B pillar progress

Honestly, I’m just not sure how I’ll get through this. It’s not the cutting and pasting, its just the state of the car. The lower 6 inches all the way around is rusted out and the rust crators on the rest of the body are very bad. This is definately not a car you can really restore. It’s going to have to be modified, but in a stock sense.  I think you need a much better car to start with for a purist restoration. Anyway, since I can’t hurt this car any more, I find it much easier to cut. Of course, I took that attitude tonight and made a few mistakes as usual. It’s time for some metal working tools for sure. I studied the situation for a bit and then cut out the rusted lower ‘B’ pillar. Everthing is gone in there; the outer rocker, the inner rocker, and the sill plate which is above and behind the body skin. I guess you call it a sill plate.  I can’t really put my ‘new’ piece on until I re-build those parts. I have a new 1/4 panel from the door to the fender well but that has to be the last thing to put on. So, I think a metal brake and a bunch of other stuff are going to be in the garage soon. Here’s some pics of the progress.

Ok, let’s get to work

I really don’t want to show the same old shots of pulling engines, etc., so I’ll just dive into the work. At this point I have gutted the car. It’s basically a body shell sitting on the frame. I have not completely stripped the frame. I did sell the engine and trans which I now really regret and I also dumped a bunch of parts by accident. Don’t ask me how. Anyway, the first job was the driver’s side ‘A’ pillar. It’s a real mess. I located two ‘A’ pillars from a yard in South Dakota. Paid a small fortune for these; door hings (since mine were either completely eaten by rust or just no good); and pieces for the lower front fenders. Of course, I bought more fenders along the way. All of this metal cost me $850. I should have bought the entire cowl. But as usual I wasn’t thinking.  So anyway, here’s one of the ‘new’ pieces. Very nice I have to say.

So how do I go about getting this piece installed? It’s cut at an angle and my first thought was to try to match the angle on the old piece and cut it out. So I braced up the body and duplicated the cut line of the new piece (which took about three nights) and cut the old ‘A’ pilar out with a cut off wheel. That was fun! 

First I started by bacing the body. I didn’t think there would be any other way to get this part installed correctly with the body off. I wanted to bolt the new piece to the body mounts with new pads. I tried to cut the old piece out dimensionally like the replacement piece thinking I could just slide the new piece in. Fits pretty good right? Wrong! To make a long story short, I could not get the door to line up. Also the distance between the top two fender mounting bolts holes on the new piece were off by 1/2 inch.  There was no way to slide the new part in and adjust it with such a close fit. Taking into account the mounting locations; trying to get the correct distance between the top two fender mounting holes;and the wiggle room needed to get the part aligned, I needed to trim the new piece down more than an inch. I figured I’d fill in the gaps with bits and pieces of old metal. A slow job for a beginner. It took a week to get this aligned. Well a week of evenings. And here it is finally in although not completely welded up. But, the door fits and the fender holes align. I actually had to get a 1 inch peice of aluminum; bent it to align with the shape of the new piece and drilled the locations for the fender bolts holes. I bolted this to the new piece to keep the proper distance. Ugly but it worked. Lot’s of welding to do, but here’s how it looks right now. 

Some shots of the rusty mess

Tear downs are a pain but I enjoy it. I do have to say for as much rust as this car has, I did not have that hard of a time removing nuts and bolts. Anyway I have lots of tear down shots,  but I thought I would just post these since they give a really good idea of the problems I have to deal with. After I cleaned out the interior I power washed the floors and here’s what was left. Rust really looks horrible wet!   The pictures speak for themselves.

I did not include any shots of the trunk, but there isn’t much there. 

Bobo becomes ‘Frankie’

Well, I have been working on my Corvette and the De Soto has been sitting for awhile. Actually, I’ve been looking for some B pillars. Gonna be hard to replace the rockers and floors without lower B pillars. Mine have been eaten away. Anyway, after some thought on the topic of names, I’ve decided that Bobo is getting re-christened ‘Frankie’, as in short for Frankenstein, since that’s what he’ll most likely be before I’m done. And besides, I just sold a car called ‘Frankie’ and I want the name back!   

Pick Up Day

So, it’s time to get the De Soto. It’s May 2007. I’m thinking well I can make the trip to South Carolina in one day; spend the night somewhere and then get the car in the AM. After that I can cruise back home via my old school (Elon) for some nostalgia and a Zach’s Hot Dog and still get home relatively early in the day.Anyway, I get to SC at 11 PM and it’s still over 90 degrees, and this is May.  Bobo, as he has since been named — he was located near Bobo Newsome Highway so it seemed appropriate –, was sitting in all his lack of glory waiting for me to show up the next AM. Given the experience I’ve had with mice and rat stuff, I had asked the seller early on if he would be willing to clean out the interior for an extra $100 and he said yes. Believe me, if someone will take a hundred dollars to clean out an old car that has most likely been home to a million mice, pay him!  The lady and her daughter that actually did the work said a rat jumped out while they were pulling stuff out. Glad it was them and not me. I hate mouse and rat droppings!   While loading Bobo onto my trailer, I had my first taste of what was to come. I opened the passenger door and it almost came off in my hand! Seems the door hinge pins were rusted clean through. I mean how does that happen? These pins are like a 1/2 inch thick.  Well, that was just the start.Brining Bobo home was uneventful. There were a lot of thumbs up along the way and I was still happy with my purchase. I still had no idea what time, moisture and humidity had accomplished!  

Here we go again!

Ok,  I’m starting all over again. This is trouble, and what’s the point I ask? I don’t know, but maybe if I get this car done, I can look back and think wow, I actually finished. Any way, read on….

So here’s what he looked like when I saw him on eBay.

Yep, a rough one. Anyway, he didn’t sell.  So I called the seller who turned out to be an agent. I made them an offer and they refused. So, what the heck, I really want this car. Who’s afraid of a little project anyway? Well, I should have been. So, I agreed to the price, which was still cheap, and drove down to Florence SC to pick him up!