Prep and Paint Underside
The car sat on jack stands for some time while we repaired the boot lid and apron, as well as a few other things, while I planned to tackle the underside next. Things changed in the shop, however. After the major dust problems we had Painting the Model A, we decided to build a paint booth. Since it is in the common area, I had to move my Sprite. To make room in my area, I had to move the Prefect a little so it came off the jack stands and back on its wheels.
Meanwhile, I got some free time and decided to work on the Prefect a little. Since there is still
some work needed on the paint booth, I need to keep both my cars ready to move if necessary. It is
too soon to get back on the jack stands. I elected to start on the sill boards (running boards). I
first removed all the old rubber covering with a hammer and chisel, followed by a knotted cup brush
on the grinder then 80 grit D/A sanding. The nearside board needed some repair. The longer of the
lateral braces was rusted out and the PO had done a really bad job of just trying to weld the holes
full and the shorter one had some unpatched rust holes but not as bad. I made a new piece for the
long one and welded it in then patched the short one by welding. It also required a significant
amount of straightening, particularly along the outer edge. Finally, there were depressions in the
top surface above both lateral braces. I finished up the surface to pretty
smooth and flat with all metal filler.
The offside board was in generally better condition. The outer edge did require a little hammer work for straightening but no splits and both brackets had some rust holes to patch. Finally, the all metal filler was needed to flatten the depressions above the brackets. The upper photos show the replaced support bracket and the weld patches to the shorter one. The others show one of the splits in the side and the top surface with the all metal filler, ready for primer. These will be painted black then covered with ribbed rubber that I already have.
As seen in the photos above, I have not been able to make the bottoms shiny. There is enough pitting
that sanding won't do it. I added a big plastic bag to maintain the blasting dust with half the board
inside and the door open to accommodate the half that wouldn't fit. This produced little success.
It would have taken many hours to accomplish much. Under advice from my paint guy, I decided to use
POR-15 instead. It is a two step process, their Metal
Prep followed by two coats of the paint. I elected to brush it on and it levels really well. A little
ran through some of the holes and stuck to the top side. It took some effort to remove. This stuff is
pretty tough. Meanwhile, I have tried forming the rubber to the curved ends of the boards and believe
I can make it fit. If so then I probably will just glue the rubber directly to the bare metal as it
was done originally.
By the time I satisfied myself that Weldwood Contact Cement was the right adhesive to apply the board
rubbers, it was too cold overnight to apply it. The instructions want: "65 deg. for a minimum of
24 hours before and 72 hours after application for maximum adhesion." I do want these things to
stick for a very long time. So, I decided to start getting the underside ready for paint, instead. I
will get it back up on jack stands, remove the axle and prop shaft and start cleaning and sanding.
Photos show what has to be removed first. On the left here is the handbrake levers, speedometer cable
and U joint cover. This is a torque tube prop shaft. On the right is about center of the prop shaft
and the shop made adapter from the '48 handbrake rod to the '58 cable system. Photos below are,
left-to-right, the axle and its spring mount, bottom from the rear, bottom from the side.
Overnight, I remembered having 2 sets of ramps. So, I lifted the front and put a pair under the front
wheels. This makes a pretty stable platform for working under the car; I have never been comfortable
with 4 jack stands. First, I disconnected the handbrake rod from the front levers then the speedometer
cable. With those out of the way and using a medium length socket extension, I was able to remove the
4 bolts attaching the U-joint cover to the gearbox. That left only the brake hose. Then we jacked it
up again and moved the jack stands from the axle to the frame (see photo). Finally, we removed the 4
nuts holding the spring to the frame and lowered the whole mechanism. The next situation to deal with
was the wheels and tires. They were too tall to roll out from under the body. A quick solution was to
remove one wheel and slide the axle sideways to get the other wheel out from the side. Then it would
all pull out with no further issues. I will remove the rear wings to storage for now and I think the
tires will then miss the body and frame. Then I can roll it back under the car to clear the common
area when not needed out.
That's my Sprite under the blue tarp to the right and of course, Dick's Model A on beyond. And yes, that is the back end of a '67 Camaro in the foreground. Dan is "making it drivable" for his nephew. It should be gone soon to make room for his MG.
To get adequate access to the under side, I had to first remove the driveline. While it is out is the
ideal time to clean it, make any repairs needed and paint it. These photos are after removing the
wheels and brakes and thoroughly cleaning with a cup brush on my electric grinder.
There was a small leak around the differential with enough oil farther forward in the area of the joint with the prop shaft tube to suspect it. I have a parts blowup of the system that indicated it should be possible to separate it at that point to make a new gasket as the prop shaft is sleeved to the pinion gear shaft. Upon separating the joint, I discovered that the sleeve is pinned to both shafts and the pins are also peened, making separation difficult. I am afraid to grind it off as replacements may not be available. Instead of a new gasket, I will use Permatex Ultra Grey silicone Gasket Maker. It is ready for that now. As suspected, there was a very thin paper gasket in the joint, about one third of which was no longer there.
I did separate the joint enough to safely get a bead of the silicone around the joint and got it back
together. I am confident it will work. Here is the joint open and ready for silicone. The unit is
upside-down. Note the oil return hole at the bottom (top in the photo) and the narrow ledge below it
that needed the silicone, without getting any blocking the hole. Then I finished cleaning with SPI
de-greaser and followed with a wash down with POR-15 Metal Prep and two coats of POR-15 paint with 4
hours dry time between coats. It got reassembled the next day. I did have to grind a few thousandths
from the off side shoes where they mate to the adjuster. The drum would just not go back on with the
shoes too tight. My records show I also did this the last time I replaced the cylinders. They were not
quite the same dimensions as the old ones. Apparently I did not grind enough that time. Finally, I
reinstalled the handbrake actuator and the axle brake pipes. Here it is, ready to go back under the
car as soon as I get it prepped and painted.
