58367 The $75 Junkyard Carrera coupe restoration

[JTR70]

Hey Gordon! Hope everything is good with you. Thanks! I actually prefer the look of the beehive tail lights so I am very happy to be bringing this car back to factory correct. Whats going on with your coupe? Any updates to share? Justin
welding complete.

Fully welded in and am dressing the welds here. Small hole to the lower right is a "locating" hole for the over rider tube support when the day comes to bring them back. I'm also shaving the glass reflectors as well. They clutter the area and I think it looks so much cleaner without them. So Into the Stock GS storage box the reflectors go along with the over rider tubes.


Just about done. Some light filing and picking to do but close.


Backside shot of left repair.


Right side patch now also fully welded and dressed.


Back side shot of right side repair. As you can see I had to finish this repair before the bulkhead wall install to get a clear shot at finish grinding and planishing back here.


Done! Now I can continue on with the rear inner wall repair.
Thanks for stopping by! Justin

[gkw]

Justin, My coupe has gone nowhere all summer.
Have been doing some remodeling on my house and has taken all summer.
I should be working on the T-1 soon.
Gordon

[JTR70]

Hope you get back on your car soon Gordon; Time sure gets away fast!

Now that I have the tail light holes repaired and the engine compartment prepped I am now finally ready for the new wall.


With my game plan firmly set I was comfortable enough to cut the wall free.


At long last, I have the right wall with all the 4-cam goodies to do this repair correctly.


Will begin trimming out the excess metal that will not be needed.

[JTR70]

Donor rear wall prep


Now for the slow and teadious process of cutting and drilling spot-welds. Last bits of the bumper bracket mount coming free in strips here.


Cutting the heart out of the frame runner here to give me room to get the edges of it clean.


center of the runner just about free.


right side mount flanges now clean of old metal.


The upper closing wall still needs to be trimmed back but will wait until its mocked up in the car. The weld joints have to be tight! Just have to repeat this cleaning process on the left side and will be able to begin trial fitments on the car. Thanks for stopping by! Justin

[JTR70]

new rear wall trial test fits.


Left side now cleaned up. Very rough initial trial fitments begin and of course I have problems right away. I was originally thinking this was going to kind of just slide right in. Fooled again!!


I have made this so much more difficult because I am trying to fit it in from the inside. If the body skin was off this really would have just went right into place. Always the trade-off; More work here or more work over there. The compartment is narrowing as I'm pushing into position and its colliding and binding in about 4 different places. Too many pieces have to go into position all at once and some are being locked out. The lower shelf here is in position on the other side but this end is locked out. After about an hour of trying to shoe horn it in from all different angles I realized the shelf will have to come off and be reinstalled once the wall is in. WHAT A PAIN!!!!!!!!!


Spent the rest of this evening drilling spot-welds and removing this shelf. It Can never be easy can it!?! Tried it again without the shelf and got it very very close. The upper wall will have to be trimmed to size next. I was hoping to get it into position and overlap the walls and scribe in my cut line but I'm not going to have that luxury.


Started trimming the wall to size. I saved the strips of the original wall I had just cut out of the car and was able to use them as sort of a template. I'm really freaked out about cutting it too short. I drew my cut line but I still left a little more meat on just to make sure! It fit in the car a little better but I now know I'll have to take the rear off the rotisserie. My bumperbracket/mounts are officially in the way. I'll have to build a temporary stand and remove this mount to get the wall in. ALWAYS SOMETHING!!

[JTR70]

**********************PROBLEM SOLVED*******************************


As I mentioned above, it was determined that the rear had to come off the rotisserie to free up the bumper bracket mounts and to give me more room to start fitting in that back wall. Problem solved as of today! 9/28/10


My initial idea was to just build a stand for the car to rest on in the upright position. Yesterday after flipping the car back over to start planning my mounting positions, I saw the cherry picker in the corner of my shop which belongs to my neighbor. I keep it for him because he does not have room in his garage. It became clear in 2 seconds I had everything I needed without having to build a stand but would it fit through the engine compartment?? I had to dismount the castor wheels to clear the roof, completely dismantle the cherry picker; slide the base frame into position. Then reassemble it up through the car


It just barely cleared!!!!!!!!! But it fits and is out of my way!


With the rotisserie and mounting brackets out of the way the wall slid into position closer still. Now I can at least work with it. This is a cheap little picker so I know the ram will eventually leak down. I clamped an exact length of tubing to it and locked it into position. You can just see it in the left of this picture. Last thing I need is damage to the roof!!


Tons of fine trimming and repeated test fits to come but I can at least get it into position now.

Inside view of left corner and joint. Again lots of careful trimming to do.


Right side inner view. its headed in the right direction. Thanks for stopping by! Justin

[merbesfield]

Justin, this is where I am with my coupe, but my bulkhead is still in so total bitch to work on. I spent a few hours removing asphalt undercoating with torch and scraper, so much fun. Thanks for posting these inspirational pics.

[roy mawbey]

Yes I enjoyed looking at those photo's as well. I also remember well scraping factory underseal it took days and days back in the 70's.

Roy

[JTR70]

Hey Mark, Thank you! I'm glad they were of interest! Hope you can find time to update your build thread. Looking forward to some pictures!

