Page Seventeen - Genioplasty

 

This is what happens with a word-a-day app.

    Genioplasty (n) – plastic surgery of the chin.

    Redivivus (adj) – come back to life; reborn. 

I’m admittedly straining my medical analogies; first oncology then dentistry now plastic surgery…

So Alphie is getting a chin lift.  Victoria British LTD’s catalog listed a complete valance with upper and lower sections, but now that Moss Motoring bought them out, the valance is no longer listed.  (Or at least, I can’t find it anywhere on the Moss website.  They may have it when they get the whole Victoria British line up and running, but times a'burnin.)  I had resigned myself to scrounging a good used one somewhere or rehabbing the valance and “chin” from the Organ Donor, but it was swiss cheesy and the chin had taken some hefty shot during its time on the road, many a crumple. 

The old and the new upper valance pieces

Luckily, while clicking on eBay for Sunbeam stuff, I happened upon Steve Alcala Automotive Restorations eBay site (his eBay name is steven6243 in case you’re interested) where he sells the upper valance without the chin.  It’s a solid bit of fabrication.  Even without the chin, it gets me much farther down the road.  Alphie’s rumbled chin is, with creative MIGging, some tissue grafts and a touch of hammer and dolly, salvageable. 

The valance, made with 40 thousands thick steel, does not include the radiator support nor have any of the holes for the grill bar trim pieces.  First step, Vice-Grip the old valance top piece to the new one and mark for drilling the holes.  The “holes” are actually slots, so I drilled two holes and Dremel-ed and filed out the slots.

Holes marked

With the slots and holes drilled, I cut the radiator support from the old piece and started its rehab.  The support had a couple of rust throughs and some thin areas.  After a blast of glass beads, it was all clean metal, but the rust throughs were easier to see and worse.  I could MIG a few of the holes, but one corner needed a tissue graft.  I drew and cut a file folder template, traced it on some 16-gauge, cut it out, filed it to fit and MIGed it in place.  Since it will be largely out of view, I only smoothed out the welds a little, enough to keep from trapping water and rusting.

Holes drilled and the radiator support in (the wrong) place

Next step, a more difficult one.  In fine Bonehead Wrenching style, I drilled some holes for MIG fill welds and merrily (and cluelessly) welded the radiator support to the new valance top.  Fortunately, after only completing three of the fill-welds, it occurred to me to check the alignment with the rest of Alphie’s snoz…  It was shifted about ¾ of inch to the left, or was it the right?

Radiator support corner graft

Carefully I ground out the fill-welds and straighten everything, again.  I am becoming quite adept at undoing welds, a valuable skill in the restoration hobby.  Here’s the catch: if the valance is off, the fender edges below and outside of the headlights will not match up, which in turn makes the edges of the chin not match the edges of the fenders or the fender lips.  In short, a mistake here will cascade.  So how can I be sure it’s all lined up?

Vice-Grip the old valance top to the new and align the radiator support with the old piece and clamp it to the new piece.  Ta da, the same alignment of the original piece.  I was quite proud and smug.  Eventually, I will learn that proud and smug is a warning…

With the radiator support clamped in “perfect alignment” (more later), I happily welded it in place.  And welded it I did.  I got it too hot and warped it.  I stretched and banged it back into shape, but it was work that could have been prevented, and it didn’t help with the alignment situation.  After a quick etch primer spray, I gathered all my open-jawed Vice-Grips and set to clamping.  A bend here and there and the valance top piece seemed to fit nicely.

All clamped up but about 3/4 inch off

Upper valance clamped in

Next day, genioplasty.  The chin suffers rust-through with dents and abrasions from some rough moments.  Start by repairing the tears around the crank-start hole.  (One of the cool things about Alpines is that you can start it like a Model T with a crank.  Someday, in a crowded parking lot, I’m going to crank-start it just for the reaction.)  The plan is to fix the rips and worry about pounding on the dents when it’s back on Alphie’s face.

Chin clamped to the upper valance

The metal is thin, so I lowered the voltage on the MIG and used short bursts.  I spotted the end of the cracks to prevent further cracking, then stitched up the remainder of the cracks.  I also found cracks around the license plate captured nuts and along the lower edges.  The drivers side edge, just below the fender opening was rusted through and didn’t complete the line of the chin.  It needed a graft.  Per SOP, I cut out the rusty stuff, and using the passenger’s side as a guide, made a file folder template that replaced the rusty chunk and regained the original line of the chin edge.  The pictures will help you see what I’m talking about.

