I found all of this while unbolting the inner. Ran a flap disc over the "fixed" area to show the high and low spots.




Also opened up the "bubbles" in the rear roof corners. I knew this was there, now I have to figure out how far I want to go to fix it.



There was also some delamination along the top of the pass rear quarter. I took this down to bare metal as well and found nothing bad.

The delamination was due to shoddy prep work, which is fine, this is an easy fix.
Mark

Lots of work to do.
I'll be rebuilding the cowl bottoms on both sides as well as the inner structure.

I got the front fenders, inner fenders, inner hood latch and baffle, bumper brackets lower fender extensions back from the blaster today.
The wrecked front fender is a piece of junk. The left is better but not by much. I'll get pics of those tomorrow while I am priming them.
The inners will need some work but are savable. Lots of straightening, hole welding and rust patching on both. I got those buried in epoxy tonight.
Yea... This all bondo before blasting.

A little paint makes things all better?

See all the holes?

The hood brackets all came out looking like brand new! The blaster also does powder coating so he ran all of the smaller brackets thru his oven in satin black.



A little discouraged with the fenders. I'll give them a good looking at tomorrow while getting them primed...
Thanks for looking.
Mark

As solid as that fender looks I think that's the path I would have taken as well.. Good luck!

I've got a set of dies that will do that roof skin flange...











Of course a bead roller and tipping wheel would work as well....

Thanks Robert! The flange is okay other then one small spot on the driver side. I can piece that in with scraps. The roof corners I will clean out and treat as best as I can and just fill them with All-Metal. I do not want to get into removing the headliner that was put in last year so welding patches is out of the question.
The fender is pretty tough. Someone welded the top of another fender to the headlight area. Didn't trim to fit or anything... Just capped it and welded away.
You can see it in this pic. It was blended in with 1/4" of mud...

I will have to dig into this to figure out how to repair it better...
I'll get better pics tonight.
Mark

Bummer, it always takes more time and trouble to repair someone else's mistakes then it does to do it right the first time! I went through this same type of thing on my Impala. I've threatened to go find the clown that screwed it all up and take away all his damn tools!

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

Bummer, it always takes more time and trouble to repair someone else's mistakes then it does to do it right the first time! I went through this same type of thing on my Impala. I've threatened to go find the clown that screwed it all up and take away all his damn tools!

You think he had tools

He had a hammer and a crescent wrench, plus a worn out flat tip screwdriver.

And maybe a Swiss Army knife.

and the jumbo sized can of body filler

All because of a stupid deer

Originally Posted by 53 Chevy5

All because of a stupid deer

That you have to pay to shoot.

Been away for awhile, on vacation in Vancouver, BC for a couple of weeks and then getting caught up on things around home when we got back.
Getting back to work on the fenders I cut the brow cap off and am glad I did. Lots of rust under there (as I expected) and it's going to be a job getting it put back together.

Sorry about the huge pics. I took these with my new phone. I will go back to the Mavica camera after this.

Lots of booger welds and braze.

After grinding off the welds and bits of cap that were left...

I also worked on smoothing the fender out a bit more and trimming off the lower part.
I worked on the fender for about an hour and this is what it's looking like now. Still a few highs and lows so I'll hit it with the D/A and some 100 grit paper to start fine tuning. I picked out a lot of low spots on this thing and took down some high spots, it was oil canning quite badly when I started but I have that eliminated now so I know it's very close.




I also trimmed off the bottom of the fender. Now I can work on the brace as well.

What a mess... Now, you have to realize this brace probably looks just like this ALL the way up the fender...

This is the piece I cut off with a hunk of the brace that was cut out.

The new lower fender will get trimmed to fit and I'll make a new chunk to fix the brace.

This is where I was last Thursday afternoon. It was a nice afternoon so I pushed the car outside and opened up the cowl areas... I call them Pandora's cowl...
Replacing both inner cowl panels and the non-existent rain channels is on the list now. Fabbing the new inners should be fairly simple after I get all of the rust cut out...
Passenger side.

Drivers side.

Fuse block...

HVAC box...


Some preliminary floor pics... It's a mess...

Easy job to build the patch panels, yes, you are right. These will be very straight forward. I can get good metal every where but the firewall seam is the one that is rust heavy. I can get down to good metal though so doubling that seam up may happen to strengthen it.
I worked on the drivers side cowl today. I took the old cowl completely out, even along the top, which I had left on the other side. I will go back and take the rest out on the passenger side as well. It will make for a cleaner job.

What I cut out...

Cleaning up the rust on the inner panel.

I used a scrap of aluminum to protect the fuse box and wiring while I was cutting.



Doing a test fit of the new cowl outer. A "little" bit of trimming and this will pop right in.
I will blast these parts and bury them in epoxy primer before welding them in.
A little more cleanup work tomorrow and these will be ready to put back together.