Alphie Under the Knife

Only a fool would take on this much rust!  BTW, I'm a fool!

Page Ten: Serious Surgery

Rusty Rockers - Somewhere There’s Solid Metal

With Alphie belly-up like a dead fish, I can get to her rusticles easily.  Standing up and working at chest height, it’s heavenly.

First up, Alphie’s ragged rockers.  Clearly, Alphie spent some time on salty roads, that and 60’s auto makers’ rust protection was mostly in name only.  Rootes’ anti-corrosion regime was red oxide primer.  Alphie’s undercoating turned toes up long ago, leaving black mucousy wads here and there on her nethers.  Bonehead Wrenching’s anti-corrosion regime is POR15, great gob that!  I might over-coat it with red oxide primer for authenticity’s sake – we’ll see, that’s a ways down the lane.

At first glance, the rockers are a shambles of jagged rust, but with my new perspective, I’m beginning to see how Sunbeam glued these cars together.  “If you can figure out how it works, you can figure out how to fix it” – at least, that’s what I tell myself.

With new cutting discs in my grinders, I went about prospecting for solid metal.  (I now understand why shops have racks of different sized grinders loaded with all manner of discs – switching disks burns a lot of time.  I have a 4 ½ inch and a 7 inch grinder, which helps, but still…)  I whittled down the passenger side, the rustier of the two, then I started poking about on the frame members where the rockers attach.  More flaky metal!  Fortunately, the rust is localized and not systemic. 

So, here’s the run down for cross member repair:

The Front Cross Member:  The rockers have three attachment points: at a front, middle and rear cross member, for want of a better description.  The front cross member only needed a small patch, about 2X2 inches.  It was easy peasy, and it gave me some good butt welding practice.  I recreated two tabs that serve as the actual welding points for the rocker panel pieces.  I attached the tabs using my latest toy, a 120-volt a spot welder from our grand benefactor, Harbor Freight – more on that below.

Front Cross Member before

Front Cross Member after

The Middle Cross Member:  The more I glared at the middle cross member, the worse it got.  The middle cross member shoots off from the main X frame at the center of the “X” and perpendicular to the centerline of the car, kinda like this: “X—“.  It also has a small box frame support that runs parallel with the centerline that supports the floor pan where the seats are mounted.  It also connects the front and middle cross members and runs all the way to the bumper attachment points at the front of the car. 

I noticed some flakey metal so I mounted a full-scale assault with double-barreled grinders, a reciprocating saw, an air hammer, chisels, hammers and bloody fingers.  After removing a length of malignant metal along the length of the cross member, I could see inside the cross member…  Flakey, crusty and paper thin, so more cutting!

With the two sides of the perpendicular extension of the middle cross member flayed open, I could see that the end of the parallel cross member was not entirely attached to the perpendicular piece anymore, BUT I finally found some solid metal.

  

 Parallel Cross Member:  The parallel cross member needs a new tip and attachment tabs.  The parallel cross member is boxed sheet metal, but I had to saw off a 10.5 cm length of it to find metal solid enough to hold welds. 

Box Frame fabbed and spot welded.  You may note that one of the tabs is in the wrong place - I figured it out when I started to install it!@%#*&

Butt-welded to the existing cross member and partially cleaned up.  I removed the misplaced tab, but now I see I need one on the opposite side of the other tab... insert your favorite curse word

OK, the truth - I kept cutting the cross member at weird angles so that fabbing a new chunk of box frame that mated up to the existing cross member would have been problematic.  It took about three tries to get a reasonably square cut.  Meaning the actual bad metal was only about 5 cm long.  It’s sodding hard to make a square cut with a grinder, just saying.

I fabbed up an 11 cm chunk of box frame using my spanking new spot welder.  The extra 5 mm gave me some leeway to adjust the mating edges to get a good butt weld.  It turned out mint, if I say so myself.  Check out the pic.

Perpendicular Cross Member:  This cross member (the one at the center of the X frame) is an upside-down serif U shaped box with a piece of sheet metal welded to flanges like the serifs on the U.  The bottom sheet metal piece has weight reducing holes in it, which present a fabrication “opportunity”.  I haven’t taken that on yet.

One vertical side of the U will need a patch about a foot long, but it will be an easy fabrication with only a flange on the bottom edge where the sheet metal bottom attaches.  The other vertical side of the U (where the parallel cross member attaches to the perpendicular cross member) will need about a 6-inch patch, also with only a flange along the bottom edge.

Middle Cross Member gutted.  The yellow lines show where patch panels will go

I'll have to recreate this rusty bit.  It covers the bottom of the Middle Cross Member
Remember Alphie is belly up in the picture above 

Rear Cross Member:  I can see some crusty rust, but I haven’t taken a grinder to it yet.  More later.

Spot Welder:  You may have seen Wayne Siebrecht’s You Tube channel – he’s restoring a Tiger with bad rocker panels, not nearly as bad as Alphie’s but that’s neither here nor there.  His video’s are quite helpful.  Anywho, he pointed me toward the HF spot welder.  So I figured, if it’s mutt’s nuts for Wayne, I'd give it a try.