Chin and valance, driver's side

With welding there is grinding.  I used the flap disk to not remove too much metal and because I was just taking off the sharp edges and looking for holes in the welds.  I will smooth everything to a factory finish during the body work stage once everything is in place.

Soooo I clamped everything, valance top and chin, to Alphie’s snoz to check the alignment.  The whole kit is about ¾ inches off on each side.  The radiator support is skewed to one side by ¾ of an inch! 

Driver's side sticks out about a smidge!

Passenger side, inset about a smidge

With some judicious bending of the radiator support, I should be able to move the driver's side in a smidge and the passenger's side out a smidge...  Yeah, no sweat, like I planned the whole thing.

Next page:  Mating the Organ Donor's rehabilitated snoz onto Alphie's front end.  Lots of fiddling to come!

Some Update Pics

The Valance and Chin have become one!  HF 240 volt Spot Welder!

Close up of passenger side.  Most of the dents and crinkles are out,
but far from finished.

Driver's side - the fit is better but not there yet. 

Page Sixteen -Mouth Fungus

Our goal!

This time we’re working on Alphie’s mouth fungus (OK, it’s rust like every problem with Sunbeam sheet metal, but I am tired of calling it cancer).  Rootes used 22-gauge metal (by my handy thickness gauge), which when exposed to thirtyish years under a tree, rusts, efficiently.  

My goal is to give Alphie a new snoz, but as I get closer to gluing it on, I find things that must be done, or would be much easier to do with her snoz on sawhorses.  Like fixing mouth fungus…

These before pics show what we’re facing.  These pieces are the inside cheeks of the front cowling that funnels air to the radiator.  And, unlike all the metal I have fitted beneath the rocker panels and under the fenders, will show.  Fabrication that you can actually see when Alphie breathes again!

Before: Left cheek from the radiator side.

Before: Left Cheek from inside the fender

Option 1: Patch the cheeks.  BUT they are very thin, very rusted and even with the snoz belly up, it’s a tight fit getting the welder in there, not to mention clamps and Vice Grips to hold a patch in place.  Besides the You Tube videos have all warned me that “you can’t weld rust;” I tried it, they're right, you can’t.  You just burn more holes.

Option 2: Fabricate new cheeks and weld in some good, clean Lowes sheet metal.  I went with Option 2.

First, I gently chiseled out the right-side cheek because 1) it was easier to get to and 2) more flimsily attached, i.e. easier than the left side.  With the cheek removed, I transferred the rough shape to card stock then refined it to fit Alphie’s snoz more accurately. 

Next, I transferred paper to metal and cut out the patches.  My cheap band saw cuts 22-gauge sheet metal with far more control than it does 16-gauge, so that's a win.

With Alphie’s snoz flopped upside down on sawhorses, I fine-tuned the patches' fit.  I made some angles that I spot-welded to the cheek to make surfaces where I can spot weld the cheek to the inside of Alphie’s mouth (see the pics).  I also cleaned the attachment areas inside the fender well of surface rust because, you know, you can’t weld rust.

Inner cheek parts, in rusted, paper and metal

Outer lip parts, in rusted, paper, and metal

Left cheek with angles attached

The coves at the sides of Alpine mouths are two pieces, an upper and lower.  On the right side, only the lower piece was rusted through.  I’m not replacing the upper piece, but I needed to patch the lower inside corner because it is where the cheek attaches.  I carefully cut out the diseased metal and MIG welded the patch in place.  Welding 22-gauge is trickier than 16-gauge, lower amperage with quick bursts.

Right-side lip patch held in place with Vise-Grips

Lip patch welded in.  I'll use JB Weld to feather the edges

On the left, the upper piece has a canker sore and the lower was just rusted through.  Fortunately, I traced the shapes to cardstock from the rusty pieces I remeoved.  I have mocked up the new pieces but have not cut out the old and welded it in the new yet.  I’ll add pics as I take on that task.

Left lip and its canker sore

Left upper and lower lips mocked up (shown upside down, sorry)

I'll update this page as I finish welding in the cheek and lip patches.

New Pictures!

