Very cool Matt! Filling some holes in the firewall are we?

Cool. That's a lot of work. But now I'm afraid to move the carpeting in my car!

Love it. Nice idea with the stiffening of that cross piece. Looks like your sheet metal guys know what they're doing.

For the record, what are you using to chip off the terrible sound deadening material?

The stuff on the floors responds well to heat, but the stuff on the sides took a lot more heat and was far messier. I may have warped the driver side panel just behind the door, a little, with too much heat from the torch. The stuff on the floors released (eventually) with a heat gun, the stuff on the sides needed propane to even budge. The stuff on the floor is heavier and the glue is rubberier, the stuff on the sides is more papery under a layer of tar, and the glue is like rubber cement. For the floors I mostly used a dull carving knife that has a pretty stiff blade. Penetration is what's needed here, tearing through the crap. The sides worked alright with a razor blade scraper after lots of heat.

The roof took no heat at all, just persistence. A razor blade scraper was enough, and I skinned it like I learned to skin a deer so long ago. I was helped by 47 years of gravity on a few panels.

If you can get some dry ice the rally prep guys swear by it. One guy just puts a bunch in an old pillow case and leaves it on the metal. Once cold a couple raps with a mallet an it comes right off.

Looks awesome Matt - and your sheet metal guys look like they did a great job on the round fill plugs.

Rabin

Who needs dry ice? If you can push it outside when it's -20°C you can bang that tar deadening off with a rubber mallet.

122_Canuck posed the question that I was going to ask, regarding the sound deadening on the floors. It looks like it's pretty sticky stuff, plus I would think it's been dried out over the years. I would like to peel mine off on the 131, get the floor properly prepped (or replaced), then Dynamat it. Looks like it's off to the tool store to pick up a heat gun! I was thinking a putty knife might be good enough, but in hindsight the blade might be a bit too thin. Does anyone know, would the sound deadening actually protect the floor on the inside to an extent? The mats looks pretty porous.
David

Much of my rust was beneath the sound deadening. Where there was no rust, the metal looked fine. I think it's hit and miss.

Long time no speak, it seems. Or is that "out of sight, out of mind?"

Whatever. I haven't gotten too much done on the car recently, but I’ve gotten a good solid week worth done since January of last year anyway, haha!

Photos to follow.

The inner fenders have been welded in, the cross brace has been fitted up and welded in, I’ve hammered out some inner fender doublers that got plug welded to the original inner fenders to beef up the material that had been compromised by corrosion and getting torn off the old body. The inner fenders look like a teenage boy’s cheeks now, though, so I’ve got some work to do to smooth them out (if I can). I’ve added some stiffener panels from the top of the inner fenders to the sloped part of the firewall too. I’ve replaced some small sections of rust from the inner rockers but have uncovered more and those must be attended to. The outriggers have been welded into the car, they’ll never come out again! I’ve plugged up several holes in the firewall but I have a bunch to do in the fenders & rad support still to do.

The next steps are to finish welding the fender supports to the inner fenders (which I've been putting off for some unknown reason), finish plugging the holes in the fenders & rad support, and do what I can do to smooth the inner fenders a little. There will be a good bit of grinding to make all my patches look acceptable (with the help of some bondo). Following that I have some reinforcement to the frame rails that I would like to do, to back up the patches I replaced rust with. With that done, I will clean and prime the inside of the rail channels to seal them up, and move on to the damaged/rusty lower part of the firewall. Engine and transmission need to be mounted, which means motor mounts to be fabbed for the B23 and a new tranny crossmember for the T5, and a good chunk of the tranny tunnel will need to be cut away and fabricated for the bigger transmission.

I’m sketching up some plans in my head for a temporary mobile rotisserie to help me blast and paint the underside of the car. That’ll be down the road a ways though, hopefully I can get that part done in the spring. If I can get the car sitting on its wheels this summer I’ll be one happy guy. That’s a lot of Saturdays for this to happen…

Ah Matt "RedGreen" Dupuis, how I miss seeing your crazyawesomewild ideas come to life.

