Floor Pans Welded

This was a major milestone.

I know it will seem to you, Dear reader, as though I think that every post is a major milestone, but rest assured, this is one of those actual cases.  After much delay and lots of cutting and grinding, the floor pans have at long last been welded into place.

Like every step along the way it took longer than I expected or wanted.  Although it was incredibly satisfying when completed, welding in the floor pans simply took a lot more time and effort than I expected.  You'd think by now I'd be used to the process of estimating my time and effort, but it always seems to take me by surprise.  Actually it probably more of a function of my over-eager optimism than my ability to effectively estimate how long something will take.

For one thing, it always seems that some of that over-eagerness has to be corrected before I can actually get on with the task at hand.

Cuts in the frame have to be welded

In this case, this preliminary task was repairing the places where I'd cut into the frame while removing the rusted old floor pans. In hindsight, the old pans were so decrepit I could have taken them out with a pair of pliers and a nail clipper, but because I set to the job with a great deal of energy and a cutting wheel, in a brief period I managed to render several long and probably completely unnecessary gashes in the frame at the very point where the new floor pans were set to be welded.  I say 'probably' because it turns out that these cuts were not completely unnecessary, as they did give me the opportunity to practice my welding on some more substantial steel than the floor pans offered before setting a spark to them.

The Millermatic 160

Test welds are pretty bad

For this job I rented a small MIG gas wire welder from Alamo Welding Supply.  Since it was the Thanksgiving weekend, I managed to get the welder for four days for the price of just two, but in the end, because of my work schedule, I was really only able to weld on one of the four days.  It wasn't long but it was enough--barely.

the welds don't look half bad

But when ground down

To my surprise and great delight, the welds I made on the frame were substantially better than those I'd managed to make on the test pieces of steel.  In fact, when I ground them down, you'd could hardly tell that I was not the cool, calm and seasoned professional welder that I claimed to be.  Well, ok, it may not be the best metalwork ever but it did the job and it will be out of sight.  This, I believe, may be my saving grace on all my welds until I get to the body.  But that is another story.

Assembled bits to the side

My three helpers

Another reason I had only one day to weld is because I can never get to the good part--the thing I want to do that day--without having to do some prep work.  In this case, I decided to remove both the front beam and the rear trailing arms in order to lighten the load on the frame and make the whole thing easier to turn over after the floor pans are welded in.  I called on my three helpers, Valery, Madelaine and Loki, and we removed the front beam.  The trailing arms came out easily and I set all these parts to the side as I brought out the floor pans.

Spot welds are the way to go

The first weld in the center

After preparing the contact surfaces between frames and the pans, I set in the pan on the left side, weighed it down with a couple of garden bricks and proceeded to tack-weld it in place.  I put a few spots in the center, then welded down the corners, then went around the pan, gradually filling in small tack welds until I had one about every three inches or so.  I re-learned to weld as I went along slowly.

The back edge

The front corner

Even with a careful pace, I came close to burning through the pans at first.  Then I learned to use the heavier steel of the frame to start the spark, allowing the wire to melt and run down just as I touched the edge of the thin floor pan with the spark.  I learned that the key to a good weld was stopping and pulling back quickly.  This allowed the weld to set as the edge cooled.

One weld at a time

All the way down the frame

Of course, the latter welds look a lot better than the first ones.  I am not going to grind these welds down, mostly because that would weaken them unnecessarily, but also because they are not going to be visible when I am done.  A think layer of silicone sealant will cover the joint, followed by paint, some kind of sound-proofing material and finally, the carpet.  I love to know that the work I've done is good, of course, but as I've said before, my goal is to refurbish, not perfectly restore this car, and this work is certainly up to that standard.

The left side floor pan is welded in!

The second pan, on the passenger side, went in much more quickly, not least because I had squandered most of the late November light and knew that the welder had to be returned the next day, whether or not the floor pans were adequately secured.  What had taken hours on the other side took fewer than thirty minutes on this one.  I think that I finally gained some degree of confidence, which allowed me to move from one weld to the next without a lot of time and/or light to work with.  It was a good feeling, even if it doesn't mean that I am yet able to claim welding as one of my skills.