After finishing the driveline, I removed both wings and started on the underbody and frame. Having
not been off the car since I got it, most of the wing bolts were pretty well rusted to their nuts.
On the off side, two of them broke and had to be drilled out. Another twisted inside its cage so
that had to be opened for direct access to hold the nut with vise grips. The bottom back bolt on
both sides also twisted in their cages and opening them destroyed them. They are accessible from
below so I will just use loose nuts instead of trying to replace them. Other than that, the near
side presented no problems. The remaining bolts removed without incident.
The weather was really cold at the time too so rather than crawl around on the cold floor, I decided to tackle the inner wheel wells. I found more signs of an old collision on the off side. The wheel well was quite wrinkled and much of it was just covered in a thick layer of tar instead of being fixed properly. This made it really hard to get it clean and required a few hours. The other side was not so bad and only required two hours or so the get to bare metal. In these photos, I have already done the initial cleaning with the a wire brush on electric grinder to remove caked on road tar and gravel as well as other loose stuff. Most of the paint is still there although it does not show too well. You can see some of the damage, splits and holes that are covered in tar rather than being properly repaired. Now there is nothing else to do but get under the car and start cleaning the bottom. The photos below show the condition before starting, not too bad really.
Well I did find an excuse to stall a little longer on crawling under the car for cleaning. Both inner wheel wells had several unnecessary holes, splits and cuts. I spent a couple of mornings welding them all closed. There was also the one nut cage inside the boot that let the nut turn and I had to open it up to get the bolt out. I managed to reshape it so it again holds its nut and it had to be welded back down.
Then another project came up, back under the car this time though. Apparently when the builder added
the extended boot, something didn't line up or mate up quite right or maybe they just didn't plan
ahead adequately. The answer seemed to be just cut the offending stuff away, mostly with a torch.
The end result was a large gap between the extension floor, inner wheel wells and the outer skin,
right behind the water-slinging tires on both sides. The gap on the near side was large enough to
insert your hand right into the boot. Photo on the right is the off side and I have already taken
a hammer to it and beat it out as much as possible so that much of it actually touches the outer skin
to be welded later. The left one is the near side and I have not started on it yet.
So the next day, I started repairs to the near side. It took a lot of hammering but I was able to get the floor part to at least touch the skin in several places. Then, after cutting and custom fitting five small patches and welding them in, it is finally tight enough that a good coating of seam sealer should make it water tight. That first patch actually had to lap the skin on the outside due to some tear at the bottom. This may have been the result of some damage instead of the boot extension. The next day, I finished the off side. As I said, it was not nearly as bad and went rather quickly. That is the state in the photos below.
The Prefect work got stalled a little after that. After Dan's second failed attempt to buy a project chrome-bumper MGB, he sort of "gave up" and, having no other project at hand, agreed to get his nephew's '67 Camaro running, actually a couple of months ago. As I feared, it has turned into a "tar baby" and he needed all the help he could get. I had some personal incentive to help out as I too want it out of here so I can get my daily drivers in the common area for a few days each for some much needed maintenance. Well, he hit a stopping point last week and I took advantage of it to get back on the Prefect bottom.
I had managed to get a little time to work on the inner wheel wells (above). Then while Dan was stalled and waiting for parts, I spent a couple of days sort of stripping the bottom. I started with a small wire cup brush on the die grinder to remove anything loose. I followed that with 100 grit sanding disks on the die grinder to get everything +at least clean and solid. A fair amount of the original paint was left. My original plan was to move it to the paint booth at that point and spray epoxy and the catalyzed Anchor matching enamel. Remember, these cars were painted after assembled to the frame so body color is appropriate. Considering the logistics of getting it to the paint booth then spraying toxic paints while lying on my back within inches of the surface prompted me to rethink the plan. Instead, I decided to just leave it on the jack stands in my area and brush paint it. Rather than epoxy I also decided to use Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer followed by the Anchor top coat. For brush painting, I also decided to omit the cayalyst to increase the flash time for better self leveling. The primer coat took one morning and the two coats of finish paint took another morning each. Finally, a coat of black on the plywood floor boards took another half a morning. Here it is, fully painted.
Then it was ready to reinstall the driveline, brake lines and fuel line. This took a couple of days, partly due to helping with the Camaro (Dan's project morphed into tar-baby) and partly because it is just fiddly. First was the brake line. Due to the way it is routed through the frame, it is 3 pieces of pipe plus the hose to the axle, of course. Only 2 of those 3 pieces had to be removed for cleaning and painting. So that was not too bad. Next was the fuel line. It is only one piece but it also is run through the frame and follows the curve over the axle to the rear of the car. That had to be shaped as it was being installed so considerably more complex and time consuming. With the plumbing done, next was the exhaust. This job always requires a bit of swearing; fortunately I am proficient. The only complication was tightening the bolts for the pipe to manifold clamp. Two of the fasteners can only be reached from above and the other two only from below. Actually those below cannot be reached by hand but can by an open-end wrench.
With all the miscellany done it was finally time for the driveline. The difficulty here is inserting the prop shaft splines into the universal joint which just hangs loose. Fingers must be used to hold the joint aligned while a helper slowly pushes the driveline into place. At this point, the working parts are out of view and the fingers are at risk from the approaching bell on the torque tube. With a little help from Dick, we managed to get it done. The last thing was the gas tank and then set it back on all four wheels. These photos show the result. I still need to glue the new rubbers on the sill boards but they won't be installed until after painting is done.
