Over My Head

This was the first weekend I've worked on body panels since early March and it wasn't a very successful weekend. I was hoping, having three days for the holiday, I would get a significant amount done. I was wrong. The hood of the car has/had some real problems and that is what I was working on the most.

There used to be a huge dent in the front of the hood that I didn't want to fill with bondo. I cut the bad spot out, we were going to replace it with part of another hood, but we ended up beating the dent out and welding it back. The hood warped like crazy where I welded. I was trying to be careful to keep the heat down but, I guess, not careful enough. Now I've got a warp and a lot of little holes to fill, somehow, where the welds don't exactly meet. I ran out of gas in the welder and that didn't help. I tried flux-core but it just blasts holes in the sheet metal. I tried lead but couldn't get it to stick or wick into the holes.

The hood also had quite a few small holes in the framework on the bottom. One part was really rusted and I ended up having to cut out a 1" X 2" piece and welding in new sheet metal. Some of the little holes I could weld shut. Unfortunately, when trying to weld many of the holes shut I ended up finding out how bad the frame in that area really was. The fact that I ran out of gas though didn't help my efforts in filling holes. I finally just gave up on the hood.

About 1:00pm today I decided I was going to get something done even if it killed me. The two panels on the interior that bolt in right below the quarter windows were an easy target. I was able to strip them and get them in primer with little effort. Too bad most of the rest of the car won't go like those panels. The body is huge and has several issues. The doors are hell. At least I have like 5 years to work on these parts.