Page Thirty-Four - Grounded

 

Alphie is off the spit, back on terrafirma.  Now the real the real bodywork begins, the stuff you can actually see.  The goal - paint in the Spring.

With the undercarriage painted, brake and fuel lines fitted (but not installed), it is time for Alphie to come off the rotisserie.  I didn’t install the complete suspensions however, only parts of them.  I planned for Alphie to sit a little higher than his natural stance because it means less leaning over while working, a solid goal, but...

I grabbed a set of leaf springs from the shed, disassembled and cleaned them.  I only needed the main springs since they will only hold the weight of the empty body shell.  When I say, “cleaned up the springs,” it took about two hours with a wire cup on the grinder, but they are rust-free, if slightly pitted, and black now.

Cleaned and painted - Main Leaf Springs in place.

U Bolts hold the 4X4 and a 2X6 that raises the back
to about the same height as the front 

Using the (also cleaned and rust-free) U bolts and plates, I mounted a 4X4 between the leaf springs.  To attach them, I drilled and cut slots for the U bolts because the 4X4 is wider than the rear axle.  A bit of a hack job, but functional.  Three sentences that took about four hours to pull off.  Now, Alphie’s front end.

Check out the 30-degree 2X4's

Ready for casters

Back in the summer, I disassembled one of the front suspensions in anticipation of needing it to put Alphie back on the ground.  The idea was to restore the front cross-member, have it all painted and slick, but not surprisingly, some of the bolts were so rusted that they sheared off, meaning there would be some drilling.  All the videos you’ve seen where some miracle gadget grabs a sheared bolt and neatly unscrews it, are all lies and miracle thinking.  Just drilling a hole in the middle of a sheared bolt is pure blind luck, and “easy outs” work about 1 in 350 tries.  I had to drill out the bolts with an oversized bit and re-thread them to next biggest bolt size.  I’m hoping the other front cross-member will not be as rusty, more miracle thinking.

I bolted on the unpainted cross-member and called it good.  The trick up front was attaching the 4X4.  To get a solid flat surface to attach the 4X4, I had to cut some funky diagonal (30 degrees as it turns out) wedges from a 2X4, which I mounted to the sway bar attachment points.  Maybe you have a table saw, circular saw or something else that can cut a nice 30-degree angle, but all my saws cut between 45 to 90 degrees.  Even with my minimal English-teacher math skills, I know that 30 isn’t between 45 and 90.  After a pile of failed attempts in the kindling pile, I finally found a way to prop a 2X4 so that the table saw would give me a 30-degree cut.

With my hard won 30-degree 2X4’s bolted to the cross-member, I screwed a section of 2X6 to them, and attached the 4X4 to the 2X6.  Attach the caster, and Bob is indeed your uncle!

Biggest Head Scratcher:  How to get Alphie off the rotisserie without dropping him?  Yeah, this took some innovation I wasn’t expecting.

I couldn’t remove the casters while Alphie was on the rotisserie, nor could I lift the entire car with my chain hoist.  I would have to lift one end, remove the rotisserie, block it at rotisserie height, move the chain hoist to the other end and repeat.  Oh, and to do this maneuver, Alphie needed to be in line with the I beam in my garage.  Easy huh?  Well, the 4X4 on the front end of the rotisserie broke when I was gingerly inching it in line with the I beam.  Normal stuff for me.

In-line with the I beam and propped up
I forgot to take pics of the intermediate steps, sorry

So, with Alphie stuck where I can only lift the front, I disassembled the front rotisserie and propped up his snoz on two foldable tables.  After some pondering, I figured out that I could swivel the butt a bit on the tables, lift the front, shift the tables back in place, swivel the butt a little more, repeat, repeat, until Alphie’s heinie was under the I beam.  Up goes the heinie, off comes the rear rotisserie, and I could switch the casters from the rotisserie to the new 4X4’s.  Progress!

Next Problem:  How to get Alphie to the ground by only being able to lift one end at a time?  Compound that with the problem of not being able to lower either end to the ground in one shot; I would need to lower both ends in stages.  Scratch, ponder, scratch…

Ah, move one foldable table to the back so that the front is on one table and the back on the other.  Lift one end and place a set of chocking blocks I had made when I first built the rotisserie.  The chocks are shorter than the tables, giving me my intermediate step to the ground.  Lower each end in stages with the chocks until everything is neatly on the ground.  Easy peasy, but it took all day.

Now, Alphie is comfortably earth-bound, and with the casters, is easily maneuvered around the garage.  Not quite as high as I wanted, but I can manage.

Grounded and highly mobile!

I can fit the doors, boot and bonnet lids and start the finish body work.  First up, the boot lid.  This is the kind of body work I've been dying to get to.  Steps that take Alphie clearly out of the grave!

Some pics...

I fitted the boot hinges so that I could check the fit, body gaps and what-not

Some rust-throughs that I cut down to clean(ish) metal

Alpine boots rust - a LOT!

All the way through!

Lowe's sheet metal to the rescue

Welds grounded.  It will need very little plastic filler now,
and it won't rust through again (for another 60 years, fingers crossed)

Alpine Owners - Oil the boot hinges so that this doesn't happen!
Don't slam the boot lid either!

Welded with a little help from the stud welder

Clean up the welds

A little JB Weld and the mend will disappear under paint

See below for more info about this pic

This last pic shows more work than is apparent.  First, all the rust-throughs have new sheet metal welded in, ground down and now filled with fiber glass reinforced plastic filler (but not sanded yet).  The latch mechanism has been cleaned, bead blasted, painted and installed so that I can better check the fit.  All the paint and an epoxy primer have been stripped down to metal.  

I am getting better with a hammer and dolly, hoping to, if not eliminate dents, at least reduce them as much as possible.  When I can't get the dolly under a dent, like the ones on top of the supports on the underside of the boot lid, I use my stud welder.  These dents will require filler, but very little of it.  I also plan to bring everything down to metal.  I don't want any old paint being pulled by the solvents in the new paint.  My goals: 1) As little plastic filler as possible in very thin layers, 2) Only bare metal, no old paint.  (I have more than 2 goals, but enough for now.) 

Pro-Tip:  You can spend hours and MANY sheets of sandpaper removing old paint - OR - you can take a heat gun and a razor blade and strip it to metal in a fraction of the time.  (Go slowly so that you don't gouge the metal.)  The heat gun will pull up the old plastic filler too, but for me, that is the goal.