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.

B Pillar time

Having the driver’s side ‘A’ pillar in and aligned means it’s time to get the lower ‘B’ pillar work started. My little brain doesn’t easily visualize how to do this type of work and the lower parts of the 1/4 panel from the ‘B’ pillar back to the fender well are rusted out. So, it’s hard to measure things. I do have a new 1/4 from the Plymouth Doctor. Anyway, I found a beat up (but in better condition) lower ‘B’ pillar from a ‘48 Dodge. I think it’s the same….I hope! It’s fragile in spots but hopefully I can get it to work. So, I blasted it and now trying to figure what to do next. Here’s the ‘new’ piece: 

And here’s what I need to replace. This is just nasty. Bang a little here, cut a little there and then sweep up two pounds of rust dust and mud that falls out from somewhere. Again I ask myself, why am I doing this?

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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.