Thursday, November 30, 2017

Belly scrub and tube screws

The welding barnacles have been ground off the Gremlin's nethers.  The same part of me that feels compelled to slide a fresh xacto blade into the center of my eye was screaming to try this:


Luckily, my awareness of the challenges facing any emergency response personnel unfortunate enough to get the eventual call to extract my maimed and pulpy mass from this temple honoring the sibling gods of hazard and stupidity won out.  Plus, it wouldn't really have been good for taking off weld nodules, no matter how good it would've excelled at taking off flesh.

The fuel lines are standing by for final fastening, so I went ahead and got my radiator brackets knocked together.  The die grinder was really handy for prepping the steel tube for welding, as well as taking off the slag afterwards (I opted to use the flux core wire, since there was no real need to waste gas on brackets).  Once I finished, I noticed I must've forgot to carry a two or something, as the new brackets are a bit deeper than the old one I used for reference.


Nothing a hammer won't take care of.  Gotta rest up for now, though.  Tomorrow's set to be quite a day.

Begin with fibrous green rectangles, seal the deal with skin, bruises, and blood

The dark gods heard my piteous cries and accepted the meager sacrifice I cut from my bank account.  In a matter of days, my fate was sealed.


I was unprepared for the hidden claws in the devil's bargain.  This demon weapon is driven by an insatiable thirst for metal and blood.  Should you neglect to feed it the first, it will take the second the moment your attention drifts and you fail to bind the demon to your will.  But dear god, does this thing rule.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Take 2 (and call me in the morning)

A man walks into his doctor's office and says, "Doc!  I need your help. It hurts when I do this!"

The doc looks at him for a moment and says, "Then don't do it."

A few weeks pass before the same man walks into his doctor's office and says, "Doc!  I need your help. It hurts when I exist!"

The doc looks at him for a moment and says, "I'm diagnosing you with moderate to acute depression and anxiety, and will be giving you a prescription for an SSRI."

At that moment, the man was enlightened.


Back on track (or at least it feels like it is), so I'll be picking up where I left off (but correctly, this time) and getting that damn transmission in.  Wish me luck. 

Monday, November 20, 2017

Swing and a miss

Went to get the transmission in, threw my back out instead.  Easy enough mistake to make.  I'll do better next time.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Don't waste your nutritional potential

I'm on the scene, reporting from deep below the Gremlin's crust.  Let's get a look at the underside of the driver's floor!


Hmm.  Got some double bubble trouble, a few porcupine quills, and a delicious slag frosting.  Not nearly as bad as I imagined it might be.  A wire brushing with the grinder cleaned up the better part of this, but I'll need to take some steel toothbrushes and acetone to it if I'm going to get any rust preventative to adhere worth a damn.

On the subject of paint, I forgot to include a tip for those who might be wondering about spray particulate sticking to the glass: steel wool.  It's not harder than glass, but it is harder than paint, so it'll peel any dust right off once it dries without causing any marring of the glass surface.  Doing that is faster than properly masking off all the glass, which I've already done a couple times before and would, quite frankly, prefer not to ever have to do again.

So now that I'm down here, I've got a little bit of work cut out for me.  The fuel lines, as mentioned before, getting the kickdown cable attached to the trans, the trans in place, and the trans cooler lines run.  I'm really not looking forward to the last part, but I'm sure I'll live.  I should probably get a bracket knocked together for the trans cooler, so I can have my lines run in a way that references it's actual (instead of planned) position.

I'm going to go ahead and get started on that mess, instead of sitting out here in the Eagle while I smoke to take shelter from the damned rain.  Hopefully I'll have a good update to share by the end of the evening here, assuming I don't run into any traps laid by the mole people who inhabit these depths.

Is this on? Are we recording?

Got the Gremlin lifted, primer laid down, etc.  Check this out:


That's not cigarette smoke tar, but I'll be damned if it doesn't look like it.  That's actually the tar/asphalt undercoating bleeding into the primer due to being dissolved slightly by the solvents in the primer mix.  Neat!

So here we are after I lazy spewed a rattle can that I found matches the aged AMC Firecracker Red nearly 1:1. 


I understand Chrysler had a few years run where "Firecracker Red" was a color choice for Jeeps (around the early 2000s or so? Sometime past the start of this millennium), though it was discontinued again after.   I'm not using the Mopar paint because I'm not entirely convinced it's an exact match, I like the color as it's aged, which is going to differ greatly from the new paint, and lastly, do I seem like I could afford buying enough recently-discontinued Mopar paint to do a floor pan (let alone a significant amount of the overall vehicle)?  I'm not made of airports.

