Removed tank, found old damage

It took a great deal of will power to tear myself away from the Vikings - Cowboys game. Luckily my Tivo was there. Who could have predicted the final score after the Vikings' opening drive? Brett Favre is still amazing.



I decided to tackle the gas tank removeal first thing, while I was fresh. Turned out to be an easy job ... the tank drops in from above and a PO hadn't bothered to bolt it down!



Before disconnecting the three wires to the fuel gage sending unit I made a note of their colors and position. Standing at the back of the car, looking straight down, the fuel line goes off at 3 o'clock. Just to the right is the brown wire. At 12 o'clock is the brown with yellow dots,and at 6 o'clock is brown with a black stripe. We drained out the two gallons still in it to use in the shop's tow truck. I want to treat the inside with POR-15 Fuel Tank Sealer, but I doubt anyone in Honolulu stocks it.







With the tank out I spent a few minutes inspecting the area and found more evidence of what I already suspected, old collision damage. What surprised me this time was the poor quality of some of the work. My plan is to leave alone as much as I can, and re-do what obviously needs to be done. I need to get under the car and remove that fuel line before I can weld the crack.



I finally got around to removing the white plastic wheel well covers. I also checked out the rubber drain plaugs along the floor ahead of the wheel well and tank area. They turned out to be dried and crumbly, not savable.



The reason for removing the tank, beyond the fact that it needed to be, was to weld this area.



Just a few minutes of grinding revealed a thick coat of bondo covering an old collision damaged area.



I spent a good halk hour grinding away all the bondo. There is no reason for it to be so thick below the bumper.



Look how thick it is, 1/8 in.in places.



I cut out the damaged areas, and cut two patches from my sheet metal stock. I finished with wire brush scrubbing with POR-15 Marine Clean followed by a coat of Metal Prep. Next week I'll shape and flange the patches, and hopefully weld them in.

The rear end is in sight

Today I got the feeling that I was almost done with the rear panel. There is a big hole on the right below the bumper line, and to weld there I need to remove the gas tank. But really that is not much. Looking ahead brings the question, where next? There are two good choices, the doors and the nose. I started at the rear to develop my skills in a less conspicuous place. The doors and the nose are roughly equal in this respect. The difference is the nose is horizontal, so easier to weld. But maybe I should treat the doors to keep the holes from getting bigger.




The first thing I did was to make a sanding block with a convex face. I had the wood left over from the welding bottle cradle. Lacking a wood plane, I did some rough cuts with my sawzall, then finished with a lot of power sanding. It works.



I used my new sanding block to smooth out the filler applied last week. Worked great.



I needed to add a little more TECHNIFILL filler, and finally got to a small but deep low spot just below the RH corner.




While I waited for the new filler to set I went back to the LH trunk lip and gutter. Ground down the epoxy filler applied last time. Also worked the area above the tail light opening, where I had patched some small holes with fiberglass. Found a low spot.

Finished the day with one more application of filler on both sides.

TECHNIFILL

Last week after fixing the Toyota I finally stopped off at Redline Automotive. The main thing I was after was some body filler, something to fill in -- no pun intended -- between the POR-15 Epoxy Filler and high build primer. Bondo is the popular choice, but I have heard there are better products, including some from POR-15. Redline is a PPG dealer, and they recommended PPG TECHNIFILL DF705. Expensive, but gets you a whole gallon. I hope I can use most of it before it goes stale.



Some exploratory primer removal around the RH taillight revealed four low areas, which I used to test my new filler. I put too much activator in the first batch and it set up just as I was attempting to apply it. The second batch went on fine, although I was not prepared for how thin it is.



While waiting for the TECHNIFILL to cure I went back to the LH taillight. I used my grinder to rough in the shape of the trunk seal gutter, then finished with hand sanding. I had a few low spots on both sides, so I applied some POR-15 Epoxy Filler and went off to lunch at 99 Ranch. After lunch came a lot more sanding, and the day ended with another round of Epoxy Filler followed by acid etch primer to ward off rust.