It was a car work weekend. I'm prepping like crazy and doing body work so that I can paint the car next weekend. .
Saturday was an amazingly productive day. The side molding removal had left a lot of damaged paint. Since the damage was along a body line, I had to sand down the paint along the whole line. If I didn't, the body wouldn't look straight when I finally got around to painting it. The net result of that is that instead of just sanding and priming a few spots, I ended up sanding and priming a section 3" tall and almost the length of the whole car.
Paul and I took photos of the work yesterday. You can see the primed area HERE and HERE.
I get to do it again with the body line that is 6" above that one. I had paintless dent removal done about 2 years ago on the car. They did a great job, but there are areas where the paint cracks ever so slightly. It lets water in and rust begins to form. I'm going to have an entire day of sanding out the body and priming and sanding and priming and so on and so on.
Next came installing some of the new body work. This ended up being a lot more challenging than I'd originally thought. It wasn't physically or technically demanding, It just required a level of brain work that I'm not usually capable of on the weekends. That is why it was good that Paul was there. He had some good ideas that saved the day. I had a few too. My first idea was to selectively add some aluminum L brackets behind the side skirt to make it stand straight on the body. The manufacturer of the side skirts suggests this for the whole side of the car, but that neither looked right, nor did it feel right when we tried it. I cut two short sections for the area that needed more bracing and rivetted those in. Paul's brilliant idea was to shim the side skirts with body washers since the skirts were 2/3" longer than the panel they covered. When added to one of my original brain children (adding L brackets at the bottom of the skirts to give them strength, these things are going to stay on really well.
As usual, my life is useless without photos. THESE and THESE are the L-brackets that I riveted to the side of the body. This is the side skirt on, but not fully braced. HERE is a look from the back.
I still have the under bracing to do. That will not be difficult or time consuming. I want to get the second side skirt on first though because there is an adhesive that is used to glue the side skirts to the body that makes them more or less perminant. I don't want to bolt up the under bracing until it is time to use the adhesive. I'll do both sides at the same time.
I then moved to the back bumper. Paul made the fatal mistake of asking how that was going to fit together. "I'll show you! It'll only take 15 or 20 minutes to install." For once in my life I was about right. 20 minutes later I had remvoed the rear bumper, sized it, drilled it and was tightening down the last bolts. He got a quick look at it before he had to hop on his motorcycle and ride home. I was pretty shocked. He let it idle for a few moments to let the oil begin circulating, then he revved it, smoked the back tire and jumped off the curb into the street like he was a motocross rider. He then proceeded to ride a wheelie the entire lenght of the street just to show off. Amazing. (Just kidding. He rode off like the cautious and responsible rider that he is. He's looking for a girlfriend and I thought that might impress any female hackers that are looking at my e-mails).
You can see how the back of the car looked before the new bumper HERE. You can see the new bumper installed HERE, HERE and HERE.
I'll get the other side skirt on tonight. I'm taking tomorrow off to be a tour guide for my brother-in-law. He sleeps late, so I'll get some body work done in the morning. By then I should have both side skirts glued and braced. The back bumper will be properly aligned and installed. I should have an initial test fitting of the front bumper done too.
I've been trying to get my brain around how to attach the front bumper to the metal bumper rebar ever since I got the new bumper from Germany 3 years ago. (Yes. It has been sitting in my basement for 3 years). I had been thinking so hard about the side skirts and how to engineer the way they attach to the car, that I couldn't stop the good ideas from coming. I really tried to.
Originally I was going to glue the bumper in place and then drill some holes and bolt through the bumper and rebar. I'd then have to make sure the bolts were flush with the outside of the bumper so I could cover them over and they'd be invisible. This would be difficult at best since it is hard to reach behind to put a nut on the back side of the bolt. All of the riveting that I did with the side skirts gave me an idea. I could countersinc the rivets into the bumper and just use them instead of bolts. They'd be a lot easier to cover over. If I used stainless steel rivets and made a relief for them in the bumper with the dremmel, you'd never know they were there. 8 rivets would be stronger than 3 bolts. Problem solved. You'll get photos of that later in the week.
Sorry this is so technical. I just sort of let the words flow out.
You can wake up now. The entry is over. ;)
Pete
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