Right, a little more progress today. I've filled a couple more holes in the inner fenders and welded the inner fenders to the fender supports. I have some tidying to do but for now it's fine. I shot a bit of primer to give it a better look for the photographs, but I think we'll all agree that this has failed miserably.





The coil hole still has to be filled, as does a few on the rad supports, but I've closed up about 7 holes in the firewall. The fuses and all the relays will be tucked under the dash somehow, and all the wires coming to the engine will be tucked up behind it and out of sight. All the wires for the horns, lights, and rad fans will run through the fenders, outside of the engine bay. As a result, the engine bay will be naked and exposed, so A LOT of panel beating and bondo will be needed to make this area pretty. That comes later. For now it's just strong.



The rear part of the inner fenders are strengthened from the frame rails right up to the firewall with these (very) hand hammered doubler panels. They're plug welded in about 30 locations to the inner fender and in several more locations to the firewall. The top of the inner fender is also reinforced to the firewall with braces as seen it the images above. The inner fenders have been beaten up a little bit as a result of all this welding (and possibly due to the hammer-fitting) but I know they're strong. I beat each one out on a sandbag and a dollys for hours and got them to the point where I thought they fit great, but that belief was shattered once I drilled the holes for the welds. I had to clamp and weld, hammer and weld, clamp and weld, hammer and weld, etc. I don't really care how rough the doublers look, they fit tightly and nobody will see them. They will get welded to the fender supports that wrap under the original inner fenders to tie things together that little bit more, and a few more stitches along the front, it just hasn't been done yet.





Wowee, this isn't what I'd hoped to be showing, and it certainly didn't turn out the way I'd hoped. I've got some tidying up to do in my future, but for now it'll have to be good enough. My soul needs progress, so after I finish the firewall and rad supports, I'll be moving onto the lower firewall, floors, and transmission tunnel. I'll have a lot more work to do in the engine bay and I will spend more time smoothing things out then.

Nothing wrong with any of that...give yourself a break. It looks fine to me.

from:
http://www.diyautoftw.com/showthread.php?158-Project-Death-Kart-1981-Rabbit-By-Goofydug

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70ggHl6GGZA (a Vega! lol... cool little cars but not much of a fan base)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZWhFmOJ6gQ (didn't watch the whole thing)

Some great progress there Matt. Beauty!

Anybody remember this car? Anybody still watching?

For the first time in a long while, I had a weekend and a bunch of energy, so I started tackling the rusty lower firewall. I have been struggling with the concept behind the kick panel reinforcement as well as the desire to widen them (for speakers or for feet, I haven't decided yet), so after starting at it for most of Thursday I came up with the beginnings of a plan.

First step, remove the lower firewall:


Here you can see the rust on the passenger side. The driver side wasn't as bad but still needed to be replaced.


In between that photo and the next, a few things happened. I figured out roughly where the reinforcement needed to go and sliced the kick panel at this point. Then I hammered out most of the curve in the upper section while bending out the lower section a whole bunch, after drilling the spot welds. I mocked up a fender and decided that the leading edge of the kick panel could come out 6" comfortably. I chickened out and went 5".




Here it is with the fender off, and you get a better idea what I'm working with. I sliced off the flange and made up a filler piece, and plug welded it up.


As I was looking at it, I thought that the floor would really be a lot simpler to do without the transmission tunnel in the way. Before I knew it...


Then, some work happened.






Some shaping is going to be needed, as the curve of the floor doesn't match the tunnel anymore, but I think that can be fixed. It just occurred to me that the tire may hit the new location of the kick panel. God I hope not. It also just occurred to me that this whole exercise may just be for practice - I may have screwed this car up so badly already that only crushing it will make it better. It also occurred to me that the work I've done so far, while strong, ain't pretty in pictures.

Next step, cut and trim the brace, weld it to the car, and build the filler piece for the kick panel. And a lot of cleanup.