Both cheeks installed - there are problems, but I won't point them out :)

The left cheek mostly installed - from inside the fender well.
I temporarily installed the headlight repair ring to keep things lined up

Left cheek from the the radiator side

Alphie's canker sore repair. 
The bottom lip is tacked in until I have the valance to align it.

New, new pictures!

Exfoliating the snoz.  New Harbor Freight toys!

Someone brass brazed a few repairs.  As long as they are solid, I'm leaving them.  I have had to reweld a few of them.

Page Sixteen - Face Lifts and Dental Work

I peeled off Alphie’s old nose and cleaned up the structure underneath.  I grafted in new metal onto her bones, closing in the inner rocker-to-foot well.  Cutting out diseased metal, welding in new tissue, welding, grinding, welding, grinding and more grinding.  Same ol’, same ol…

I discovered that the Donor’s right front wing is a replacement, which I just sawed off to replace the right wing on Alphie – a twofer!  The Donor’s snoz has age spots, a rusted septum, rotten teeth and bad gums.  It also has…

Black Eyes

Alphie’s original eyes got a solid punch - they were severely black and no longer lined up, but the Donor never took a smack to the face, so the one I’m working on is not technically a black eye.  Although Alphie’s original eyes were…  Hell, never mind, I’m straining the medical analogies.

Here's the problem - returning to original dimensions

Let’s look at the Donor’s rusty eye socket.  The area below the driver’s side headlight is rusted
through, leaving me little reference points for where the metal should meet.  Fortunately, with the headlight buckets reinstalled and a tiny smidge of straight metal (see pic), I figured out the amount of space to make the fender line up with the chin valance.

I picked up a cheap contour gauge sometime, somewhere and it’s damn handy.  I used it to map the contour of the fender and transfer it to a piece of sheet metal.  I cut the metal to the curve then cut a 2X16 cm strip of sheet metal, which I TIGed to the curve.  The result is a bracket that will be spot welded to the inside of the fender and will span the gap of rotted out snoz.

Gauging a contour with the contour gauge (Ha! A frowny face;)

The Fix!

Here's how it works

Clearly, there is more metal work to do, but "the fix" allows me to adjust the spacing and gives me some solid metal to attach the chin valance.  The pic shows a rough fitting in dire need of tweaking, but it shows how it works.  Once I weld "the fix" in, I will need to fill in the gap and reweld the seam below the headlight opening.

The opening for the turn signal seems to have been gnawed out.  But I have looked at MANY pics of other Alpine's turn signal openings and most seem chewed out.  Maybe it was an opening cut out on the assembly line rather than die-cut during the stamping of the fender. There is some more work to do here, but I need to replace the turn signal assembly to see where more metal is needed.  You may notice, as I did, that there is only one screw hole securing the turn signal assembly to the fender, clearly a problem.

I'll post more pics as I weld things together.  I've decided to order a new chin valance saving me a lot of banging, grinding, fiddling and such frustrations.  Besides, the metal on the Donor's valance is rusted thin and flimsy.

 Page Fifteen - Winging It!

A thoroughly mangled wing!

A quick update - Alphie enters a new phase of restoration, stuff that will actually show!  My biggest challenge from day one has been replacing Alphie's crumpled nose.  I'm finally there!

Cancer Treatment - Round Umpteen

Alphie is right side up, her rotisserie has been tweaked, and she’s ready for her next round of cancer treatment.

First Protocol: Remove a Wing, the passenger side first.  With solid rockers, I’m prepping Alphie for her snoz transplant, and like everything else, when I sawed off the passenger front wing (fender for the yanks), I found rust growing with kudzu-like abandon.  So de-rusting is the goal.

Wingless with all the rust showing

The lower back corners of the wheel wells, where floors meet firewall meet wings and wheel wells is particularly fertile soil for rust.  Wingless and in the full light of day, the rust defiantly sneers.  I take the spike of my body hammer and tap around to find the deepest pockets of rust, creating cascades of flaky rust and find several spots of serious infection.  In several places, the metal breaks away leaving holes where I must fit and weld new sheet metal.  Marshal the grinders!

Second Protocol: Cut, Cut, Cut.  Fit the small grinder with the cutting disc and get at it.  I cut until I find healthy metal and a suitable place where I can most easily fit and weld in patches.  Except for the lower corners of the wheel wells, most of the new metal will be covered by the wing and wheel well, so it needs to be strong and rust protected, but not necessarily pretty.

