Body Work

Because I'm a glutton for punishment I'm doing everything on this car myself I decided I was going to do all the body work and painting on the car myself.

The only things so far I haven't done myself on the Sonnet:

• Mounting and balancing the tires on the rims (had a buddies Dad who owns a tire shop do it basically for free though)
• Rebuild the brake master and clutch slave cylinders and that was simply because the repair kits for them are completely discontinued.

I had never done any automotive bodywork or painting before this so hopefully that's a vote for what can be accomplished when you do your research, are incredibly careful, and work really really REALLY freakin' hard.

First things first was removing the old paint from the parts, the car was bought with this weird off blue/gray with a horrible faded crimson/brown stripe setup. Yeah that had to go. If you think blue/grey and crimson/brown are a good combo you're probably color blind.

The front body somehow escaped the fate of the nasty racing stripes, I suspect it came off a different car.

 Original paint on the hood, doors, and headlight buckets. The orange ring in the headlights are the original factory paint, where whoever painted it afterwards didn't remove the headlight lens to paint it.

So began the arduous lengthy sweaty dirty job of removing the old paint from the body. We found that best method was to use a putty knife, paint scraper, screwdriver, or something similar to scrape off the top coat of paint. This topcoat was extremely resistant to sanding but would scrape off in huge chunks, then all the layers below (and there were many of them) could be sanded in less than half the time needed to just get through the topcoat. This car has been at minimum 3 different colors, in chronological order: from the factory it was orange, then green (this coat seemed actually professionally or otherwise well done), then the nasty blue/grey.

The door shells were by far the worst for ware, the edges had big chunks missing, cracks, the passenger door had a huge hole by the handle that dingus filled with Bondo. Structural repairs are apparently overrated... seriously though, fiberglass repairs are unbelievably simple. Just Google "Repairing Fiberglass" pick literally any of the 200,000 videos and your chosen redneck will show you how to do it. This step did have to discover a few more very questionable repairs from Dingus. He obviously had fiberglass because on the back body he covered the holes for the back bumper... from the outside. He fiber-glassed OVER some silicone. If I ever find this m**********r I'm gonna just sock him right in his nose.

This type of damage is a little trickier to fix but very doable.

 Don't just fill this with Bondo. Actually fix the hole...

That chunk that's missing in the door from the back

Once all the pieces were fiber-glassed, Bondo'd, Sanded  I power-washed them. Now is a good time to do this since you'd probably not want to drive around in a car that has 40 years of dirt, grime, mold, and whatever else stuck on the fiberglass, even if it's just so your headliner adheres better. The now clean pieces were loaded on a truck and we drove em to Scott's shop so I could have space to build a paint booth and paint in it.

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).

Speakers, Carpet, and Seatbelts

Like any 20 year old my car has to have a bangin' stereo right? Well sorta, dingus cut some half ass holes that either were going to have speakers in them or had speakers and he didn't want to sell em with the car. So I measured them and bought some speakers to fit in the holes, I went for cheap with good materials no paper. I ran all the wires for them, soldered the DIN1 connector through the appropriate hole in the dash. Slotted in the speakers and screwed em in.

Still have some hanging wires at this point but they didn't stay that way for long. You can see I did make a surround for the speaker out of scrap galvanized steel so it actually fit in the hole right.

After all this work the stereo fired right to life and pumped for a while. I left it for the week to go to school and when I came back the next weekend and turned on the car *POOF* big puff of electrical smoke from the radio and it wouldn't turn on. The radio I got was in some way defective because the 10 amp fuse in the back of it should have blown before the radio went. Glad I bought a warranty with it.

With the speakers in I could start working on the carpet. I cut based on the old carpets, trace old onto new with chalk, cut about an inch outside that chalk and test fit, adjust, repeat until it fits.

