Sandblasting Heat Exchanger

I finally found some time to try out the pointers Brian gave me on my sandblaster. I throttled down the media supply and let it rip on one of my heat exchangers. I also bought some high temp paint (500F) so I could paint the exchanger right after I blasted it.

I used black beauty slag from Reed Materials. It took about 1/2 a bag (50lbs) and about 1/2 an hour to get the part clean enough for paint.

Right and left heat exchangers before blasting

Left exchangers after media blasting


Left exchanger in high temp primer

Left exchanger in high temp Detroit Diesel Green Paint. Much better than the rusted out P.O.S. in the first pic!

Rotisserie Under Way

I scavenged a few pieces of 1/4" thick 2.5"x2.5" square tube to make the pieces and parts for my rotisserie. Last night I welded up the main uprights and tonight I'll make the outriggers. I am going to make the outriggers bolt on so I can break the contraption down and store it under my truck in the garage.

Small bits of progress, but I feel this time will pay huge dividends when I sandblast and start to fix holes on the bottom side of the car.

Project moving along again

I haven't got any new pics to post, but I have some progress to report. I have re-established contact with a fellow car buff who has offered to assist me in getting my rockers fitted up. He has a lift in his garage we are going to use to get the heater channels fit correctly. I am going to take the body and chassis over to his house, we will use his lift like a fork lift and seperate and mate the body as many times as it takes for everything to fit. We are tentatively scheduled for 3 weekends from now.

In the mean time, I am preping the car a bit and building a rotisserie. I made up the front and back skewers this evening out of some angle iron and the tubes out of a trashed front beam. I am expecting some 2-1/2" square tubing to come my way early next week. I will make the bottom of the rotisserie when that arrives. After we get the rockers fit up, I am going to mount the car to the rotisserie and bring it back home.

I also received a lesson in how to 'tune in' my sandblaster. I gave up on it last year when it took about 4 hours to blast an area the size of a butter tub. I found out one of the valves needs to run at 50% instead of 100%. The full open position causes too much media to clog the feed tube and then everything surges instead of running smoothly. After we get the rockers in, I plan on a full-on sandblasting.

I'll post pics of the rotisserie when I get it built.

Heater Channel Fit Up

I got smart this w/e and cut the left side off my extra chassis and used it as a jig to get my new heater channel and floor to fender well support fitted up properly to the body.

I also bought an 8mm 1.25 pitch tap and a 10mm (can't remember the pitch) at Car Quest. I have been looking at tool stores for metric taps for awhile and could not find any. I used the taps to chase all the bolt holes on the new heater channels. I also bought a dozen 8mm bolts to use for the jig.

This is a view of the left side of my rotted out chassis (yes it is THAT BAD) bolted to the new heater channels.
The inner rear wheel housing comes out of the box with 2 seams that need to be welded up. I was looking for something a little les s thought provoking to work on, so I stitched it up.
This is the whole heater channel and fender well to floor dog leg assembly clamped into place and fitted up. I still have a bit of work to do to get the convertible stiffener buttoned up inside the rocker skin, so these pieces will go on and off another half dozen times before I start welding them up permanently.

The green car is from someone's ebay listing. The car is in bad shape, but the top is folding properly. I am posting this for a guy on the airheadparts.com forum

Don't know if you can see the detail or not, but the red arrow is pointing toward the skinny piece that often gets bent when someone sits on the apron right in front of the engine cover. It already has a bend in it and if it gets messed up it prevents the top from closing properly.

Fender to Well Part II

Today I made and installed a patch panel to replace the rotted out section below the bend in the fender well. The piece is about 2-3/4" tall. It took about 4 hours to fit, weld and grind this piece.
This is a pic from inside the front driver's side wheel opening. It is of the patch and the fender well after I ground everything down to fit.
From the wheel opening again after welding and grinding
From inside the passenger compartment after grinding and welding.

Fender Well Supports

I cut out some rot and cut this patch to fit. This is on the driver's side at the front end of the dogleg. This should give me a solid welding point for that end of the floor to fender well piece. I'll be welding on a 4" patch all the way around the curved piece to the right of this.

I used the old floor to fender well support to make a cardboard template of the bottom plate that attaches to the pan. I stabbed holes in the template where the bolt holes were so everything should line up. I built a cage for the regtangular floating double nut at the front end of the plate. I also traced the old piece to make a patch that I welded into the front of the dog leg piece (left side of the picture). This wound up a very smart thing because the dog leg didn't match the template and I had to do some reshaping. After the reshaping, everything fit really well. I used M8 flange nuts to weld on. They tend to be easier to weld then standard hex nuts.