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.

The Grind

Page Thirteen – The Grind

First there’s welding, then there’s grinding, and usually more welding, followed by more grinding...

An Ode to Rotten Rockers 

In my last posted (April 1), I lamented the search for solid metal; the lament continues.

Burn-Through

I’m using 16-gauge sheet metal straight from Lowes, but Rootes used something slightly thinner.  My little metal gauge gauge proclaims the Rootes stuff to be 16-gauge, but my eyes and fingers tell me it’s thinner.  Perhaps Alphie’s original tissue has degraded slightly over time, maybe the Brits measure metal gauge differently (I have learned that measuring metal gauge is particularly occult, requiring voodoo), but the MIG welder burns through the Rootes metal with aplomb, like COVID quarantiners burn through toilet paper and hand sanitizer. 

Welding my Lowes sheet metal to Rootes metal often means making ugly metal warts big enough to fill the burn-through, which in turn means copious grinding!  (There is the possibility, although remote as a Siberian village, that I'm not that good with the MIG...  Surely not!)

The point, whenever I think I have found solid metal to which I can suture new tissue, I find more flimsy, diseased metal.

Fitting Sheet Metal Pieces

I’m getting the hang of making metal jigsaw puzzle pieces.  I’ve shown how I make a file folder template, which I transfer to sheet metal, but that’s not the end of it.  The "Fitting" can be tedious.

The Fitting involves hundreds of trips from Alphie to the bandsaw, to Alphie, to the vice for grinder work, back to Alphie for gazing and scratching, back to the vice for hand filing, back to Alphie…  You get the picture. 

Eventually, the piece fits and is welded to Alphie.  Then there’s the Grinding of the Welds, followed by the Welding of the Grinds, followed by the Grinding of the Re-welds…  It’s the “fun” I signed up for – truth be told, I love it, but no one ever said I was all that "right."

Latest Harbor Freight tool grab

All of this is very time consuming, and as per my addiction, I turn to my patron saint in harried times.  The good folk at Harbor Freight call me if I don’t show every other week or so.  

Check out my new belt sander!  It cuts the time to “adjust” a piece to fit the puzzle significantly.  (Part of the car hobby, like most of men’s hobbies, is buying more stuff to support the addiction.  What fun would car resurrection be if we couldn’t buy more tools?  And parts?  And other cars? And die casts, but I digress...)

ROCKER PANEL(S)!

Color-coded no less!  Remember Alphie
Is upside down on the rotisserie

I say rocker panels – plural – because each rocker panel is a three-piece assembly.  I made you a drawing:

At the time of this post, I have the “panel,” as I call it, in place.   The “panel” is a flat piece of sheet metal that creates the panel from the lower door sill (rocker) to the junction of the floorboard of Alphie’s interior.  

How the "Panel" and the Stepped Inner-Rocker go together 
with some cool 3D text!

The stepped panel, the piece scavenged from Bob’s Butt (in the pic) creates the inner rocker panel.  The inner rocker meets the “panel’ just below the pinch weld at the very bottom of the rocker assembly.  The chunk of inner rocker from Bob’s Butt gives me the dimensions and placement to fabricate the rest of the inner rocker.

Chunk of Bob's Butt that gives reference
for inner-rocker placement and fender lip support

The outer rocker panel, the one visible on the exterior, covers both the “panel” and the inner rocker and is pinch welded to the edge of the inner rocker – see the pics.  I haven’t purchased the outer rockers yet, because I want to fit the snoz from the Organ Donor first.

After I weld in the chunk of Bob’s Butt, I will bend, fit and weld in the remainder of the inner rocker.

Before POR 15

POR 15

I’m not big on pushing products, but the shiny black paint you see is POR 15 – that’s Paint Over Rust 15.  Anyone who has ever worked on or talked to anyone who has ever owned or worked on a Sunbeam Alpine or Tiger will tell you that the rockers were rusty as they rolled off the assembly line, it’s factory rust! 

After POR 15

Alphie shall rust no more!  I have treated the factory rust with POR 15’s Metal Prep, essentially a rust converter that gives the POR 15 paint something to grab.  POR 15 paint chemically combines with the rust and seals it against moisture.

Alphie’s new rockers will be slathered in a thick comfy coat, inside and out.  A hundred years from now, Alphie may have rusted to dust in a field somewhere, but her rockers will still be there like T-Rex fossils waiting on future archaeologists!

I’ll add more pictures to this post as I complete the inner rocker.

More Pictures!

Here's a pic of the next sections of the inner rocker.  Why make sections, you ask?  Because my little metal brake can handle one foot sections, but a two foot section is beyond its and my capacity.  I mean, I can FIT the two foot section in the brake, but bending it requires a Marvel Avenger - yeah, I tried anyway! 

First I fit each piece to the contours of the inner rocker upper section (remember, Alphie's upside down in the pic).  Next, I'll try TIG welding two sections on the bench and fit them.  If that works well, I'll TIG the entire piece on the bench then fit it to Alphie.

Ready for my new TIG welder!

BTW, the TIG welder is up and running!  I'm learning the ways of the TIG.

Before!

After!  The Inner Rocker Panel, Sunbeam Secret Rust Vault! 

One last pic showing the finished inner rocker. 
The front is boxed in and the support at the door is welded in.

What Not to Do!

Page Twelve – The Un-Doing and the Re-Doing

The tedious tale of a teleworking weekend.  (Alphie is getting plenty of attention during these COVID-19 times.)

The Situation

To fix the rocker panels, I must fix the x-member and its assorted components.  I have fixed the passenger side forward x-member, and the middle extension, but the aft x-member has more problems than the other two.  The leaf attachment is anchored to the aft x-member and a smart restorer would take pains to keep the alignment of the passenger side’s leaf spring shackle to the driver’s side shackle.

