Rambler American Restoration
Driver's Side Quarter & Rocker Panels
Part 5 - Rocker Rust -- The Surgery Begins
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August 23, 2003
Saturday August 23rd found me starting the first session of
cutting out the bad metal. The picture below shows where I stopped for the
day. The white line on the outer rocker panel shows where I'll cut the outer
rocker. Everything between this line and the back of the car will need to be
fabricated.
Also, note that I've pulled the rear body harness into the
back of the car. If you don't do this, chances are very high that you'll end
up either cutting it or melting it. I didn't take any pictures of the
process, but you'll need to remove the steering wheel and instrument panel
to get to the connectors for the rear wiring harness. I also needed to
unplug most of the stuff in the trunk so I could slide the harness forward
enough to make it easier to unplug. If the dash were out of the car, this
step would have taken about 10 minutes instead of the almost hour it took me
today.
Here's a little better view of the outer rocker panel. After
I took the top of the rocker cover off, I did get a little bit of a surprise
that will make putting this back together a little more involved than I
thought it was going to be.
The surprise was that the outer rocker is attached directly
to the cover. I'm guessing that the rocker cover and outer rocker were
attached to each other before they were mated to the inner rocker. It's
actually not a bad way to do it, but since I don't plan on taking the entire
side of the car apart to duplicate this, I'll have to find another method.
My current plan is to attach the new section of outer rocker to the existing
panels I'm not replacing and then measuring for a line of holes on the new
cover. I'll use screws to hold everything in place temporarily and then plug
weld it all together.
Here's a shot of a spot on the inner rocker I'm a little
concerned about. It's not rusted through and it isn't soft but there was a
pretty thick layer of loose rust on it. I'm thinking that I'll just treat it
and then weld a reinforcement plate over it.
Here's the top of the rocker cover. Notice that there are
three slots in it. Those are for the screws that attach the sill plate to
the car. The new cover does not have these in it so I'll need to do this
myself. One thing I learned when fixing the cowl last year is that you
should never get rid of big chunks like this until the project's done.
Here's a "worm's eye view" of how bad the rust was in the
rocker. I'm not sure what type of coating is on the original cover (the
coating is the dark stuff) but I do want to find out. Except for where the
mouse nest was, it seems like it was pretty effective at keeping it from
rusting.
Here's what it looks like when you open the garage door at
my house. As you can see, I don't really have all that much room to work
(the garage is an oversize two car) and it would be very nice to get the car about
another foot or so in the air but I have been able to get a lot of stuff done
given the limits of what I can put in my garage. I
may end up building a wooden frame to set on my jack stands to get the car
up higher.
Up next: Part 6 - Rocker
Rust --Finishing Up The Surgery
Last Updated
02/15/04 05:02:34 PM |