Of Wizardly Welding and more of Dad's fine painting

Remember the last post about getting help from my friends? 

Dad's good friend Jim is a very accomplished metal fab and welder and his skills have been much appreciated on many a project for our family.

Dad had some scrap lying around - we just needed to cut it to make some of these brackets

A few holes and I think we'll have it...

Not sure if I showed these pieces before - but they are part of the windshield support structure and had broken cleanly in the seam - with Jim's help, they're whole again

And the other side - smooth and load bearing

Remember the top of the dog house? Here is the underside with more of Dad's good painting

Remember that little clearance problem with the gas tank cap? Here is the notch Neil routed out and that shall fix the problem

More wizardly welding - the windshield had broken around the center line and needed to be repaired - thanks to Jim - we're a few notches closer to a finished restoration.

More to come!

Finally! More went back on than came off! 3/22/14

Got a lot done on the 62 today!

Remember the gas tank and brackets? Here they are back in!

This is Cooper 'helping' Dad to tighten up something. 

We even put the windshield on briefly to to check the spacing on the front piece of wood for the top!

After this shot I had a conversation with Cooper about standing in the gauge.... Not sure if it took :-)

Ah yes, the Woodshop - aka - Garage.

Here is the product of the woodshop - one piece of 3/8ths inch plywood cut to become the top of the 'seat' or 'dog house'. 

Oh and the 62 Tag went back on!

Fitted and screwed down to the three cross pieces

One glitch for the day - the gas tank with the cap on won't clear the last wooden cross piece. Whoops. Pulled that off for a trip to Neil's workshop for a brief conversation with a router. 

More to come!

The return of Dad's Paintshop - 3-20-14

While I was still nursing a cold - Dad was busy in the paint shop (aka the basement)

These are the original Gas tank mounts - just cleaned up, sanded, primed and painted

Remember those wooden pieces that I mentioned Dad had angled and placed? Here they are painted

And the original gas tank - stripped, primed, painted and looking GOOD for 70 years old!

And the original tank holders - looking every bit as good as the tank!

Huge thanks to Dad for this one! 

More to come!

Dad's wood work - 3-18-14

Remember those pieces of wood Neil made up for me? 

There are two of them - drilled and with the ends angled as the others are

There is the third one - all courtesy of Dad's good work while I was down with a cold.

More to come!

I get by with a little help from my friends (and family) - 3-16-14

Beatles references not withstanding (You're welcome Mom!) this lyric turned cliche is actually true. This project would not have gotten off the ground without my Dad. Going back as far as the first time I tore something apart in the basement as a kid or the set of tools he got me for Christmas in the 8th grade, Dad's mechanical influence has been with me for essentially my entire life. More directly - This project sat without Dad's dogged determination and I owe him for that. (This post was written in Dad's basement with him present but that has no bearing on my thanks - really! :-))

Dad has been busy:

Both the Crank side wheels have been painted

And remember that not terribly great looking condenser? 

Yup - all the brackets too along with new bolts and a new Gasket

We've shown both of these pieces before but here they are together, ready for some welding and some additional sandblasting. Dad has been straightening the hoop parts some more.

Like most of my projects - it isn't all about Dad - we both pull in other friends and family to help - my adopted Grandfather Neil 'Gramps' is a cabinet maker and makes my wood cutting skills look pathetic. 

That is a piece of oak that Dad had lying around that Neil is planing

See those three pieces - those are all cut to length to be the supports for the top of the 'Engine Box' or 'seat' of the 62. Thanks Neil! For this and for all the other wood work you've done on this car! (Including storing the wood for almost a decade....)

More to come!

Removing Paint, putting some back on and a Broken Bolt. (Arrgh!) 3-8-14

With the weather getting warmer, Cooper and I made the trek to Dad's house for some more work on the #62. Dad had been busy in our absence - as he usually is. 

Dad pulled the glass and gaskets out of the windshield and had applied some chemical paint stripper. 