Rusty bits on the front beam

Next, from both of the sets of parts that I pulled off--the front beam and those trailing arms--I learned that the paint job I'd given them was inadequate.  I cleaned, primed and painted them all flat black.   I see now that I have to paint them with a hard gloss, in order to better protect the surfaces.  Flat black looks cool but it scratches and chips too easily.

Also, my intent to leave the bolt heads unpainted or even covered in clear acrylic was a bad idea.  Even though we've had no rain to speak of, what little moisture there was in the past few months has caused a few tiny bits of rust to form on all the parts that were not actually painted.  So, I will go back and paint everything with a hard gloss enamel.  I'd like to paint the bolt heads another, contrasting color, like green, but I don't have the exact color the body will be and I don't know how good a standard 'Emerald Green' will look.  I'll try a couple of experiments this week.

Before I get to those details, though, I have to flip it over to seal and paint the bottom of the pans and the frame before I start putting all the freshly re-painted goodies back on.

Cuttin' and Grindin'

The 'fit' in the back corner

Although hopes and dreams are the point of this journal, I am sometimes guilty of thinking ahead to the next task even before the one at hand is complete.  Such is the case with welding in the floor pans, a job which I somehow thought would be relatively easy and yes, complete by now.  Of course, it is neither.

First of all, I rather casually underestimated the time it would take to cut the floor pans to fit.  Because I went slowly, cutting at most an sixteenth of an inch at a time, I not only took longer than I expected, I also made about ten times more toxic metal shavings that I had to contain and dispose of, and I doubtless irritated my neighbors more than the guy down the street who uses two chainsaws at once to clear brush behind his house.

Cutting off 1/8" at a time

I don't know how he does that, but I do know that I made a hell of a lot of noise ripping up sheet metal in the past two weeks.  The reason I went so slowly is because I didn't want to make a mistake.  The raw shape of the pans is just that, a bit raw, so I had to carefully measure, cut and measure again.  I did this by eye, using masking tape to mark off the strips that needed to be cut off.  Then it was fit, measure and cut again.

And that was for just one side.  It took another week to finish the passenger side.

The old welds have to be ground down

The corner needs to be cleaned

Another part of this process is preparing the frame where the pans will be welded in.  I have roughly ground down the rust and old welds, but I still have some buildup in the corners that I can't seem to get out.  I bought a set of 'carbon steel' grinding bits for my drill which were useless, reduced to smooth steel in about 10 seconds.  The grinding wheel from my angle grinder won't reach in there, so I have to find some other way to carve out steel from a ninety-degree angle.

Some over-zealous cutting on the frame

The rest of the receiving surfaces for the pan are in pretty good shape, except for the places where I sliced through the frame in my over-eager efforts to cut out the old pans.  Had I observed more closely, I might have noticed that the old pans were barely welded in place, and I would not have cut so deeply or nearly so long.  This means that before I can weld in the pans, I'll have to make a few repairs on the frame.

Finally it fits in the back...

...and up front as well!

Before I can even think of welding, I have to get the pans to fit neatly, and after only a few dozen excruciatingly loud cuts, I have both sides fitting pretty neatly.

Next step:  I have to get a welder.

First try with the welder

It welds but crudely

The welder I bought from Harbor Freight proved to be too small and inadequate for the task, even of welding the body pans to the frame.  I did some test welds, and even considering the fact that I had literally not touched a welding machine.  I made some tests, trying both lap and butt welds, and although I was able to make one, very tiny but good lap weld, I was not able to get good results with butt welding the thin body steel. For body work with thin sheet metal, it would have been completely unusable, so I returned it.

Two thin pieces welded

That weld after grinding

I thought perhaps I would just go buy the next model up and from a more reliable U.S. manufacturer, but the choices at the hardware stores also seemed limited to hobby-style welders.  I decided it was time to go talk to a person, and went over to a small locally owned welding supply shop on the East side.  I learned a lot and ended up putting a down payment on a TIG welder.  This type of welder is more powerful and actually easier to use than the little wire-fed model I bought, but it's also a lot more expensive.

