New World Datsuns...

Urg! I'm not jealous of you doing body work.
No special trick on the roll pin that I'm aware of.

Line it up straight, use a punch set that has the little nub in the center (helps to keep it centered), whack it.

I'll have to get a set of nubbed punches for things like that. I was able to get the end of the pin in my vice, from there I thought it would be easy but I just ended up chewing up the end of the roll pin...

I cut out the bad section of the passenger side rocker and cut a little more off the driver side.





Dissected my rocker patch panels to separate the good from bad. Looks like I'm gonna be a little short of what I need...

The bad


The good


Still working on this. Carved the body line out straight in the filler and started to rough the lower section out. I'm finding it way too hard to keep focused on the filler work. I've got 12 days before I head to work, this car HAS to live in epoxy primer before I leave.





I mentioned these yellow welds before, but here's some pictures. Are they factory welds? What are they made of? Bronze?








On second thought, I don't think the welds are factory. But it makes me wonder what repairs actually went down in the past.

Brazing

Yep, to make it smooth. They do it on the roof to at the A and C pillars. That is why you see 510keeper putting lead in those spots. Those spots at the window and trunk opening are to help direct water, or not to allow it to pool.

Ahhh, okay. I guess it's the wheel arches that throws me off, the brazing isn't so pretty...

I avoided the rear glass as long as I could. So I popped it out. I'm getting so much better at doing this. Thick vacuum line seems to do the trick, or rope...





The first of the flash rust hit the tail light panel so I'm gonna grind it away and start the filler there today. Hoping to have epoxy primer covering the car by the beginning of next week.

So I got a siphon feed blasting gun and a big box of walnut shells. It makes getting paint out of tight areas an easy task. I tried to get the gun with the lowest CFM rating, the box said 3.2CFM average, which sounded way too low but I ignored it and turns out the gun uses 13CFM, lol. I'll bet the only time it uses 3.2 CFM is with a nearly empty tank with the pump off and only half trigger. My compressor can't quite keep up, but still things are moving along and paint is coming off.

Source for gun and media?

Harbor freight for both. $20 for the gun after the 20% off coupon, $23 for the 25lb of walnut.




As you can see, it's everywhere. I'm about 80% through this 25lb. The gun seems to work as it should, not that I have any experience to go on. And the media seems to be good quality, nothing clogged the gun so far, but again no experience to go on. Too bad the used media is full of paint and stuff, otherwise I'd sweep it straight into the garden.

180g on the DA got me to here. Just got lots of detail work to sand by hand now...





Can anyone identify these straight edges? I'm fairly experienced in architectural drafting, and my insticts assume it's a drafting tool of some sort, but I just can't figure it out. One hole on each metal piece is slightly slotted...

What length are they?

My first guess would be the old edges that were attached via cable to old drafting tables.

Similar to this


Or maybe from one of those swing arms like this


I did technical drafting in trade school but that was 25ish years ago. Staedler was the go to brand for drafting tools back then. Still have my box of Staedler compasses, triangles, and french curves.

The more I look at them, I'm fairly certain they come from the swingarm thing.

Car is looking goodbye the way, come do mine next

I called the company that makes the 60cm one, and the ruler is older than anyone that works there so none of them know. I think you might be right on the right track about the swingarm possibility. But what throws me off about that is the level so slight adjustment in the brackets, maybe 5° adjustment.

Taterhead wrote:Car is looking goodbye the way, come do mine next

I think you'll want to wait and see if I fall flat on my face when it comes time to do any real spraying, lol. I've only got 4 days to spray epoxy, or wait and deal with surface rust when I come back, but that's no fun at all.

Spray now

I know, I know...

It's just hard for me to decide if it's ready. Haha

I'll be gone a month and a half or so, that should be a good test to see how well my epoxy primer adheres.

If it's not ready you can work on it more when you get back -- but at least it won't be rusty.

I'm hoping to spray Wednesday or Thursday. Then I've gotta fill the garage back up with all the body panels and clean up. I finished masking for the last time earlier. Tomorrow I'm gonna blow all the dirt out with air. Then after the dust settles overnight I'll do a final clean, then finally spray.





Random guy walking down the sidewalk saw me and struck up a conversation. I could tell he was a little weird, but I figured what the hell. He asked what I was doing and I told him paint and body. He takes one look at the car and asks if I've sanded it yet. It was hard not to laugh and I said yeah. He stared at the car for another couple minutes before he said bye. I just kept walking around cleaning up.

How wet is your garage?

My car has had bare metal on the core support for years now zero rust...

It's not too bad. I have a couple of those moisture absorbers for RV's. I keep getting flash rush in the same spot, the license plate spot. I sand it off and it comes back a few days later. Makes me scared to paint it. Lol




Picture sucks but the rust is there. Second picture is a shop towel soaked in Ospho.