1949 Pontiac Streamliner - start of some lows

i watched an episode of bitchin rides on tv the other day and they did a 52 pontiac convertible that was a bit of a rotbox. when they fixed it they were discussing which gm panels they could use on the rear quarters and i think chevy ones were used due to availibility.
not a bad watch if you can find the show online and the car looked awsome when done too.

Sometimes you've got to be brave! I restored a Beetle years ago that had had heater channels put in by a previous owner without the body being braced - to get the door gap right I ended up cutting the channel away from the door post, front quarter panel and front bulkhead. Scary when you've got everything swinging around in open space!

Things are slowly happening. Got some sills made, happy with those but not happy enough to take a picture of them......

I stripped everything off the bulkhead and out from under the dash so that I could see what was going on. Hairymel popped up to take unfortunate photos of me doing just that



He also found a grommet shaped like a smiley face....



With everything out the way I really need to do something constructive rather than destructive. Despite my apparant success with the sills so far I haven't yet grown a large enough pair to whip the entire old sill off yet. The new sill needs to connect to the bottom of the a pillar and the one I am working on is probably the worst bit of the car.



Naturally, it's been bodged previously and has a lot of rust in it. Luckily the other side is a lot better so can act as a useful reference. So plan number 467 is to repair the a pillar enough such that the doors can be mounted and the new sill connected to the bottom. I decided to use the angry knot wheel of doom to uncover all the nasty and then work from solid metal towards the a pillar



Damn you knot wheel of doom and your predictable uncovering of more holes than one previously thought!! I'll be making this bit up in sections because it's just not practical any other way. So after all this time of ownership here is the first piece of new metal going in...



I'm not sure why I welded it in such a random, haphazard way but never mind, it's solid. Chop out some more grot...



That bracket behind, despite it's appearance, is actually solid so will be cleaned up and left in there. Sadly that's as far as I got although Hairymel did find a fesh air vent shaped like a smiley face.......

Smiles all around this resto !

Cool project I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on.

Managed some time on this, I'm definitely in it for the long haul.....

Let me start off by saying, as if followers of my bodgery didn't know, I have no idea what I am doing. That doesnt matter to me, I enjoy fiddling no matter what and if something comes out the other end that doesn't look like poop or burst into flames then that's a bonus..

I chucked a 16a plug onto the work spot welder, no fuse in there to go wrong and we'll all assume that the consumer board at the other end of the circuit will do something if all the amps get carried away with themselves. Using my sister as a sort of work trestle slash helper monkey I spot welded my sill sections togther:




You will note I have gone a bit nuts with the number of welds. Internet research told me 1 weld every inch which seemed over the top but didn't stop me running with it. So there are 300 spot welds along the four flanges that I have done. This took over a day because you could only do about 30 and then you had to leave the machine for 45 minutes to cool down again! Anyway, done now, welder still in one piece and electrics in unit not on fire.

I also received some cool stuff in the post:





So now I have all the repair sections I need (well everything I can buy, still got to fabriate stuff myself) to rebuild my sills and the front of the rear quarters.

I continue to contemplate my a pillar:



I realise after staring at it for ages that I need to either start at the top and work down, or start at the bottom and work up. Since I've attached my little bracing frame at the bottom I figure I'll work top down. I gird my loins and start to unpick all the previous repairs (i.e. plates over the top of rust).




Then I look at this bit:



Urgh is all I can think. Maybe I'll just cut some bits off? More box section bracing goes in, I am low on box section so recyled material is utilised.



Then I really lose my marbles and hack out the section that connects the the screen/roof to the box that houses the door hinge.



That box looks rusty too:



Christ knows if I'll ever be able to reconstruct a car out of this mess but I have at least kept all the bits to use as a pattern..........

Just buy yourself 34 tins of Isopon and three Daily Telegraphs. It'll be fine.




(don't do this really)

Of course, I didn't just walk off with half the car cut away. I formulated a plan!

1. Recreate hinge box thing.
2. Reconnect bottom of windscreen to hinge box thing.
3. Hope everything lines up in the end.

So here is the offending piece of rusty grot that I cut off



Much complex CAD



Followed by much cutting, folding, filing, swearing etc



Blob it onto the car and then get it aligned with some little bits of scrap tacked into place



and finally, because part of the box is attached to the front sheet metal, I recreated that and tacked it all in. This gives the hinge box much more support so I guess I'm hoping it is in the right place now!

Stuff like that terrifies me. When you have nothing to shape off of, except your memory of the shonky tinwork that was there before! Brave man.