Like $1500 expensive.  That's more than I paid for the car itself!

So, I put a down payment on it, thinking that if I pay off a little bit a month, in about a year's time, I can have the welder I want to work on the body.  In the meantime, I only need to rent a welder to put in the body pans.  So now that I've got the pans cut to size, as soon as I have finished grinding down the frame surfaces, it'll be time to weld. 

Floor Pans and Welder

While I would not blame either reader for being skeptical of claims that major progress is being made on the Ghia, I am happy to report that I have proof that more--much more actually--than mere contemplation of the task is being done.

...and with them.

The frame without the pans...

In fact, the arrival of the new body pans and a welder to put them in with means that I am now officially putting this thing back together. I know, I said this when assembling the front end, and that was the actual beginning of the rebuild, but this represents a major step forward in the process.

Looks good...

...but it's just an illusion.

It seems that each piece of the refurbishing process is going to cost me about $300, and this was no exception. The two body pans together, delivered from California, cost about $350. I took care to order quality parts, but I was surprised at how thin the metal actually is. I shouldn't be because I can recall how easy it was to bend back the old rusted pans when cutting them out, but I attributed some of that to the poor condition of the metal.

The fit on the inside front...

...and the back inside corner.

Now I see that the floor pans are actually stamped out of a very thin sheet of steel, which would not even support my weight if it were not welded in on one side and bolted to the frame on the other. Interesting, too, how it is that such thin and easily bent bits of metal come together to form a rigid and solid structure. Of course trying to keep the weight down without sacrificing structure is another challenge faced by the designers, and seeing how that is done is always interesting to me.

Outside front...

...and the back.

In any case, I took the two new panels and set them into the spaces intended for them, expecting the worst in terms of fit, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Both sides easily fit, and although there is some adjustment needed, it is a comfort to know that it will just take some patience and a few hours with the grinding wheel to get them to fit exactly.

After that, the real challenge begins: welding.

Now, I have long claimed to be a welder, based on the fact that I worked in that capacity just out of high school for a little over a year. Now a quick calculation by the eager reader will yield a number of years that have passed since I last held a welding torch, but I am sure it's like every other skill I've mastered over the years (like pitching a baseball and putting the eight-ball in the corner pocket at the end of the game) and will come back to me instantly and without flaw.

The welder: 90amp flux core wire MIG

Well, ok, I will need a little practice, but only because I have only one chance to get this right.  If I burn a hole through one of the panels, if I don't completely ruin it, it'll only take that much more skill to fix. I bought a welder for this task, but it's not a very big one, and I am a bit concerned that it's not up to the task.  There's no way to really tell until I get to working on it.  While I think I could benefit from a more expensive welder, I think that just being careful and using the tool correctly will make it possible.

Back to Work!

Well, after a three-month hiatus, I finally got back to work on the Ghia this week.  Of course, my excuse has been two-fold: the heat and Valery's absence conspired to prevent me from lifting even a wrench for a dozen weeks or more, so the progress I had been enjoying until June simply ground to a halt.

Much to the relief of both readers of this blog, cooler temperatures and Valery's return have likewise combined to get me back out in the garage and get some grease under my nails.  Though the going is still slow, it is at least going again.

After weeks of cleaning...

...it's as clean as I intend to get it

I picked up pretty much where I left off on the rear end.  The transmission was nearly cleaned when I stopped working, so that's the first thing I tackled.  The surface of the cast aluminum transmission case is very complex, so after a few days of buffing and working it over with a brush, steel wool and some bits of sandpaper, I deemed it 'clean enough' and proceeded to paint it.

Masked and ready for paint.

A nice coat of high-heat black.

Before I could paint it, I had to drain the transmission fluid, both to prepare it for refurbishing and to make sure that there was no metal in the fluid.  This required a trip to the oil change shop up the street to dump out the oil in my container first.  The whole process is a complicated one, with a lot of steps depending on the previous one, and this was no exception.  Once the fluid was drained I repainted the transmission case with some high-temperature black paint and set the whole thing aside, ready for re-installation at last.