My circuit breaking spot welder

My spot welder is the bees frickin knees!  It made fabbing up the new chunk of box frame much faster and easier than plug-welding it with my MIG.  (Editorial Note:  I have been referring to “plug-welding” as “fill-welding” in previous post.  They seem like synonyms to me, but most people on the interwebs use the term "plug weld", so count me in.)

The spot welder pulls some juice – the instructions tell you this, but it’s a bigger problem than I expected!  You can’t plug it into an extension cord, even a hefty one.  When I was welding up the box frame section, I kept tripping the breaker.  Any resistance will load to circuit.  For example, the welding tips were a little loose creating enough resistance to trip the breaker.  I found that I had to turn everything off on the garage plug circuit (which included the plugs in the kitchen) helped.

 

I found that it would make a couple of welds and the next one would trip the breaker, but there didn’t seem to be a pattern of how many welds it would make on the trot nor how much time I waited between welds.  Apparently, if the garage fridge was running, it tripped the breaker, if it wasn’t, it welded right along with no worries.  Now, I turn off the fridge for spot welding, just don’t forget to turn it back on!

A Quick How-To:  The mating surfaces being spot-welded must be clean, a bit scuffed and in tight contact with each other.  Any rust or space between the surfaces creates resistance that will compromise the weld.  And, uh, the little sparks shoot out of the weld are damned hot and will burn through anything other than leather gloves.  It’ll make ya cuss - wanna see where it burned my little pinky?

A Portable Spot Welder:  The cord on the spot welder is only about two feet long.  Since I can’t drag Alphie within two feet of one of the two outlets in the garage, spot welding on the car itself is a problem.

[Side Rant:  Why do builders only put two outlets in garages, fer sod’s sake?!  When I build my cavernous Garage Mahal, I’ll put an outlet every two bloody feet and at a 220 outlets on each wall!  TVA will write my name on a wall somewhere!]

This adapter lets me use the
higher amp circuit on my generator

Just so happens that I have a gas-powered generator.  After the great power outage of 2011, Dad decided to give his offspring generators, thanks Pops!  I wrestled it out from its corner of the garage, dusted it off, fired it up and plugged in the spot welder.  When I pulled the trigger, the generator did a little torquey dance and died.  I upped the idle and tried it again.  It burned a good spot weld but still did its torquey dance and died.  I found an adapter while digging in my Dad's stuff that will let me use the higher amp circuit - I'll keep you posted.

 Higher amps but still 120 volts

Rocker Restoration continues and I’ll update as I take on new acres of rust.

Closing Health Note:  I have created a nightmare of ragged metal edges that are ravenously hungry.  Wear your damn gloves, and buy more Band-Aids (sorry, adhesive bandages)!

Roasting an Alpine

Alphie goes belly-up for rusticle surgery

Page Nine:  Alphie on a Spit!

I got to thinking - a dangerous thing, I admit - but to transplant the Organ Donor's nose onto Alphie, I'll need get the body panel gaps even...

• To get the body panel gaps even, I'll need to mount and secure the doors.
• To mount and secure the doors, I'll need to replace the inner rocker panels to rigiditify (my new word) Alphie’s bod.  
• To replace the inner rocker panels, I'll need easy access to Alphie’s tummy.·
• To get to Alphie’s tummy, I'll need her on a rotisserie.
• To get Alphie on the rotisserie, I'll have to cut and modify two Harbor Freight engine stands
• To mount Alphie to the HF engine stand rotisserie, I'll have to replace the frame rail tips where the front bumper mounts... one thing leads to another!

Therefore, I conclude, that I shouldn’t cut-off any Sunbeam noses just yet!

Oh, I built a rotisserie!  BUT, as with everything concerning Alphie, spinning her on a spit turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

Problem #1 – I Need a Coupla Inches:  The engine stands are too short.  In order to rotate the body 90 degrees, the engine stands need to be taller than half the width of the car.  After much measuring, I need them to be at least 34 inches from the stand’s mounting plate to its bottom rail.

The engine stand upright (cut) with the 2X4 rectangular stock
that get it to 34" (or close enough)

A friend who manufactures laser cutting machines, gave me a length of 2X4 rectangular mild steel tube stock that fits over the post of the engine stand, meaning the post will fit inside the rectangular stock.  First, I had to cut the engine stand post in half.  Next, I inserted the engine stand upright inside the rectangular stock and laid it out on the bench.  I expanded the post/rectangular stock until the bottom edge of the mounting plate receiver was 35.5 inches from the top of the bottom of the post where the perpendicular beam meets the post. 

Thirty-five and a half inches turned out to be the magic number that will allow Alphie to rotate 90 degrees without banging into the legs of the stands.  I can work and weld her rusty underbelly without having to muck about on the floor. 

Fun fact, welding upside down SUCKS!

Close up shows the angle adjustment screws 

I have never worked on a restoration without having to scooch under and out-from-under a car thousands of times.  I’m looking forward to NOT doing that!

Problem #2: - I Need a Few Degrees:  Engine stands tilt the engine mounting plate back slightly; I assume to keep it from sliding off the stand.  The receiver on the top of the post where the mounting plate attaches is not at a right angle to the post.  When you press engine stands into service as a car rotisserie, the mounting plate must be perpendicular to the car’s center line.  

