Did you have to look it up? Try “battle bowler,” “dishpan hat” or “doughboy
hat.”
What else must be painted body
color? The hard top, and don’t you prefer
the fit and feel of the hard top over the soft top? Alpines just look better sporting a hard hat.
Fortunately, and unlike most things belonging
to Alphie, the hard top is in grand nick.
A small ding where something fell and hit him in the eyebrow and a
couple of other small dings, but the rust is minimal. I again upset some rodent housing inside the
C pillars, where the building material and pee rusted through in two spots on
the inside.
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| The before shots - rear window is a bit hazy |
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| The interior isn't bad for 60 years, even if a bit mousy |
First the teardown. The rubber seals had petrified (per always) and
a couple of the screws holding the B pillar clamps to the top where rusted and
had to be drilled out, but teardown was fairly easy. |
C Pillar, driver's side view of the rodent home.
BTW, all the black will be blue and visible when it's done. |
I dulled a few razor blades scraping
off the old paint. Sounds harsh, but the
paint flakes off easily when you hold the blade at the correct angle, saves
tons of sandpaper, elbow grease and dust.
Next, a quick sand down with the random orbital, and we have clean metal
to mend. |
| Maybe the paint came off too easily. I'll take it |
I pulled the eyebrow ding with the
stud welder, but managed to pull out a plug-o-metal when I gave it a hefty tug
with the slide-hammer. Had to weld that
up.
As for the rodent residences, I cut
out the flimsy rusty stuff with the grinder and made file-folder templates of
the holes. Traced the templates onto
Lowes sheet metal, cut them out on the bandsaw, and got out the MIG machine. These were both small patches and only
required a few trips to the belt sander to get the fit.
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| After eviction - driver's side |
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| Passenger's side - I also etch primed the other side. |
NOTE: And this seems overly obvious,
but don’t try to push down an unruly side of the patch after just welding three
of the four sides with a bare finger. I
know, but it burns like a mother and leaves an embarrassing blister on the tip
of your pointer. Small lessons that dumb
people must learn.
 |
| Patched! |
 |
| Ditto, passenger's side |
Holding your pointer out so that it
doesn’t touch anything, grind down the welds and smear some JB Weld as filler
and presto, clean repair. Interestingly,
I looked through many Googled pics of Alpine rear seats with hard tops
installed, which turned out to be about four, to see what part of the hard top’s
metal is visible. Turns out, the bottom
quarter of the C pillar where the rear quarter window’s toggle clamp (yep,
called “toggle clamps,” looked it up) attaches to the C pillar is exposed, so
my patches will show when all is done. |
Welds ground, JB Weld filled, but still
have some pin holes to fix |
 |
| Not my best pick but passenger's side done. |
There were a couple of cracks in the
hard top at the rear base where it mates with the body that needed some MIGging
too.Some more pics
 |
See the little clips holding the headliner at the edge?
They shoot off - don't lose them |
 |
Alphie took a shot to the eyebrow at some point.
(Push the rain gutter trim off from the underside.
Be careful not to bend it.) |
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| Eyebrow and assorted dings, sorted! |
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| Hold it - not fnished yet! |
