Project Theseus

[Noll]

Hey Noll....man, you are a beast! When do you sleep? I have been following your build from the start and look forward to your daily posts.... but 2am, 3am etc... when do you sleep? You are doing a fantastic job and every time I check in makes me want to get to work on my cars... maybe once good weather comes and get house renos completed. Anyways, wanted to chime in on your choice of colours ---- lime green? would not be my choice. Yellow, maybe - apparently yellow cars don't get stolen... Whatever colour you end up with will make this one sweet, sweet ride... keep up the excellent work and the great posts. Thank you!!!

Thanks, and good question haha. In fairness I'm not working on the car that late (usually till 6-7pm) but that's just when I get around to posting before going to sleep. Lack of work due to covid has me with a funky sleep schedule lol, although while it means less money for needed parts I do have more time to work on the car.


I suppose it's less of a lime than a lemon - this sort of color. I know it's not to everyone's taste, but I like it and it's a bit different from the norm - not like this car is going to blend anyway though haha.




And much appreciated, it's nice to be nearing the end (even if there is a still a ton of stuff left to do yet), hopefully will be able to make it out to some shows and see you all this year (if covid allows those sorts of events to occur) or the next.

[Danielz]

Hey Noll....man, you are a beast! When do you sleep? I have been following your build from the start and look forward to your daily posts.... but 2am, 3am etc... when do you sleep? You are doing a fantastic job and every time I check in makes me want to get to work on my cars... maybe once good weather comes and get house renos completed. Anyways, wanted to chime in on your choice of colours ---- lime green? would not be my choice. Yellow, maybe - apparently yellow cars don't get stolen... Whatever colour you end up with will make this one sweet, sweet ride... keep up the excellent work and the great posts. Thank you!!!

[Noll]

Worked on the taillight panel today. Lot of little stuff needed doing, not sure how well it shows up on camera. Did a bunch of plug-weld final cleanup as well as hammer-and-dolly work to straighten the lower valence out properly.






With that done, I re-did part of the rear quarter repair I did way back when I put this quarter on.

Remember this gap? I could have fixed this with some filler and 5 minutes, but that would always bug me, so time to spend a couple hours welding it up properly.


















This thing is looking better and better . I'm still pretty much decided on the lime green/yellow, but it definitely would look good in metallic grey/silver.

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[Noll]

Looking great! I agree the spoiler is a nice touch and it will look really nice when done.

Thanks! Should look the business, and I'll be keeping it black which will be a nice accent from the body.

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On to the driver's rear arch today. had previously ground this too thin and kept blowing pinholes while trying to fix some cracks, so decided to do it right and replace the section entirely.





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Not quite perfect, but good enough fir a little filler and better than thinning the panel out again. Will be improving the panel gap at the bottom soon, same as the other side.




Cut/tacked this inner arch to match the other. As said before, i'll be welding/cleaning all this up properly later.




Can't really see in the pic, but tapped the outer arch flange back into shape after bending the lip over inside. Some spots that will need a little filler, as with on the other side, but nothing major.




Next up, redoing the roof join.





Despite my best efforts there was still a little warping, but the warpage is now on the larger section of the panel instead of the roof join, so should be no issue with any filler/lead cracking.

[KeithZed]

Looking great! I agree the spoiler is a nice touch and it will look really nice when done.

[Noll]

More work on the hatch/spoiler today. Welded in a bunch of captive nuts on the lower section:




And then drilled out the upper holes larger and welded the captive nuts in flush. I'm aware this heat will have warped the panel a bit, but it already needs hammer/dolly work so not a big deal.






Looks exactly the same as before externally, but hey, captive nuts are done.



Aforementioned hammer/dolly work and reworking one small area and the hatch should be 100% done.

[Noll]

Decided to take a break from the fiddly stuff and do something more immediately gratifying. Spoiler mounting time! Decided to go for a bolted-on look, might not be to everyone's taste but I like it and it has the bonus of making mounting way easier than glue + 3 million clamps.