Back to the paint I'm using:

I believe glaring difference between the OE and new paint colors are due to,

  1. The primer choice.  OE was grey or black, depending on the alignment of certain stars.  I used white, because I'm not going to be using that primer anywhere that the paint will be seen. This was to give me a chance to see how the color would react with a different undercoat, as well as giving me a chance to make sure the white primer didn't go to waste.
  2. That old shit be dirty.
  3. New paint is still drying.
In order to run those goddamned fuel lines, get the trans in place, and seal the underside of the floors, Gremlin got tall.

Sure would've been nice if I'd thought to do that when I started fucking around with the floors. . . 

The next update will feature our return to the center of the Gremlin.  At this point, I'm just postponing the Eagle post because. . . Well, just because that's what I feel like doing.

Monday, November 13, 2017

Getting to the bottom of the floors, part two: The cover up

Alright, so the metal has been prepped using delicious acetone and is now bearing it's tooth.


In case you thought the scenario involving aluminum powder mixing up with the grinder leavings was far-fetched, here's what I used to scrub the surfaces:


Now, to the paint. POR-15 is one of the better flowing paints I've used. It does a really good job of getting into surface irregularities, but there are some extreme irregularities to account for with some of the welds I'm trying to seal.  Because of that, I want a little more flow than usual and will need to thin the paint out a bit.

POR-15 cures in reaction with ambient humidity.  This is one reason that you need to ensure your surface is totally dry before applying- the moisture causes the paint that is in contact to cure faster than the rest of the paint, which traps the moisture in and corrodes the metal.  For this same reason, you have to be careful about which thinner you use.  Of course, POR-15 promises pain, regret, and misery to anyone foolish enough to use anything other than their proprietary thinner, but I'm a risk taker (or there's not any suppliers open on the weekend within driving distance. Your pick).  

When looking at alternative thinners, we have to immediately rule out anything with alcohol or other solvents that absorb moisture.  This means aromatic solvents are going to be what we're after.  I grabbed the highest quality xylene available at 8:30PM on a weekend (read: what they had at Home Depot), which I'm hoping will treat me right.  Picking and choosing which instructions I'll obey, I'll only be thinning the paint by 5% at the most.

Yeah, right. I'm not measuring anything! I'm doing this by eye, so it'll probably be more like 15%, if not more.  Not a big deal, though, since this is a nook-and-cranny filler.  The actual paint is going to be a different beast altogether.


This is why they tell you to put plastic wrap between the lid and the can after opening (and so you can open it again).


And this is what you do when the plastic wrap doesn't work.

Dispense and thin the paint, brush it where it needs to crawl, and get ready for the next part.  It's like paper mache, but with glass and isocyanates. 



The tube is "POR Paste", i.e., the same damn thing that's in the can, but thicker and more expensive per ounce.  The white mat is fine strand fiberglass, and I'm not going to mince words; it's a pain in the dick to use. 

I used the paste because I first used this method when I didn't have the actual paint.  In the interest of reducing need to buy additional products, I've tried the same general approach on the driver side, though with the canned paint.  It's looking like it'll be fine, if not a little easier.

When you lay your POR strips, don't bother fussing around at getting them laid just right.  You'll find them a lot more compliant after about 30 minutes to an hour, which is when the paint has started to cure.  Wait until the mass has a plasticy, clay-like texture, and firmly press it in place to evacuate air pockets and ensure complete contact with the surface the god awful mess is applied to. 


The idea is for the glass to act as a substrate for the POR, which is pretty damn tough stuff once it's dried.  After it's all cured, lay down your full final coat(s), and you're set.  For the underside of the vehicle?  Do the same thing, but upside down.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Getting to the bottom of the floors, part one: Treatment options

Before I get started on what I did to finalize the floor repairs, I want to share some general tips and reminders.

1. Always be aware of potential interactions between different materials you're working with.


This is grinder abrasive and steel dust.  This is a drop in the bucket compared to what has been generated, just over the course of the floorboard adventure.  In this dust, we have rust (iron oxide), raw steel (iron and carbon, maybe some extra spices), grinder wheel mystery meat, and flap wheel abrasive (aluminum oxide, zirconia, etc).  Think of how well this would get along with a roughly equal measure of dust from grinding aluminum, and how excited the whole party might be when a good and hot shower of slag and/or white hot metal chips show up to join them.

2. Cheap welding blankets shed fiberglass more than a cat sheds fur.  Same for how much material either spray out when hit with a grinder.  A good static charge, a blower, or a heavy misting of water in the air, to be followed with a thorough vacuuming, are good things to help with this.