Next time I pry a Sunbeam Alpine from its crypt, I’ll be sure to do that!

I could have easily locked the alignment by welding in a temporary brace before I happily hacked away at the rusty supports.  But no, my smug little self lit up the grinders with blissful abandon.

Aft X-Member Tip
Fabbed before the Re-Do

The weekend before the Un-Doing, I had made two of the shackle supports (there are three) and welded them in place.  Feeling quite pleased with myself, I glanced at the driver’s side leaf spring shackle, and something didn’t look right.  Things had gone cock-up! (And you thought this post wouldn’t have any British slang.)  

I scurried over to measure the driver’s side.  You won’t be surprised to learn that things were, indeed, cocked-up, all cattywampus for those raised in ‘round here.

The passenger side shackle was lower than the driver’s side, and the bolt was not at a right angle to the center line of the car.  Furthermore, the opening where the leaf spring bushing sits on the fubar-ed bolt had spread too wide…  All my “Oh shit” bells rang like Quasimodo was in the belfry!

Bracket - Post-hack

So many mistakes, such happy cluelessness – it’s sad really.

Desperate measuring, despondent head scratching, and prodigious “oath-making” commenced.  There are damned few common reference points between the driver and passenger’s side – I mean reference points that aren’t tattered rusticles.  Now that I had hacked everything up, how the hell was I going to get solid measurements?!

Then I remembered…

Bob’s Butt

Bob's Butt - My Savior!

My Sunbeam buddy, Bob (only first names here on the blog) gave me a complete Sunbeam Tiger rear section, lovingly referred to as Bob’s Butt (apologies Bob).  I say complete; the guys rebuilding Bob’s car carved many chunks from it, but I got the leftovers, see the pic  The Organ Donor is far too derelict to give any good numbers, but Bob’s Butt saved mine!

Speaking plainly to myself, I said, “Dumbass, why don’t you measure the passenger side of Bob’s Butt?  Der!”

But Bob’s Butt is worth far beyond good measurements – solid, (mostly) rust-free pieces.  All I had to do was cut them off (after measuring EVERYTHING!) and paste them on.  Well, it’s not as easy as that, keep reading. 

Add a 1966 Sunbeam Tiger to Alphie’s Frankenstein body count.

I’ll spare the details, but I amputated one support that was made of 14-gauge steel (I only have 16-gauge) and that gave the reference measurements I needed.

The excision took about two hours of Thursday afternoon.  Straightening and prepping the piece took another two.

A good blogger would have taken pictures of the whole process.  Unfortunately, you’re reading my blog. 

The Un-Doing

Friday afternoon started with fitting the piece of Bob’s Butt to Alphie.  No pictures, so I’ll pause while you imagine the cutting, the straightening, the cleaning, the rust treating, the fitting, the grinding, the filing, the supplemental measuring, the second, third, etc. fittings...  Pause some more; it was a week’s worth of tedious.

That’s about three-plus hours of Friday afternoon.  Add another two hours of Saturday morning for spot welding the flanges for the rocker panels attachment, an extra couple of fittings, bead blasting, priming and MIG welding it to aft leg of Alphie’s x-member. 

Un-Doing all the pieces I had laboriously fitted the weekend before and prepping everything for the Re-Do took the rest of Saturday and the first hour or so of Sunday.  As it turns out, my ugly welds stubbornly resist “letting go.”  Oh, let’s not forget bending the shackle back to its correct position. 

Plenty of measuring, all of which was about a week late.

The Re-Doing

Sunday, after finishing Saturday’s work, I made a paper template of the bracket that goes above the shackle and boxes it all together.  Make that two paper templates; I decided that I would have to make the bracket in two pieces and spot weld them together to get the measurements and shape I needed.

No pics, of course.  Here’s a drawing to help you visualize it.

Not drawn to scale
nor particularly well

Hold it – I forgot that I hadn’t made the third support that connects the inside of the shackle box to the inside leg of the x-member.  It’s in the drawing.  It’s a fairly simple fabrication, but it took three pieces of file folder to get the shape right, and I had to MIG weld on a flange because it’s curved – um, I didn’t MIG anything to the paper template.  Work with me here.  (Refer to the drawing because, again, I didn’t take any pictures.)

(Note:  It's a kerspIoded view.  I circled the parts I fabbed in red.  The blue arrows are supposed to show you how it all glues together.)

Each side of an Alpine’s forward leaf spring shackle is reinforced by three pieces of sheet metal.  They were a bugger to retro-build and retrofit, but they are plenty strong.  

It’s about 2:00 Sunday afternoon, but I have all the pieces bolted and/or vice gripped into place.  I mentioned it before, but this is when I noticed the bolt wasn’t at a right angle to the center-line of the car.  Geez!

What to do?  I slotted the bolt hole that was incorrect.  It was the outside hole, thankfully, because slotting the inside hole would have been a test of ingenuity and forbearance.  OK, with a slotted hole and machine square in hand, I corrected the right angle correct and weld a 3/8^th thick washer on to create the new bolt hole.  Not stock looking but aligned!

Welded but not cleaned or primed
(I see things that won't work already)

I finish Sunday with MIGing and grinding aplenty!  I added a new grinder from my Dad’s stash for a total of three.  When you weld ugly, you need a ready supply of grinders.

The driver’s side x-member only needs half this much fiddling, and me having learned what not to do!  Pity.

When I install Alphie’s new floor pans, I’ll tidy-up the welds, maybe add a small cover to prevent water from getting to all my ugly welds.  I’ll decide that later.

Next up:

Rocker – friggin – panels!  Finally!  I have already surveyed the pieces of Bob’s Butt I’ll need to get the alignment of fender to rocker panel.

I will endeavor to take pictures next time – no promises…