'63 356B T-6 Rebuild

[John Pierce]

What a great summer with the kids and vacation! Not much time on the Porsche, but I'll give a quick update on how my door repair is progressing.



The bottom part of the door skin needs a bit of help now that I've repaired the rest of the door.



I made a template and placed reference marks on the door to help realign the replacement during welding.



The offending rusted section was removed.



Now having access to the inside of the door I could see lots of surface rust.



The side lip was also rusted through so it was removed.



Replacement piece.



Repaired and looking so much stronger.



The inside sanded to remove the old paint and rust and the remaining tar removed with scraping and gas then treated with phosphate.



Epoxy primed and top coated. No future rust!



Now to fit the replacement door skin bottom and try out my new jigs.

Thanks for following.

[Phil Planck]

Looks good John. Just make sure your weld line is high enough to planish with a dolly behind.

Phil

[John Pierce]

That's for sure, Phil! I haven't made the final cut yet, but it's very near where it needs to be to get my hand and dolly in there. I want the two metal edges to mate up evenly so I can work on improving my TIG skills

[John Pierce]

Finally to the point where the door skin can be repaired.



Cutting the replacement panel. The Stoddard panel front matches the angle and curve of the original door and the rear is unfinished so it can be made to fit any door. I originally bought a replacement panel from RD, but the gauge metal was heavier, it was galvanized and the front angle didn't match up. Oh well....



The panel needs to be cut to size and the flanges bent correctly as they come only rudimentary bent over.



I pie cut the rear to make the curve easier and also had to place a 90 degree bend to finish the side off.



Pretty nice match. Once the jigs are in place there will be no gaps.



The panel has a nice crown and fits perfectly for TIG welding.

Thanks for following.

[JTR70]

Glad you had a great vacation and good to see you back at it John! I'll be watching this lower skin repair with great interest to see how well your holding jigs performed in controlling the heat warp. Wishing you best of luck here.
Justin

[John Pierce]

What an experience welding the door skin!


Jigs set up and ready to weld.



Spot welded together and things looking good with no heat distortion. I then TIG welded the two panels together and all went to hell. But I recovered from it. The hard part was keeping the curve from front to back as the door gets fatter in the center.



Inner side flanges.



Complete after 3 days of hammer and dolly. The nice thing from this whole experience is that my shrinking and stretching skills are really good now and all the distortion is gone. The door skin has a nice curve top to bottom and from front to back.

I can now start fitting the doors to the car!

Thanks for following.

[Phil Planck]

Really came out nice John. Are you sure you had enough clamps ? One down, one to go.
Phil

[JTR70]

It turned out great John, a very clean and detailed repair! Yes, more fun to come for sure. Beautiful job!
Justin

[John Pierce]

Thanks guys!

The left door wasn't rotted out at the bottom as badly as the right door was, so I got lucky there. Which is funny as the rest of the car is much worse on the left than on the right. The right door only needed some frame replacement and bump stop repair. My next job will be to clean up both doors, get them into primer and fit the replacement window frames. Hopefully they'll fit. They previous owner didn't have the frames when he sold me the car. When he finally located them he didn't want to give them to me, but sell them for lots of $$$. Aren't some people wonderful?

[John Pierce]

Spent a few hours today ensuring the insides of the door were clean of any previous sound deadener then sanded them down and primed them. I had previously converted any remaining rust in the seams.






Moved the rest of the car outside so it could enjoy the lovely sunny weather


I hope everyone has a great Labor Day.

[Jack Staggs]

Nice work, John. It was wise of you to repair the doors before fitting the rocker panels. I've seen some pretty ugly results when the procedure was reversed.

[DG58INNM]

Good job John. Happy to see you got that door done. I've been waiting patiently to see the pics. Even though I've been very quiet on here lately, I still follow every day your, and many others, progress.
Take care,
DG

[Jack Staggs]

I have european heater parts.

[bbspdstr]

..........so do I.

Jack, you are so subtle.....

That's one thing I have never seen, New Heater parts on an early engine!

[John Pierce]

Careful there....we don't want to start the "New Heater" vs "Euro Heater" debate over here on ABCGT!!