A driveaxle ready to be rebuilt.

The universal joint and cover.

Next I turned my attention to the driveaxles.  Having removed them months earlier with a special tool, I knew that these would be among the dirtiest jobs I would have left to deal with, so I left it till last, of course.

The grease is thick and dirty.

Marked for rebuilding.

The driveaxles didn't let me down in the dirty department.  Although the grease was dirty, it was mostly viscous and it seemed like the universal joints were going to be re-usable.  After removing the boot collar and the circlip that held the u-joint to the driveshaft, it was a fairly simply matter to drive the u-joint off the shaft.  I put the whole u-joint into some solvent to break up the grease, then proceeded to break it down into the various components: two races, six ball bearings and the a pivoting ball that attaches to the driveshaft splines.

It's hard to tell if this is ok.

A soak in the solvent.

The first universal joint looked ok with all that dirty grease on it, but as soon as I cleaned it up, I discovered that it was no longer serviceable.  Deep pits had formed in the races where the ball bearings had come loose and were banging back an forth.  Although the bearings looked good, it was clear as soon as they fell out that the tolerances were too loose.  The part cots about $75 to replace and there are four of them, so I'd like to re-use them if possible, but they can't be refurbished if the tolerances are too loose.

The bearings look good.

The second u-joint looked very good, and I will be able to re-use it without a problem.  When I tackle the other driveaxle, though, I will find out if I have to buy just another pair of joints or a whole new set of four.

I don't want to put such an important part back in the car unless it works perfectly, and like tires and other parts that come in pairs and quads, it's best to make sure they are all the same, or as close to it as possible.  It doesn't make much sense to come this far and put damaged parts back on the car, so it looks like I will just spend the money and replace all four.

Once step at a time, however.  Next up will be that other driveaxle.

Too Hot to Touch

The last time I was able to work it was in the 90s

Well, there is no progress to report because I just haven't been able to work on the Ghia in over two months.

One reason for this has been the weather. This has been one of the hottest, driest summers on record here in Austin, and it's made working on the car almost impossible.

It's just too damn hot.

Now, I am a Texas boy, and I am used to the heat.  Hell, I love the heat!  I even love the Dog Days of August.  After all, I was born in the middle of August, so this time of year is really my favorite.
But this year, whew! We've now had over 60 days of triple-digit heat here in Austin; over twenty-three days in a row, and the first week of August the high temperature was 105 or higher.  Our electric bill is up and the lake is down.

Working on metal, even in the shade, is not something I'd recommend during a triple-digit heat wave.  The recommended temperature range for paint peaks at about 100 degrees, so I even if I can clean a part and get it ready for paint, I can't actually put a coat of primer on a piece of steel that's been sitting in the sun for longer than a few seconds.  Hell, I can't even pick up a piece of steel that's been sitting in the sun that long.

Of course, even if the weather was cooler, I would probably not have done a thing anyway, considering that my Bride has been away for nearly three months now, and I just haven't got the wherewithal to shop cook and work on the car in the evenings.  I know, that's a particularly lame excuse, but it happens to be true.  I guess if I could stomach some fryer grease with my automotive grease, I could just shovel down a burger in the shop as I work, but it has come down to a choice, dinner or the car, and these days, I am choosing the former.

The weather is likely to break here and my Bride is likely to return in another month or so, so I may be back in the shop by the end of September.

Front End Fun

Finally it's time to rebuild...

...all the pretty parts are lined up

This was one of the most anticipated and delicious moments of this whole process so far.  I have thus far managed to keep up the momentum in this project by segmenting it, thinking only of the next two or three things that I am going to do on the car.  This not only helps me keep focussed on the practical tasks that will move the car forward, but it keeps me from getting daunted by the enormity of the the entire undertaking.

There are, however, parts of the process that I anticipate and envision long before they are possible, and this helps to keep me dreaming about the finished project.  One of these parts was the front end, which I successfully rebuilt this past weekend.

The first piece back on... 

...is the top torsion arm.

