Grelland's Ghia

[Grelland]

As can be seen, I will need to apply more solder, and that is  the tricky part, as I will need to heat and melt the solder I already applied in order for the new solder to blend with the old, and then all my filing will be in vain...

Oh well, I guess I will learn as I go along...

[Shubee2 (DSK)]

Hi Roy Looking Good Do you have a Wood Ladel? to spread the Body Soder when you are working with it? The Thing when Using Body Soder and to get good Results you need to Clean all the welded areas real good and tin them when your melting the body soder make sure to push the soder rod in to the welded areas  which will eliminate air pockets and you wont have to worry about it rusting between the repaired body and the body soder  I dug out all the old Lead on my Nova when I did the Body on it I rewelded  all the joints and releaded it.

[Grelland]

Hi, Gary, yes I bought a kit like this from Frost so I have the wood ladel, and I am sandblasting the welds prior to applying the solder flux.

[Shubee2 (DSK)]

Hi, Gary, yes I bought a kit like this from Frost so I have the wood ladel, and I am sandblasting the welds prior to applying the solder flux.

GOOD Boy

[alfie the monster]

Some top skills there 

[Lee.C]

That is something I have always wanted to try/learn 

[Grelland]

me too, so I simply jumped into it...

[Grelland]

Guess it's time for an update again...

I have tried to apply more solder to the area I already filled in, and here's a shot of the top of the fender after I filed it down again. It looks quite good now, I woudl guess there are a couple of 0.5-1mm deep craters here and there, so I guess I will have to go over it once more:

[Grelland]

Then I started on lesson #2 in the art of body soldering: vertical panels...

Now it is even more important to control the heat, as the solder will run if it gets too hot.

With some patience this is how the outside of the front fender looks after one night in the garage:

[Grelland]

And one night worth of labour later, it looks like this:

[Grelland]

The picture did not come out too good, but the point is that this is getting quite nice and smooth :-)

Here's a detailed shot of the ridge on top of the fender, where I try to make sure the rigde follows through all the way forward to the chrome ring:

[Grelland]

and finally a shot of a bracket I made for mounting the splash guard plate on the other side, so that everything is now prepared for mounting this fender also:

[empicolector]

very nice work keep going 

[Neil Davies]

I've been playing with body solder too - I'm using it on my '70 to seal the welds on the repair panels, filing it to shape as best I can and then using plastic filler for final shaping. The idea is that the lead will stop the cracking that you often see along the long straight welds, especially the ones on the rear quarter panels. Takes a bit of practice to get it right though!

[Shubee2 (DSK)]

I've been playing with body solder too - I'm using it on my '70 to seal the welds on the repair panels, filing it to shape as best I can and then using plastic filler for final shaping. The idea is that the lead will stop the cracking that you often see along the long straight welds, especially the ones on the rear quarter panels. Takes a bit of practice to get it right though!

The Welds have to be good and Solid I Dug all the lead out on my Nova rewelded all the joints and seams then releaded them the factory joint's were all cracking from Body Flex  over 30 years

[Grelland]

Guess it is time for an update.

First of all, I got the left hand side fender back from a friend of mine that is a panel beater and he had manufactured a new wheel opening on this side too:

[Grelland]

Then I filed the fender some more, and as far as I can tell, am I done with this now, but I will leave it to my friend, the panel beater to judge...

[Grelland]

Then I sat down and had a long look at the shape of the top of the fender.

Then I realised that the shape is not equal side to side, so I decided to make some cardboard templates in order to check, and here's what I found:
(The brown areas  indicate the diffenernce in the profile from side to side)

[Grelland]

I guess these cars never were quite the same side to side, but I am a little concerned now, as the right fender has been welded twice by a previous owner, so I suspect that the basic shape of that fender has been somewhat distorted.

Maybe this will never be visual at all, we'll see....

[Grelland]

So there has been a while without any updates, so I thought it might be time for one...

First I started off by sand-blasting the back-side of the dash and the underside of the last front fender. I then covered it all with a lick of etch primer:

[Grelland]

Then I received a small package for my engine project. These are injector bungs that I will weld into the intake runners:

[Grelland]

And the last thing I did on my car last year (2007) was to mount the last fender to the car.

[Grelland]

And I ended up spending most of the evening getting this gap ok:

[Grelland]

It is still not perfect, but now I can at least open and close the door....

I still need to work on that gap, but I am quite optimistic now :-)

[Diederick/DVK]

such awesome work!!
this should be a real beauty when it gets on the road 

[Shubee2 (DSK)]

The Car Is Coming along Good and is looking great And I Can Tell by looking at the car there a ton of Hours spent just getting it to the stage it is in now Keep up the good work Roy in the end it will be worth all the time spent..

[Luftkraft]

very impressive work! keep us posted

[Grelland]

Thanks, guys,

I spent one night massaging the gap between the fender and door, but it is really not that much to see, so I will come back with an update after tomorrow's session.

Meanwhile, here is a shot of the engine with my new CSP exhaust mounted. Cant wait to find out what this will sound like, not to mention how it will run...

[Grelland]

After a couple of more nights in the garage, working on this door vs fender gap, I think I will say that I am satisfied. Here's how it looks now:

[Grelland]

It is not too different from the pic in a post further up, but now the gap is some 4mm +/- 0.2 all the way, while the variation was a lot more on the previous shot. Not easy to see, but now i KNOW it is ok....

Here's a shot from behind, where you can see the reflection from a lamp continuing fron the fender into the door. I am quite eager to get this right, as I dont like it when the door gaps break the gourgeous lines of the Ghia