1967 XT Falcon Door Rust Repairs

[enigmas]

Stage 1.
The car outlined in this post is my daughter's Classic Ford Falcon Sedan. I've had the rust repair work on this car in mind for quite some time now as she wants to have the car on Club Registration. The car requires a Victorian RWC equivalent to a MOT in the UK. Regulations are now much stricter with rust even in non structural doors a failure point.
In the past I repaired both DS doors. I now need to move my attention to the PS doors.

The door shown in the images below is the PS front. This is where I'll begin.

[enigmas]

Stage 2.
These images illustrate the areas that were cut away from the rotted sections of the door skin. The inner sections were cleaned of debris and loose scale then treated with rust convertor.
I also drilled several more drain holes into the lower section of the door as I do with all the doors that I repair. Moisture is the enemy of panel steel. The extra holes also improve the ventilation within the door cavity.











The additional drain/ventilation holes are visible at the base of the door frame.

[enigmas]

Stage 3.
This stage of the repairs encompasses welding up the small holes of the inner door skin, cleaning the repaired areas, treating the metal with zinc primer and fabricating cardboard templates (ie. cereal box container) then preparing the outer metal skin templates.

Here are the pix of the process.















The 3 metal templates ready to be welded in place. The silver finish is a zinc paint coating on the back of each template.

[enigmas]

Stage 4.
I got quite a lot done today...and spent most of the day working on the door. As an aside you'd only choose to expend all this energy and time if it was for your daughter. 😉

Here are the pix of the days work.
The tasks are self evident so it only requires a modicum of text for those interested in this type of repair method.

The repair patches were MIG welded in place using a spot weld technique; slow and tedious but negligible distortion. The welds ground flat and then fibreglass resin smeared over the surface to fill any pinholes that remained. After that the repair areas are given an applied, thin layer of fine filler and this is sanded flat. The silver paint is a zinc etch primer that I had at hand. The only remaining repair apart from paint, is where the passenger side mirror was fitted. This will need a reinforcement plate under the door skin.

[enigmas]

Stage 5.
Todays task focused on repairing the botched side mirror securing holes and a bit of spot filling on the repaired panel sections, primarily any small remaining pits and scratches.

Due to the rather large elongated holes I decided to fabricate a support piece under the top skin. This necessitated removing the quarter vent window. As the quarter vent seal was virtually cactus replacing it seemed sensible. Fortunately "Resto Spares" close to home had several in stock. Once the vent was removed (the WSM was of no help) the reinforcement plate was held in place and then welded through the the original mirror securing holes.

The pictures below outline the day's work.



















The new quarter vent seal from Resto Spares

[enigmas]

Stage 6.
Today's task involved fitting the new front PS quarter vent seal and etch primering the 2 lower door edge repairs.

As an aside the manufacture, quality of the rubber, the design and the intricate detail of this one piece quarter vent seal is excellent. The downside was that it is initially a bit of rubik's cube puzzle to fit. There are seemingly instructions on the package but nothing detailing the method required to fit this seal. Although it took several hours, the seal is now in place. If I had to fit another one (eg. Driver's side) it'd be a more straight forward process.

[enigmas]

Stage 7.
Today's task was to clean, prep and paint the inside of the door. This section is a fawn/bronze colour. I had 500 ml of this paint in acrylic lacquer mixed-up several years ago when I repaired the driver side doors. I have a small touch up gun that is ideal for this type of job and apart from the weather being a little too humid, the paint went on without issue.

Prior to the top coat of paint, the panel received a light coat of etch primer, followed by a coat of primer surfacer.

Here are some pix of the job.

[enigmas]

Stage 8.
Melbourne typically had 4 seasons in a day today. The morning was cold and wet with the afternoon clearing to a blue sky with both sun and humidity. As a consequence of the varying weather conditions and as I work outside, I had to carefully consider my options for painting the door sides and edges. During cold whether I often use a hair dryer to both warm the panels and to speed the evaporation of the paint solvents.


Below are a few pix of todays task.





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[3litrekiwi]

Nice work Vince, the doors look like they will be nice and sound when finished for a fraction of what you would have to pay for potentially a lesser quality job.

As an aside, how do you put so many largephotos up, the system would only let me load two small ones. 

[enigmas]

Like this Martin. link your images to the image hosting site below. It is both free and reliable.

postimages.org


Method:

* Sign in.

* Create a GALLERY. (Eg. DG Trans)

* UPLOAD you image. (No need to resize)

* Click on your image. (It will open on a fresh page)

* Select SHARE from the Tool Bar above

* Click on DIRECT LINK.

* Post your image into the PICTURE icon in your post's toolbar above on this forum.


NOTE:
You can upload as many images as you like to Postimages.org

[enigmas]

Stage 9.
My role in repairing the rust, corrosion and metalwork of the door is virtually over at this point. I've also spent quite a bit of time restoring the appearance of the door's interior metalwork, paint and trim. These are essentially aesthetic details. The overall plan for the car is a full external body repaint once all the surface areas have been restored to a sound, rust free condition. The areas concerned are primarily around the rear windscreen due to water ingress and sections of the boot lid that had been poorly restored previously.

Here are some pix of the days work.
The door's interior panel was also treated with a protective coat of black stoneguard and all the internal mechanisms lubricated.

The stone guard paint can be seen through the cutouts of the door's inner panel.


Some card that I had aside was duct taped over the large openings primarily to protect the rear of the door card from internal moisture.


The door card trim clips were taped in place.


These trim pieces were cleaned and treated with vinyl paint to restore the overall colour.


The interior panel was cleaned.


The door card and interior door fixtures back in place.