SC Coupe Restoration

[tperazzo]

As promised Part 2 of the rear quarter and lock post area, but first thank you for all the encouragement.

Phil, our cars are so similar. Both sides of my car had problems in this area. Best of luck on your repair, I know you will persevere.

Roy, this area is confusing and I've been following Phil's thread and Bruce's comments diligently. All great information by the way, especially the note about checking the latch engagement and mesh.

My guess is that Phil's RD repair panel is trimmed long and it either needs to be cut or flanged once more. I will post a sketch showing how my car was assembled.

Roy, all the lead has been removed on my lock post. You are seeing some shiny remnants of lead, but the contours in my pictures are that of the steel.


First photo is my patch piece tacked in.


Rather than plug weld the piece in the same location as the factory spot welds, I decided the continuously edge weld the quarter patch to the lock post. Probably overkill, but this seals the pieces so no contamination can interfere with the lead applied later.



Inside of rear wheel well showing all the bends and patches. If you look really carefully you can see heat marks from my shrinking disk. If you look back at the before pictures, someone overstretched this area. Hammer/dolly/shrinking disk brought this area back smooth.



A tad more metal finishing needed near the concave curve. Also need to weld the top near the window.








Door gap is currently about 4.5mm. Lead will be re-applied here for a uniform 3mm gap and to smooth out the lock post shape.



Thanks for looking!

[roy mawbey]

Tom,

Very inventive work from you Tom, this area of the bodywork has me scratching my head and after looking at both yours and Phil's and Bruce's photo's I still cannot get my head round it.

My problem is still that last transitional (approx 8mm x 12mm) step from the lock post panel to the rear fender. Its clear to me the door has to be hung first to have a datum that corresponds to the rear fender. I can understand as well as Bruce says if the lock post is original providing its in good condition its far easier to keep it or repair it.

In the fantasty world it would so much easier if the lock post panel had the full last step formed and stamped and the rear fender panel had a mating part just to suit. However that could never happen. So, in your case Tom you can make a section to fit because its not all free to move and although difficult it works. With the repair panel Phil has with the 15mm ? long 90 degree flange and a lock post that appears to have no transitional final step I cannot see how he will make it to the next stage? That 15mm long return flange has to be cut ( or joggled ) at some point before welding ??

I presume that is lead on the final photo below the repair you made
on the transitional step?

Wow, making my brain work ( not that well though ) on both yours and Phils thread.

Roy



I await with interest your stage 2 of this repair.

Roy

[foamcar]

Amazing - that exact same area was damaged and rusted on foamcar. I may have to repair(extend) the same flange you repaired. Mine is there, but not as long as your repaired one.




Phil

[MMW]

Very nice work & I love the hammer form you made. Keep moving along & soon enough you'll be done with the metal work.

[tperazzo]

Thank you Justin and Roy. The front trailing edge is a tough one because it's so important to get good gaps. No filler allowed, or it will easily be detected when the door is open. Instead, all the filler must be on the door like the factory did. I will revisit this area when setting the gaps with lead soon.

I moved on to the rear quarter door edge now. The previous owner or bodyman butchered the upper half with a pointy hammer of some kind. It's not too bad, but the lock post flange was also damaged and rusty.





Someone folded the flange back to gain access to the outer skin, but they did a horrible job on the outer skin as well. The skin sheet metal was over stretched, so I cut some of it out. The lock post flange looks cut in the picture, but its actually folder over onto itself.



Here's the lock post flange restored.



This is a picture of a very crude hammer form used to shape the repair patch.





Not easy to form this, but I'm too damn cheap to buy one.






You can see in the last photo, I had to slice my patch to get the elevation right. No matter how many times I measure, I always screw up one way or another.

Part 2 coming soon.