Of course a claim like that requires some qualification, since it wouldn't be accurate to say that I put the whole front end back together.  Rather, I can say that I managed to assemble what I have been calling the 'heavy metal'--the front beam, with it's torsion springs, arms, ball joints, steering box and tie rods.  All these parts form the bouncy parallelogram that is the front suspension, and many of them required more than just a simple buff and paint.  I had the ball joints pressed into the torsion arms a couple of weeks ago, so by now, all they needed was some flat black paint.

The spindles need to be buffed...

...but they cleaned up nicely

The spindles, now free of the ball joints that had held them to the torsion arms for so long, were ready, having been buffed and painted the previous week.  It was a bit tricky mounting them, but with a little upward force on the top arm, they just fit the way it was supposed to.

New ball joints are installed...

...with the spindle between them.

The lower torsion spring set was shot, so I went over to Austin Veedub for a replacement set.  Knowing the terminology now is helpful, since I was able to ask for the right part and the guy even knew what I was looking for.  He set a guy to work on it while I waited.  Soon I heard the sound of rhythmic banging coming from the spot where the guy was supposed to be removing my spring set, and I knew that couldn't be good.

Hmmm. No banging should be required to remove those springs.

Just remove a couple of set-screws and it should just slide right out.  Not sure if the banging was actually related to my quest,  I took Loki out for a drink of water and when I returned, the parts guy had a set of torsion springs out on the counter.

The wrong springs.

I knew this right away and told the guy so.  He looked chagrinned but said "I knew it!  The Boss just came by and told me that these were what you needed, but I didn't think so."  "Well," I said, "You were right.  Now where's your guy working on that set?"  He took me into the back where I found a young mechanic bent over the front end of a shell of a bug.  A long metal pole was sticking out of one end of the lower torsion tube and barely an inch of the springs had emerged from the other side.  I looked at it and could see that the tube itself was bent, and that was what was preventing the springs from coming out.  I told him that the top and bottom springs were identical and that it didn't matter where my set came from, so he quickly loosened the set screws and in less than a minute I was headed to the cashier with my greasy prize.

I felt like a head-hunter emerging from the jungle with my trophy.  Back home, I slid the torsion spring set into the tube as soon as I got it out of the truck.  This was the last, greasiest and dirtiest job I'll have to do for some time.  I expect that I'll face some similarly tough moments in the body rebuild, but this part really symbolized the baseline for this reconstruction.

The steering box needs help...

Fresh grease, please.

After those greasy springs went in, it was time for another semi-dirty job required prior to this rebuild:  cleaning and rebuilding the steering box.  When power-washing the frame a few months back, I inadvertently blew the plastic plugs out of the steering box cover and forced a bunch of water into the box itself, where water is definitely not supposed to be.

New tie rod ends, too.

Tie rods connected to steering

I thought perhaps I had ruined it because the action soon got a bit stiff, but in fact it turns out to be a fairly durable component with a couple of heavy metal gears inside that do not rust easily.  I simply had to remove the top plate, clean out the hydrolyzed gunk and refill it with gear oil.  A quick coat of paint and it was ready to reinstall.  I was careful not to disturb the blocking bolts that limit the reach of the Pitman arm, so it was a simple matter of mounting the box so it hit the two bolts at the end of its reach and bolting it into place.

Once the steering box was back on the front beam, it was time for the rest of the fun, clean work.  This is what I had been looking forward to for so long.  And, it went exactly as I'd hoped.

The long tie rod and new end.

Steering damper, too.

Slowly I was able to fit all the parts back together, carefully buffing and cleaning up each bolt, bracket and nut as I went along.  Some of the parts, like the tie rods, had already been sanded and painted, and just had to install the brand new ends.  I measured the old tie-rods carefully so when I fitted them back in, they dropped in perfectly!

A new front end is installed!

The best part of this whole exercise was this, the final assembly.  I collected all the clean, painted and new pieces and proceeded to put it back together like a big metal model.  After assembling countless models with their decorative little tie-rods and wheel spindles, it was a delight to put together something massive and real.

I love it when that happens.

Next:  Back to the back...