In that case...We think alike

 

 

Priya...any more progress? (asking for a friend who refuses to get off his........sofa)

 

Yes, I got the last of the rear bumper brackets done on Friday. I'm now working on replacing a piece of reinforcing fiberglass I cut out to mate the ACI 70-73 rear clip to the back of the 79:







This reinforcing panel was cut and removed just above the yellow line. It feels good to be finally putting some stuff back in place on the rear instead of taking it apart.

 

Here's the last rear bumper bracket that needed to be modified, ready for welding:





And the final weld:




And here's all the driver's side rear bumper brackets painted grey:




Then it was on to a piece of reinforcing fiberglass that goes on the inside of the upper deck I had previously removed to make the rear clip join:




I trial fitted it with some tape to see if it would stay in place and it looks good:




I took the tape off and added fresh resin and matt to rejoin the pieces. At that time I found the tape wouldn't hold the piece in place when the resin was on - go figure. I quickly raced around the garage to find something to prop up the piece with and found these two pieces of 1/4" plywood at a suitable length:






At this point I went into the house and took off my coveralls. I was sitting there feeling pretty pleased with myself when it hit me I used polyester resin on this SMC instead of epoxy resin - d'oh! So, I rushed out to the garage and tore it all apart and wiped everything back down with acetone - ain't that a peach? At least I remembered before it hardened up, better luck tomorrow

 

Man that sucks about the wrong resin, Priya. You do unbelievable body work! If I tried that underside resin work, I would have it dripping all over me insted of on the car LOL! Good luck, Lou.

 

Thanks Loup68. I had a better day at it today and got a little more of the lamination done than I did yesterday, There was a bit of dripping, but it wasn't too bad. When I attached the ACI 70-73 rear clip to the back of the 79 there was a whole lot of dripping going on, the coveralls I was wearing became more or less a solid lump after the resin hardened.

 

Today I cleaned up the laminating I did yesterday so I could finish the job off:




It turns out I didn't have my plywood pressed as tightly as I should have on this side of the reinforcement panel and it wasn't stuck to the upper deck in the area shown by the red rectangle:




So, I feathered out that edge so I could laminate on top of it:




And here's the lamination complete, just a little clean up needed:





This sanding in the gas tank area overhead while looking up is really nasty work! So hard on the eyes!

 

Short of a snorkling mask and a zip-up painter's suit overhead sanding is a super pain. I use the large goggles and an n95 mask to keeo eye and lung irritation to a minimum. I also buy those $5 rainsuits and seal the collar and cuffs with duct tape. When I'm finished for the day I hose off the suit before removing it.....
But you probably knew all those tricks.

 

I use the N95 mask but I tried goggles and safety glasses and so on and they fog up on me after a minute or two and I can't see anything. So I sand without any eye protection which is shear torture. When I was sanding down the join between the 70-73 ACI rear clip and the 79 upper deck my husband suggested I try a large blower fan pointing upwards and that was a significant help. I didn't use the blower on this stuff because there was relatively little to sand.

 

So, at some point I found this problem just behind the driver's side rear wheel well:





At this point, I don't have it in me to take the body off the frame so I'm going to repair this in place as best I can. Before starting I decided to remove the driver's side rear wheel only to find this:




No key was found in the car so I'm waiting for hubby to bring something home to deal with it. I've had the car since 2009 and I just find this out now. Good thing I never got a flat.

I pulled back the carpet in the rear of the driver's side and I see I have one bracket I need to remove to fix this. I used a cut-off wheel to remove the inner part of the two rivets and remove it. I also smoothed out the inside of the rivets from the metal cup that holds this body mounting point so I can fiberglass over the inside of the factory SMC.




I spent a few hours preparing the surface for glass, feathering the edges of the crack and so on:



While I was using the cut-off wheel to remove the rivets from the interior bracket I accidentally cut through the SMC at the blue arrow. No matter how good you think you are with power tools in close confines something like this always seems to bite you.

I obviously can't apply fiberglass on the outside of the body where the steel cup is for the body mount. Fortunately, on the inside of the car I can get entirely around the crack/hole and there is 2 inches of solid factory SMC to add the repair to. So, most of the feathering and sanding is happening inside the car and in theory I can get a satisfactory SMC repair if I can feather edge the edges of the SMC from inside. Its quite a challenge trying to feather the edges on the front of the hole that the body mounting bold sits in. I've been using a mirror and a die grinder and its gone reasonably well so far although its pretty awkward to do this kneeling where the driver's seat goes and leaning on the edge of the rear storage compartments area. I spent perhaps 2 hours sanding inside the car and afterwards my lower ribs on my left side were really sore from leaning on that edge. I decided to take today off as I'm still really sore and hopefully I'm healed enough tomorrow to take some more of this.

 

you can use a pair of vise grips on the locking lug or a hammer and chisel....a really long pipe wrench will grab it too

 

We used to heat it up with a torch a bit and that would mess up the chrome and make it easier for the vice grips to dig in and turn it.

 

Take an impact socket about the size of the mid point 9f the lock and give it a couple good hits with a dead blow hammer and back it off. Works every time for me.

 

Hubby says he's going to use a die grinder and put a notch in each side of the lock nut and hit it with an air chisel. He says he's done several this way and he can usually walk them off with the air chisel.

 

Dub and other members showed me how to repair that area pn the inside and outside.
I'll see if I can find the posts...Post #2793 has some pics of the passenger-side repair.
Post #2882 also....I kinda jumped from one area to another

 

Wow, you sure had a lot of body mount trouble to sort out on your car! Great job! Thanks for finding those posts for me, that's a lot of help.

 

Here's the link to doorgunner's post #2793
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1591645717

Here's the links to doorgunner's post # 2882
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...post1591705381

If you have body mount issues, this is well worth a look.

That's a scary amount of work you took on doorgunner, I just don't have it in me to handle that kind of stuff, I'm so impressed with your stamina and determination!

 

TEAMWORK..........wiith a quart of Crazy mixed in.
The "keepers" that allow the nut to move around in its cage were rusted badly so I removed them.
Since I didn't feel likevwaiting a week to receive new cage-nuts, I re-used what I had.
I should NOT have welded the new nut to the original cages......I should have welded the original cages in place,then slid a new nut into each cage so the new bolts would align with the new nuts.

It just worked out that I welded all the original cages in the right spots...the new body bolts screwed into the new nuts easily (lots of anti-seize on nuts and bolt threads.)

I hope that made sense

 

I've got the body mount area prepared for fiberglassing. I'm going to have to do it in a mirror because I can't get my head close enough to see where the hole is:



I removed the cage for the nut as it was mostly rusted away anyway. I figure I need a day to get everything prepped for doing the mat/cloth and resin, I'm low on resin so I want to get as much of this done as possible, if not all of it and I want to make sure I don't get any resin on the nice interior bits while I'm doing this in a hurry. Its going to be a more difficult doing it in a mirror but I think I can handle it.