It's not a fast process but if you're careful you get a good fit and it looks good, something you can save a lot of time and money doing yourself. To stick it on I just used carpet contact cement. I bought a gallon but only used about 3 quarts, and that's really applying it heavy (which is recommended). Just be careful that the cement only gets where you want carpet cause it's a bitch to get off (which is kinda the point isn't it?).

Seats in to see how they look. Looking good. It kind of looks like car! If you squint

Rebuilt Brake Master Cylinder

My brake master cylinder was leaking fluid back into the pedal box and was really really spongy on the few drives it went on. So since after spending close to 2 hours calling dozens of automotive stores I finally contacted the manufacturer who makes the rebuild kit for the cylinder, and they had of course discontinued it. So what was going to be a $20 part became a $225 rebuild to White Post Restorations in Virginia (http://www.whitepost.com/). I will say though that while it's expensive you get what you pay for it. The cylinder came right out of the box powder-coated, with the fitting re-tapped, all new seals and dust cover. It literally bolted on, we bled it and my brakes were rock hard. Plus any cylinder they rebuild comes with a lifetime warranty and you have any problem they'll rebuild it again for free.

Big Delivery 3/20

I realize that I'm awful about updating this blog. I know I am but between work and actually working on the car it leaves little time for anything. Anyway...

In March I order a bunch of stuff at once and most of it came at once. Carpet, speakers, radio, rebuilt brake cylinder, and air-heater ducting. 

Dashboard Recovered

So even after all my bragging about how well the dashboard came out from all the painting it didn't look great in all light. I guess I'm too much of a perfectionist for that then. I took the dashboard to an upholsterer to get it professionally done.

I think it came out phenomenally. Check it out:

Shift Linkage

When going through the wiring I found that the reverse-switch wasn't being tripped properly. The way the switch works is by literally pushing the button down when the shifter is locked into reverse. The problem was that said switch wasn't even being touched when reverse was "engaged". The linkage was always problematic when driving the car. Upon inspection the linkage is adjustable, so I removed the shifter, and the linkage.

The bracket that holds the shift handle had a huge lump of booger weld on it that I'm sure wasn't great for functionality. So I ground that off.

After a little more inspection after disassemblly I found what may be the problem with the shift linkage...

Yeah, that ain't a SAAB logo. I think I've got the linkage out of a f*@king beetle. I mean if you're gonna rob the linkage out of a car it might as well be the most common one on the planet. All the drawings I've found the linkage looks eerily similar so after a little modification I think I can make it work.

the bolt that holds tight the position on this bar needs a groove to fit in, so closest is the stock one and the second groove I made.

Tightened on

All reinstalled, I adjusted the linkage to about 2 to 3 inches shorter

re-greased the ball joint at the bottom of the shifter

Wiring: FINISHED

After god knows how many hours and how many feet of new wire, rebuild kits, the electrical system is finished! I finally got the wiper motor fixed after a $40 new brush plate, hours of modifying said brush plate, and more struggle it finally works. The heater fan works, the radiator fan works, the lights work, the back up switch work. If I'm honest I'm not 100% sure all the stuff in the gauges work but that will be an issue with the gauge not the wiring.

I've added an aftermarket radio to go in the hole the previous owner chopped through the dash. Wired up the spots for the speakers. So pictures of the beauty of my wiring to follow.

Wiper Motor Rebuild:

old plate on the table (top mounted brushes)

new brush plate installed, had to use longer screws than stock due to spacers

So the issue as it turns out with the wiper motor was with the old brush plate. Finding a new replacement was a pain in the ass because while Lucas (Lord of Darkness) put similar wiper motors in just about every single European developed car of the late 60's and 70's. Emphasize on "similar" as in not the same. So I bought a $40 new brush-plate for a Hillman Avenger. Which of course didn't fit right out of the box, so I spent close to 2 hours hacking it up with a Dremel tool. It then fit but the new plate has the brushes mounted in the middle instead of the top. So the new brushes were grounding out on the case, so after I added 2 nylon spacing washers to each screw, add power and the motor worked like a dream... or whatever it is Lucas parts work like.

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.