Sheetmetal screws initially to get it in the right spot, then used nice stainless hex hardware. Will need to weld in captive nuts behind, but that's a future problem.






Threw on the taillights too for good measure:






profile looks pretty nice on the car IMO




All nice and flush except that one area that I mentioned I'd likely re-do. This would be a lot of filler, so better to make it from metal.




Threw on a wheel too.




Man, I cannot wait to get this thing on the road. It's going to look gooooooooood.

[Noll]

More misc. repairs today. P/S rear taillight surround (or whatever you'd call this area) wasn't the right shape, so marked where to cut/weld:




And all done, much better.




On to the door gap. Not sure how well the photo shows it, but the gap got a lot bigger at the bottom. Much better now, the door still needs to be aligned/repaired but the quarter side of things is solid now.






Also welded up all the rest of the arch stuff that needed doing. It's not all perfect, but good enough for me - the few spots where the arch bodylines lost their crispness during repairs I'll make nice with a little filler when the time comes to do that.




That's this corner of the car pretty much done with, other than a couple things I can't easily do till the car is on the rotisserie - namely redoing the dogleg and a small section of roof structure above the rear quarter window (the underhang bit).

Now on to the other side, which should be a lot less work (knock on wood).

[Noll]

All I can say is to keep up the great looking work! Your attention to detail is wonderful, and will show when it's done.
Keith

Many thanks! It's not going to be perfect, but I have a great chance to fix all of the major issues now before paint, may as well spend a bit more time and do it all properly so I don't have to do it twice .

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I started today planning just to tap the rear wheelarches into shape, but the plan quickly snowballed after I mocked up a wheel/tire at full bump and found I still didn't have all the space I wanted to.




I was never quite happy with the patchwork repair to the p/s inner arch, and, combined with the folded-over flange it reduced the amount of inner arch space more than I'd have liked so I decided to hack some chunks out of it to see if I couldn't gain a bit of tire clearance.





This is all ugly as hell, but not going to do any cleanup/finish welding till the car's on the rotisserie. Hell of a lot more clearance now, and the single-wall section isn't noticeably weakened.




I also spent a bunch of time tapping the outer wheelarch body line back into shape, the pics didn't really show it but rolling the arches left them pretty wavy. There's a couple spots I'll need to fix where the welds split from being bent so much, as well as one section I decided to just cut out and redo entirely.




Much better. I don't plan to run the car quite as low as in these pics, but I'm going to drive it hard and I don't want to have the tires rub on hard cornering and possibly cause the paint to burn off the arch like I've seen on lots of lowered cars. I have room to spare now and can set up the bumpstops so the tires never contact.












Next up, do it all over again on the other side.

[KeithZed]

All I can say is to keep up the great looking work! Your attention to detail is wonderful, and will show when it's done.
Keith

[Noll]

Started on the rear repairs today. built up a bunch of weld in the gap here:




And all cleaned up. Might re-do the rear patch at some point, borderline on whether or not I can live with that kinda ugly seam being there (even though it'll be under filler).




Moving on to the other side, sliced and bent stuff until the gap was decent:






I then did a bit of slicing and hammering to get the lower body-line behind the doors to be parallel with the doors instead of V'ing out a bit. A marked improvement, but still more do do for it to be perfect.






While doing this I noticed that the bottom of the doglegs twist out a bit - you can see that it doesn't quite follow the profile of the rockers.





This will bug me if I don't fix it, but probably best to wait till the car's on the rotisserie to deal with it properly - the less welding upside-down the better.

Next up, probably tweaking the rear wheel arches and then on to the rear valence and p/s door gap.

[Noll]

Did a bunch of small bodywork jobs earlier. Most aren't worthy of pics (carefully tapping some ridges out of the roofskin etc), but this was a decent visual before/after.

After sectioning the rear quarter it bulged out a bit in spots.




A bunch of metal shrinking done:




Much better.




Also started documenting some other problem areas I'll need to deal with. For some reason the curve of the bodyline isn't matched by that of the hatch on this side, no such issue on the passenger side. Going to throw on the other hatch I have to see if it's a body issue or hatch issue.



