I have been so busy lately it's been tough to make time to get working on the little car. But today I had a 6 hours to use and I was determined to make progress. On the front and back of the rear inner fender there are two pieces that make up the bottom of the inner fender. Both of these are pretty rusty on the passenger side, so I am replacing them. Today I though I would basically get that done ,but I forgot about a small mess that someone made using bondo, galvanized metal, rivets, chicken wire, fiberglass and anything else lose they could find around that they could mix in there.
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Seems like a lot of work when you could just put a single bend in a piece of sheet metal... Anyhow I decided to cut the whole panel out and remake it. I make a quick couple of bends in order to get the shape, but decided to make it as original as possible so I pulled out the bead roller and put two beads in it for stiffness.
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With that clamped in place I started working on the rear fender part. Once I had the rusty remains of the original out I started measuring the other side of the car to make a replacement. It is pretty much incredible how little of the original part was actually left, you can see the remains of the original vs the new part. I even had a chance to try out my new shrinker!
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I have been painting any parts that will sandwich together with weldable primer first, so that is why there is some primer on these parts.
I started welding and got the fender piece and the new part installed, primed and painted!
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Once this was done I started pulling the front part of the fender apart to make new parts, but I looked at the clock and decided that project might be too involved for today. Since I still had some time left I started looking at the rusty metal braces that I needed to remake. There are two parts that I need to make, both fit on the outside of the passenger footwell that my girlfriend made. The top piece seems the most straightforward so I decided to tackle it. I started with a paper template, once made I cut it down to the shape that I hoped would make the part most efficiently and traced it on some steel.
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I cut it out and was able to make two of the initial bends on my small harbor freight brake, but I couldn't figure out a way to make the remaining bends with the brake, so I clamped the part to my welding table and bent it by hand. Surprisingly it went better than expected and the part looks pretty good.
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Somehow I still had a few minutes left so I primed and painted the entire inside of the fender so it will have plenty of protection in the future. A few weeks ago I painted all of this with rust stop also, so hopefully this thing won't have any surprises.
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And with my final minutes clicking off the clock I got some good primer on the front as well.
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Today was pretty productive and I am glad to have gotten through a bunch of this work. The passenger side has only a few parts left before it is rust "free" I'm looking forward to getting the rocker dealt with and making the second brace for the passenger footwell.
