Door Sills and Rocker Panels

During the work on the rest of the car the door sills/rocker panels got some abuse from tools laying on them or being stepped on, stuff banging into them. Problem is these panels are visible with the body on so they can't be allowed to remain looking like crap.

Right here looks like there was some kind of body repair that the Bondo chipped off...

Well once I took the wire wheel to it it was worse/better than I hoped. At first it was worse because it was an obscene amount of Bondo coming off, but once it was all off it was a slight relief that whoever has repaired the rocker had at least welded on a patch instead of filling the hole with Bondo.

So this seam got wire brushed all around and got a new glob of the best Bondo money can buy, smoothed out and sanded and go primed with the rest of the rockers and door sills.

<ADD PICTURES OF PRIMED ROCKER/SILLS>

Rebuilding the Doors

The doors on this car were rough. Their fiberglass skins had to come off so they could be repaired and painted and I figured that'd be a good time to rebuild and restore the under workings of the doors. 

Here are some before pictures of how rough the doors were before I did anything. First I removed all the internal components, window regulator, window channels, windows, locks, latch, everything. Once everything was out and stored away to be cleaned separately I set to work on the door frame. Removing all the old paint and silicone took several days, even with a grinder and a big wire wheel.

I'll add some pictures of what the doors look like afterwards later, I didn't really take any during the process but the process isn't overly complicated. Just take pictures of everything before it comes out so you know where it goes when it's time to reassemble. Or you can do what I did which is do the doors one at a time, then you have the one that's still together to use as a guide.

The locks and latch all got polished and rustproofed, Lowe's sells basically machinist's oil in a spray can that you blast on and rub in to protect the metal. All the internal components that are painted got wire brushed to metal then they were primed and painted. New window channels went in, and the windows were cleaned thoroughly while they were out of the doors. Window regulators got polished extensively and re-lubricated with some oil.

Then it was just a matter of putting the puzzle back together with the newly cleaned, painted and lubed parts. A simple if nerve wracking process (slotting the glass back in was super scary).

Trunk Pan

The old trunk pan obviously was a little worse for wear. It's design allows for any moisture in the vehicle to pool there are rust through. Obviously that's not great for structural pieces to be so full of rust holes.

I took the old pan to 3 different metal shops in my area. None of them could help me. I'm pretty irritated that 2 shops that "specialize in metal fabrication" couldn't do a little bit of metal-brake work. So I splurged and bought the $110 plans for sheet metal from the Ashcrafts in Oregon. When they come I'm gonna do it my damn self.

Wheel Caps

Svettlana came with some some none-original wheel caps, they're chrome emblazoned with a large W and "Western". The wheels aren't chrome so the caps didn't match, not to mention they're generic so the fit isn't perfect.

With my second visit to Tim Nines at the junkyard I picked up some original plain alloy caps that go with the rims. They're from a junkyard car so they were really rough, dirty, oxidized, and 2 were pretty badly dented.

So they were wire wheeled, and I hit them with staggered decreasing grits of sandpaper to get a finish similar to the sandblasted rims. The two dented hubs I heated up with a torch and tapped out the dents from the back until I was content with their surface. Once they were done I clear coated them to prevent further oxidation.

Reservoir Strut

Got tired of looking at this nasty rusted reservoir strut and the rusted bolts that go with it. So I did the reasonable thing and redid it.

Looking rusty, beat up, and in general bad shape

The cap area was so corroded it actually makes getting the cap off a struggle

Forgot to take pictures of the strut out of the car but there it is.

I tried to match the color of the steering rack. Got pretty close, but now the valve covers are 2 or 3 shades darker blue.

E-Brake

The E-brake wasn't really working, seemed like it just needed tightening but I was redoing tons of other stuff so I figured why not redo that handle that would be visible too. This has really stopped being a "Fixing Up" and moved into a hardcore, true, body-off restoration.

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Trunk Release Mechanism

While the body was off like everything else the trunk release assembly is easy to get to and it's something that is actually visible once the car goes back together so I figured it should look nice.
So that whole assembly came off, was cleaned, sanded, repainted, and then greased and put back together.

Headlamp Mechanism Revamp

Of course to get the headlamp buckets out of the front fiberglass the whole pop-up mechanism had to come out. Like everything else I figured "Hey it's out, might as well clean it up." so that's just what I did:

Trunk Pan

I pulled up the fake Dynamat in the trunk pan to discover (I wasn't really surprised) a large amount of rust on the pan in the trunk, mostly under where the battery obviously had sat. As usual the previous restorer had done a top notch job and not only made the battery's spot the only place with Dynamat he had also obviously not had a battery box and fumes and probably some acid leakage had eaten into the metal.

So I went to scrape the large amounts of rust with the paint scraper when I got to that section under the battery I came into a much more serious problem than surface rust. In several place throughout a 5 ' wide by 1' long section of pan the rust had eaten all the way through, where it hadn't eaten clean through it had thinned to the metal to nearly paper thin. I think right now my plan of action is to cut out this section, fabricate a new one, and weld it in.

Looks just dirty with Dynamatting...

That's not dirt. Well some of it is

Holey-pain-in-my-ass Batman!

Frame Rust

The floor pans of the Sonett were covered with knock-off Dynamat, I could see in the cracks in the previous owners half-assed insulation/rust prevention attempt and in those cracks was rust. So with a flat head screwdriver and a paint scraper I scraped out all the old Dynamat, popped out the drain plugs in the pan and vacuumed up all the stuff that was stuck under the matting.

As you can see the floor pan was absolutely covered in surface rust, thankfully a good solid tap showed me that the pan was still solid. So I set out to remove as much rust as I could, combination of a wire-wheel, hand sander, and belt sander; both with about 200 grit sandpaper. Then I vacuumed up the rust and dirt that came up, wiped down the area and resprayed it with my probably 250th bottle of Krylon black anti-rust enamel. Now I can sit on the floor pan and not feel like I immediately need a shower, plus it should stop the rust from getting any worse and keep the floor solid.

Before:

After some preliminary wire-brushing, sanding:

After a little more thorough treatment:

After Paint: