Wifey's Ford Pop hot rod.

I know this is probably of little use but I've found (off ebay) that the brown ones are rubbish, but the blue (zirconium ??) are quite good and last well,
Nigel

So, back to Wifeys Pop
You may recall this from earlier.



I cut away all three faces so that I could remake the corner, Folded up some 1mm zintec to suit and firstly remade the door inner lower face (if that makes sense). This has a joggle in it to accommodate the side face coming down to meet it. Welded up and cleaned off with the much mentioned finger sander



The next piece was the vertical piece that comes down to the corner. This was bent to go around the section and welded in after trimming the door and patch to fit.



Finally a small piece was bent up and let in to reproduce the bottom part that folds under the door frame. I also drilled and welded the spot welds to finish it off.



The eagle eyed may notice a thin gap where the corner has rusted through. The metal is solid all around so I may just drop some bronze weld in and call it good (the bottoms of my first pop's doors were manky but never gave any issues in 10 years of ownership so i'm not getting precious about them).

Sorry, not sure what you mean Mark. There's nothing missing, it's been rebuilt as it was and the same as the other one.
Do you mean the oblong hole? That's the bottom of the door, there's three along the bottom.
Failing that I'm at a loss as to the missing bit.

Ah! I refer you to the what I wrote

"The eagle eyed may notice a thin gap where the corner has rusted through. The metal is solid all around so I may just drop some bronze weld..."

It's just a line of rusted through, I'll make a decision tomorrow.

So, after a couple of days of phosphoric acid cleaning the door bottom is rust free. Some of it was deep and there were two tiny spots where it had gone through. The rust that Mark spotted tigged up without issue, the metal was solid either side.
I now have to clean the door again with 15% acid and dry really well. once fully dry a scuff up with grey Scotchbright will see it ready for epoxy primer then filling.



After all that my workshop is a tip, clean up time

I finally got the door painted. It has been a right pain, it was very subtly not flat and took a fair bit of work to get good. The last two coats of epoxy went on two days ago and were then flatted out yesterday. Today was base and lacquer day.



I'll start flatting and polishing in a couple of days.

It doesn't feel like it ! I hope the other door goes better.

Me and my big mouth.
I hadn't actually looked at the passenger door in detail, just "it doesn't look bad".
Have a look at the close ups before and after I used the finger sander of truth.












I have some work to do

After a bit of a diversion, back to the door.
I cut back the paint to see what I was dealing with (I knew really but it focus's the mind).






I decided that it would be best tackled in two halves. I wanted to keep the doors stiffness as I know that just cutting it all ut leaves them a bit "wibbly wobbly" (technical term) with no reference points regarding twist.
Apologies for the following photo, it was taken with the door the wrong way up and after I had done some of the following work. First job was to cut the skin off on one half to expose the frame, or what was left of it.



I then made a replacement section fot the outer lip of the frame, leaving the corner intact for now. This piece has a gentle curve to it. I used heat shrinking to get this.



This gave me a solid section so that I could tackle the corner. I cut the layers away down to the diagonal brace. The end of this was well perforated so using the traditional Cardboard Aided Design a template was made and a repair section cut and welded in. The odd shape is as original.



The next layer is the door bottom. The same technique was used again. The corner joint was still partly in place at this point, keeping the door in line. The holes are for the "spot welds".




Thats it for now. It will be Saturday before I get on it again. I have to unpick the corner and reconstruct that.