That's Dad working the die grinder to pull off more paint and rough up the surface. 

Chemical stripper at work on two of the vertical support pieces for the windshield. Careful note will see that the pieces will need to be welded.

That's Dad scraping off additional paint loosened by the chemical stripper

The Vent covers have been removed for their own stripping, priming and painting

After we put that front support tube on, we pulled it back off again and began to prep it for priming and painting. That is Dad going very easily over it with a grinder - just enough to take off the paint. I tried it - I'm not that good at going easy with a grinder....

And here it is a while later - note Cooper keeping watch in the background. 

Here is an example of Dad's great work at priming - this is one of the original lift handle brackets 

Don't recognize the black straps of metal? These hold the gas tank onto the wooden mounts that hold it to the car

Furnace parts not withstanding, here are parts of the braking system, primed and painted

So the story on this sequence is a little longer than the photos would indicate. Dad looked over at the gasket on the Condenser and said 'that really ought to be replaced.' I took it upon myself to take all 14 bolts off. Then I couldn't manage to get the thing unstuck. 

All four metal holding pieces have been removed, but she won't budge

With the help of a putty knife, and Dad's 5-in-1 tool....

It finally came apart. 

Then the gasket scraping began again - this time to clean the surface off to prep for a new gasket

Not sure what we'd do without putty knives...

Not a whole lot of junk in the water hopper in my opinion - pretty clean really

Remember that Broken bolt (arrrgh!) part from the title - here it is - out of 14 3/4" long 5/16th inch bolts, one decided to snap off. This is that one. Theres always one. 

Here is the same spot (different angle) and you can now see the freshly drilled and tapped hole where the bolt was in the previous picture. What should have been an easy job turned into a small journey of frustration.

Remember the front tube from earlier - here is the other side of it where the grinder couldn't quite reach. We're hitting it with the Chemical stripper to loosen it up

One last shot of the now pretty much clean gasket surface. 

More to come!

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The day Cooper showed up to Help - 3-1-14

Cooper went in for knee surgery a few months back and hasn't been up to coming over to help. Then with some schedule conflicts, it just didn't happen. Finally he was able to make it over this day - and I know he did a fair amount to help. Or was it entertain?

Yup - there he is helping or was it supervising? 

First task for the day - pull the font tubing back off and straighten it. Decades of use had put some serious tweaks into the front tubing and we decided to get at least the majority of them straightened out

First step - driving a section of pipe into the end of the worst tube to be able to put force on it without crushing the shape. 

Here was the first attempt - Cooper checking out the 'jig' I setup so I could step on the pipe closest to us and attempt to bend it back. This did work - but not as well as anticipated. I didn't get any shots of the way we actually got it done - we took a metal pipe and placed it underneath one of beams of the house - using a bottle jack we were able to make a makeshift press and put some serious force on that piece of tubing. That worked fairly well. 

Dad attacking the tubing with 'locking pliers' - trying to get them a little straighter. 

Time for some explanation - one of the two reasons for tearing into this restoration in the first place was the aluminum angle iron that I found badly corroded. This is one of the replacement pieces I bought in probably 2005 or 2006 and had cut to fit then drilled holes into. Unfortunately - my method of drilling holes was off. Some were very close - others were a half a hole off in two dimensions. Apparently the steel angle I bought instead of the aluminum used by Fairmont is slightly different in dimension as well - I took a grinder to modify this piece in order to fit square with the rear tubing. 

This was a seriously frustrating piece - the bolt simply did not want to go in - and the hole had to be drilled, then redrilled in order to get it to line up correctly. Finally it did. 

With both front and rear (and side) bolts in we were able to drill the other holes since the spacing was now more or less correct. 

One in - one not so much...

This is why we put the front tubing on - we discovered that the front frame pieces were in different places at different angles then they were supposed to be - Since they were not being supported by the front tubing. Obviously this means that there will be some additional drilling required. 

Last shot of the day - the straightened front tube back on - holes drilled - bolts in them - We made some progress!

More to come!