Bodyline dips out here where I welded a patch in, will need to rectify that and do some general cleanup to where the weld cracked while I was tapping it into the correct shape.



Plus a bunch of other misc stuff that will need doing. Guess I'll start at the back of the car and work my way forward.

[Noll]

Well it is a 2 engine hoist rotisserie and it breaks down into small parts, It has had 4 separate Z's on it for resto so it is plenty strong for a 500lb shell.

Now it's not a full 360 degree rotisserie but I have never had any problem getting at any part of the car, with some mods you could make it go all the way around.

Awesome! Thanks again so much, that'll definitely save me a bunch of time making a similar setup. Not sure when I'll be able to head down your way but hopefully soon.

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Headed out to the garage again at 3am last night and spent a while measuring everything 6 ways to sunday. Near as I can tell, the doors, fenders, and rear quarters are the same length side-to-side, and every measurement I made came up the same on both sides. A bit stumped as to where the difference is coming from, but I've been able to mostly dial it out.

Threw absolutely every panel on and used the back curve of the cowl as the reference point for where the fenders should go. Everything lines up nicely up here like this:




Measured from the rear strut towers to the front corner of the inspection panel lids to make sure that the fenders were sitting the same distance forward relative to each other (they were):




The d/s fender gap still leaves something to be desired, but this is in the realm of being able to move the door back a tad and then shave a mm or 2 off each side of the gap now IMO. The gap near the top of the the vertical section is what is key, once I get some m8 bolts for the bottom that'll pull it forward and parallel with the door.




The doors are also the same distance forwards, as shown by where the front edge is relative to the end of the drip rail. The issue must be either the door or fender but I'll be damned if I can figure out the precise cause.

[grannyknot]

Well it is a 2 engine hoist rotisserie and it breaks down into small parts, It has had 4 separate Z's on it for resto so it is plenty strong for a 500lb shell.

Now it's not a full 360 degree rotisserie but I have never had any problem getting at any part of the car, with some mods you could make it go all the way around.

[Noll]

For what it's worth I have a spare rotisserie that you are welcome to have, I wish I had thought of it when you were down here last fall.

Ooh, that would be extremely appreciated! Just would need to figure out a time to make the drive down again. Do you think I could take it apart far enough to fit in my volvo or would I want to rent a trailer? It's mostly the long beams between the halves that would be the issue I suppose.

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Continued on with the panel mockup today. Got the passenger door on - red sharpie marks where I'll need to cut and push the quarter towards the door to even the gap out. Not a big deal, I still have access behind there so nice and easy to use a copper bar to weld the gap up nicely.




With the door on and the gaps acceptable for a starting point, I got the fenders slapped on and laid the hood on top (no hinges/etc yet). With everything sitting so that the door gaps are good both sides, the d/s fender is about 13mm farther forward than the passenger side. Oof.




If I move the d/s fender back to line up with the leading edge of the fender, the door gap is more than nonexistant.




Weirdly, despite all the p/s fender bolt holes lining up when the panels are placed like this, the inspection panel on that side very much does not; it overlaps considerably with a flange at the top of the firewall:




If I move the p/s fender and hood to align with where the d/s one sits, the inspection lid fits just fine but that 13mm creates the mother of all panel gaps:



I'm thinking the solution is going to be a combination of moving the d/s door back and shaving the back flange slightly to keep the panel gap correct, moving the p/s door forward and possibly building up some weld on the back edge if needed to keep the gap nice, and possibly doing the same stuff to the fenders. I'll want to bolt up all latches and panels properly, which means that sooner rather than later I'm going to need to buy a bolt kit for the car.


While I'm at it, the bodylines on the doglegs seem to V out a bit - near as I can tell (hard to find pics from above that showcase this on other cars) it should be parallel or close to the bodyline on the doors. Anyone happen to be able to confirm? Should be an easy fix, just need to cut the flange in the wheel arch and fold the whole panel in a bit.