Another view after one patch

Pencil, marker, file folders, scissors, belt sander, band saw – template making.  With each new template, I’m slowly getting better at fitting patches.  Sometimes the learning curve is a long arc.  Sunbeam’s version of 16-gauge sheet metal is thinner than Lowes’ version – I think I’ve said that before, but it never led to any corrective actions, until now.  

I finally started adjusting the amperage on the MIG welder; you would think that I would have learned this earlier…  I had set the MIG to weld Lowe’s metal, and it welded it with ease and efficiency.  But when joining Lowes metal to Sunbeam metal, I was joyfully burning holes in Alphie’s tissue.  Lowering the amperage mitigates burn throughs but doesn’t completely eliminate them.  Must improve welding skills!

Third Protocol: Weld, Grind, Weld, Grind.  With patches fitted, I blaze away with the MIG.  Since the patches are thicker than Alphie tissue as I have mentioned, I can’t run a continuous weld line.  I have to connect tack weld so that I don’t put too much heat into the thinner metal.  The problem is that the finished weld looks like a row of warts that require copious grinding.  Even when the patches are welded and ground, it looks like surgery done after Dr. Frankenstein spent a few nights closing down the bars.

After etch priming, I will mix up some JB Weld and use it like plastic filler to smooth out the welds that will show inside the wheel wells.  JB Weld is harder to file and sand to finish, but it is so much stronger than plastic fillers.  Eventually, the wheel wells will be factory fresh and a little stronger than the original.

Patches welded in with more to come

Painted with POR-15 and the wing trimmed to the fire wall and inner wing

Detail showing the attaching surfaces for the Organ Donor's wing

Update: After cleaning up the driver wheel well - ready to fit new metal

Update: Snoz ectomy complete!  Some clean up done, more to come

Page Fourteen – The Snoz

It’s been a while and work has been done, it’s just that it’s kind of boring.  Important, but boring.

Rinse and Repeat

I covered building the driver’s side inner rocker panels, but the passenger side was almost the same, just a bit easier, less rust and rot.  Alphie has two very solid inner rockers now, which means I can get to the nose transplant, to wit…

Passenger side inner rocker panel complete -
I'll tidy things up when I apply the new snoz.

Snozectomy

I took the scalpel to the Organ Donor’s nose first because there was more room for error and removing it would inform me about how to remove Alphie’s snoz.

So, what did I learn?  First, hacking off Alphie’s nose will be easier than hacking off the Organ Donor’s nose was.  I purposefully cut more than I will need from the Donor.  The idea is to get it off the car and slowly and carefully whittle my way to the metal that will meet Alphie’s body.  That way I get clean metal to weld where the original body panels met, making my welds to mimic factory welds.  Having said that, cutting on the Donor was a merry free-for-all.  I didn’t have to be that careful to make the cuts clean so I took to the grinders like Michael Meyers with a chainsaw.

The second thing I learned is that I will not replace as much of Alphie as I first thought.  I thought I would need to keep the Donor’s inner fender wells and attach the Donor’s nose to Alphie’s front frame rails.  As I dug into the Donor, I found that the Donor’s wells were not any better than Alphie’s and that not cutting out the fender well will be a smoking lot easier and less likely to screw up the alignment.  That was a big find!

Clearly not a factory weld

Incidentally, I burned through three 7” cutting discs, four 4 1/2” cutting discs and a 4” thin grinding disc; the cordless Sawzall got in on it too.  But as you can see, the Organ Donor’s disembodied nose now awaits cleaning and fitting.

I removed the factory – well, it was factory on one side – leaded seams with a propane torch and wire brush.  Once I got below the lead on the passenger side, the weld is clearly not a factory weld so the left wing may be a replacement.  If it is a replacement, it’s about to go on its third Alpine.  I plan to replace the lead to fill the welds as well as other many of the dents.  (It's still called "leading" but it doesn't actually use lead, way too toxic.)

That's what a factory weld looks like.

The Donor under the knife, day one.

The Carcass

The Organ Donor is looking more and more like roadkill that the birds have picked over.  Now our front yard is adorned with a mangled mass of metal threatening many jagged and angry edges very likely to require a tetanus booster.  But progress!

Some post-surgical shots

Disembodied nose

Ready to be cleaned and prepped

Careful, you may bleed just looking at all that ragged metal 

P.S. I apologize to all the wildlife left homeless because of my actions.