Thank you Roy! As 356 owners I think its just a right of passage to scrape off old tar. I remember it being one of my first chores in the 80's. That got so old,so quickly; sand blasting was such a luxury! Thanks again to you both for the nice replies! Justin


Spent yesterday cleaning and trial fitting the lower frame cross brace and bumper bracket flanges at the corners.

The frame portions are about 90% fitted. Before I can go any further I had to start trimming the upper wall and getting it to line up better as well. My land mark is that shouldered border around the decklid opening. Need to get it all lined up next.


I decided earlier today to start knocking off some of this rust. I gave it an initial acid bath and got most of it. One more time should get it clean.

Between my 20+ test fits I slowly started removing slivers of steel and got this left section to line up pretty good with a tight joint as well.

Right side getting close too! You can see in this picture with the wall sections very closely lined up that the old spot weld holes miss the tailskin flange on the car. So the flange will need to be trimmed and shaped along with lower holes added for my plug welds. Perfect example of how all these cars vary just a little.


Almost there!!! I've got just a little more fine tuning to do but its almost ready! I'm hoping to be preping the skin and wall faces for final paint next.

[JTR70]

Wall now cleaned of all remaining rust and is ready for primer and paint.

Put both inner faces in primer and an initial coat of paint.

Just one more test fit and a bit of fine trimming before final color to the inner surfaces.

Inner wall face in final paint as of late this evening. There is alot of welding to do and many areas will be burned and will have to be reshot. My main goal here was to get a nice coat of paint on the upper most parts of each panel which is Impossible to do once installed.

Inner skin now also in final color. With all this pre-work complete I can now finally install the wall for the last time.

[JTR70]

Tacking in New rear wall.


After such a long road to get here; the first couple of tack welds were very exciting!

This right frame rail is undisturbed and the donor aligns much nice over here so I'm letting it set the tone. You can see how the old bumper bracket flange lines up nicely with the donor section as it makes the corner. Frame sections at this corner also fit nice. It should look like it never happened once I'm done in here. Hopefully!


Left frame rail is a different story. It bows outwardly about an inch too wide and has to be forced into alignment with the new cross-member.


I've had this length of angle iron in here since'99 when I cut out our old fabbed-up repair wall. I needed something to tie the two frame rails together so I could mount it on the rotisserie.



The left side was out even back then because I cut this bar to size which is an inch too wide now. This also explains why the left bumper bracket was not centered in the hole and rubbed on the tail skin. I took this inch out of it today and am now using it to suck the rail into position pictured here.


Its now drawing it in and holding the position where I needed it to.

Tacked and clamped into final position. Will continue to stitch it in next. Thanks for stopping by! Justin

[JTR70]

[JTR70]

Wall and lower cross-brace now firmly tacked into position. Ready to get it mounted back on the rotisserie to complete the welding. Before I can do that I have to finish welding up the outer corner of the bumper mount plate.

This is the left mount plate with corner fully welded and dressed.



Right corner now finished as well. It got a little tricky and tight to get in there to weld and to dress them but was just able to make it.

Very happy with it so far. Everything overlaps and sandwiches together just like the factory had it.

Putting the bumper mounted rotisserie bracket back on. The other side is seated flush, this illustrates how far out of alignment the frame section was. Fortunately this rig is adjustable.


seam welding the crossmember to the ends of the chassis as it was done originally.


Here is that detail right before I harvested the panel. I took this shot for later refference.

Now that the cross brace was secured it was now safe. Back on the rotisserie!! Welding up the closing walls next. Thanks for stopping by! Justin

[JTR70]

Began stitching the wall together working from the top down. It all lined up and went suprisingly smooth for a change.

Right side is now fully welded and dressed smooth.

Very happy with the way it has all sandwiched together in the corners. Just like it did on its original chassis.

Plug welding the upper flange run here.

Left side now finished up as well.


With my limited accessabilty in here this was a clean as I could get this junction. I joined the two pieces right along the spot weld line to preserve the lower original overlap joint. Its as good as I could hope for short of cutting the tailskin off which is what I was trying desperately to avoid.

New rear bulkhead wall is now officially welded in! Sprayed a little primer on the joints to see what it was going to look like. A long road to get here but I'm at least happy with it. The little rear shelf is up next. Getting seriously close to wrapping this repair up! Thanks for looking! Justin

[JTR70]

Engine tray/shelf install

Left side of this tray is tuck under in position but I am locked out again on the right side! Just when I thought it was gonna get easy!


The simpliest remedy at this point was to cut it in half and install it in pieces. Always something!


Right half being installed here first.


Plug welding it back into position.

With the right side securely in I went ahead and mount the left.

This side now ready to be plug-welded.

Tray now welded in. Next chore is to smooth the plug welds and go over the area with my spot welder for a stock look.

Plugs smooth and flange spot welded. The very corner was seam welded as originally. I then went back and melted the mig welds with my torch for a proper gas welded appearance.

Also finished preping some of the original engine compartment related hardware so I can get these installed before I paint this area. All the slotted holes around the perimeter of the engine compartment for mounting the pushrod version engine shelf were closed off by the factory with these bolts and washers. Acid cleaned and black oxided all the original NSF (non-sufficient funds) bolts and hardware. Had some a Karros in there but I replaced them with NSF's. Most of the bolts were NSF's so I'm kind of partial to them for this project. This sure eats up alot time when your addressing each individual piece! Par for the course!