In other words, I need to tilt the receiver and mounting plate down a couple of degrees to level them.

Not bad.  We call that Bonehead Level

My solution is to mount the upper section of the post (the section with the mounting plate receiver) up against the inside of the rectangular stock so that it is locked in-line with the rectangular stock.  (See the pictures; it will help you follow this discussion immensely!)  I placed the lower post section in the middle of the rectangular stock to give me some movement where I can adjust the angle of the mounting plate.

I drilled holes and welded three nuts on the sides of the rectangular plate so that I can adjust the angle of the mounting plates.  The bottom two cap screws give me some fine-tuning and lock the angle.  (I added the cap screw just below the mounting plate receiver for adjustment to eliminate some movement.  I only want movement that I plan for.)  Again, check out the pics.

Problem #3 – I Need a Wider Stance:  The width between the engine stand’s wheels is too narrow.  I don’t want Alphie pitching over when I rotate her on the rotisserie. 

Extra stance and racing tires

Sub-Problem:  I also need to be able to roll the whole kit and caboodle around the garage, so I need some decent wheels.  The little metal casters that come with the stand just don’t pass muster.  I bought some 6” pneumatic casters from our patron saint, Harbor Freight.

I mounted the engine stand post to a 5-foot section of 4X4 and mounted the pneumatic casters to the 4X4.  Plenty of stance with plenty of wheel for rolling about!

Problem #4 – I Need a Connection:  I watched a few Engine Stand to Rotisserie Conversion videos, and I noticed a situation.  In the one video, a guy using the same HF engine stands I’m using had each stand holding up its end of the car independently of the other stand.  It looked to me that if he tried to roll the car on the rotisserie  – or move the car on any axis, for that matter - the engine stands would separate from each other and drop the car, mashing the car and any hapless soul who happened to be near it at the time. 

I need to connect the engine stands, front to back, so that the whole contraption moves as one piece.  Enter another a length of 2X6 - I had a twelve foot one taking up WAY too much room in my shed.  Instead of mounting the supplied rotating caster on the front leg of the engine stand, I mounted the front legs of each stand to a 2X6 to set a fixed distance from each other.  I mounted a fifth pneumatic caster in the middle of the 2X6 to prevent the whole thing from sagging in the middle.

Problem #5 – I Need Better Mounts:  Alphie has had surgery before…  It seems that someone in the Alphie’s past welded nuts on the end of her front frame rails where the front bumper mounts.  The angry studs that protrude like British dentistry from the frame tips threaten to tetanize (it’s a word, I Googled it) anyone walking past.  The studs are scary, rusted, stripped, and they’re too short.

Ahhh! 

I mounted the stand’s mounting plate to a 2X6, which I then fitted to Alphie using the shiny new bumper attachment points.  For all this mounting to happen, I added longer bolts (actually, they are pieces of ½” all thread) than the studs currently poking out of Alphie’s smile.

Sub-Problem – Shiny New Frame Rail Tips:  The frame tips where the front bumper mounts are “perished;” I need new ones!  (See the blog post, FIRST FABRICATION, about making new ones.) 

I love the smell of mig welding in the morning!

Problem #6 – Trimming the Fat:  Alphie needs to be at her lightest when she twirls.  I stripped everything down to her shell – nothing on the firewall, interior or underbelly.  I removed all manner of parts tossed in her boot and interior, all of which went to my secret storage hidey-hole.  Nothing is piled under the car… yet, more of a challenge that it sounds.

Going Up!

Problem #7 – Hoisting Her:  Once stripped to her knickers, I hoisted her high enough for receivers to meet mounting plates.  

My engine cherry picker handled her front end and my chain hoist mounted on a substantial I-beam that my house builder so thoughtfully included in my garage.  He added it to keep the attic above the garage, you know, actually above the garage.  I use it to lift various kinds of heavy kit off the floor, including Alphie, smashing!

All Mounted Up!

She’s finally spitted on her rotisserie!

At first, I thought I had her too high.  I feared that she would hit the garage door when I spun her.  I thought of several ways to drop a couple of inches – each idea required a good deal of re-engineering and a bit fiddly.  Then I thought, may as well give it a whirl (snort!:)

This angle shows how the rotisserie works

I took out the pins that keep the mounting plates from spinning inside their receivers, and she sat peacefully on her center line.  Then I nudged the handle on the front mounting plate just a smidge and Alphie rolled belly-up all on her own.  Seems she’s a bit top-heavy, not exactly balanced.  

I could slow her roll so she’s somewhat balanced but she is too heavy for to stop her from rolling, much less rotate her back the other way. 

If she had been less balanced, the let’s-give-it-a-whirl” idea could have been much scarier.  It’s better to be lucky, especially if you’re not that good.

Note:  Use the I-beam chain hoist to manage the roll in the future.  Cars are heavy, turns out.

Next up:  Serious Surgery!

Now I can get to work!  I couldn't fix all this laying on the ground!

Oh, I have a grinder, two in fact!  There is good metal in there.