Alright.  Back on the floor!

The point that determined how this should be handled is that it was unscheduled work.  This wasn't on the list as a restoration task- it's a repair. This means that concessions had to be made in the name of expediency, with the first being that only sections of the floor got new paint, while the old shit stayed on parts that weren't being fixed. 

The spot-treat approach adds a little bit of a challenge to the potential longevity of this kind of repair, since painting the rust preventative over the old paint would creates an overlap of the new paint over the old.   This would create a substantial area for moisture and corrosive elements to be introduced to the unprotected metal.  With this in mind, I've removed enough paint and undercoating to allow a space between where the new coating ends and the old starts.  A shot of primer and paint over the bare space between coatings will still leave a small area that's not as well protected, but it won't introduce the same level of chance for the rust preventative to act as a barrier that will keep moisture in.  I expect that it'll do the job until I feel like fully attacking the floor pan.

Here's the roughed out floors, still waiting for a final wire wheel pass to get the remnants of the tar undercoating off.  I'm changing tenses from this point because I'm a liar and haven't actually finished this work yet.




Since the wire wheel will score the surface and carry tar into the metal, this will be followed by cleaning up with acetone.  This will help make sure there's not any material left in the metal that will keep the rust preventative from adhering. 

The rust preventative needs either existing rust or tooth to the metal for it to grab on and shrink around as it cures.  Since this is mostly new metal, I could either treat it with an acid etchant, or I could rub it down with fresh abrasive.  While the etchant will do a lot of good to increase the rust resistance of the metal, it takes more time than I have to spare.  Time being a deciding factor, the metal's going to get a pass from the orbital sander with a fresh pad, followed by a final (second) scrub with acetone.  This should have us all set and ready for part two: painting and patching.   Or patching and painting.  Patchainting.


So You Thought You Could Weld, Vol. 2: Concealing the Evidence

Eagle ignition update continues to be postponed.  I'm sure we'll all live through the wait.

Today I'm going to be focusing on being aware of limitations, deciding when to stop, and making the best of work that you're not satisfied with. 

As I hope I've made clear in the past, my experience with welding is "a few hours-ish" with general materials, and "zero" for thin sheet prior to this exercise.  That puts my limitations squarely within the "under-experienced and under-tooled" category for actually getting the job done, which is compounded by the fact that I'm in an old, uninsulated garage in a residential area.  The setting puts some restriction on when I can work effectively, since early mornings and late nights aren't times where people are too forgiving of a lot of messing around with an angle grinder.  That on it's own has been a source of many wasted days.

I'll begin with an example of the state of the floorboards, followed by the problem that has been encountered, possible methods to correct it, and why they may or may not be desirable.

The passenger floor:


Passenger floor with light from below:


If you aren't able to see, we have pinholes of light shining through at the points indicated by the arrows:


So what do we do? Well, here's the options:

  1. Ignore it. 
  2. Keep weld filling the holes.
  3. Patch the holes and reinforce the metal to ensure thin areas are strong.
Option 1 will ensure that all of this work goes to rust in no time flat, and in such a way as to make sure things are worse off than if I'd never messed with it.  Not an option, but it's counted as one because a lot of folks would consider it.

Option 2 will guarantee that this takes another week or two as I continue chasing pinholes and filling/grinding new holes as they develop (parts of the driver side are all filler and no sheet, and look like Damascus steel), not to mention having to go out for a bottle refill.  

The biggest drawback here is my lack of experience.  Were I appropriately skilled and experienced in this craft, this option would definitely be the better of the three.  Unfortunately, I don't have time to go to school right now.

Option 3 will require the least expense from a time and materials perspective.  This option gives me the chance to work better and faster, since I'm more familiar with the practices and materials involved.  Most importantly, it will offer an equivalent (or greater) level of strength and corrosion resistance, so it's a concession that doesn't come at the price of the quality of the work.   

Option 3 is the way I'm going today. I'll be writing up a post of how and what and when as I get this mess knocked out, hopefully all sorted out by this evening.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Buckle up! It's not just a good idea. . .

It's the law.  I know I was supposed to be posting an update on what'd been going on with Eagle, but it's going to have to wait a moment.  I wanted to first make sure to let anyone who decides to try flux core wire welding on these unibodies know that they are taking a painfully long path.  I'm sure there are plenty of experienced welders that can do great work using that method, but we don't have any of those writing for this page.

I guess what I'm saying is: just suck it up and get a gas bottle.  To clarify: get a proper gas bottle, and not one of the 20ft baby bottles.  Sure, they're not cheap, and yeah, the logistics of getting them filled are challenging, but make it happen.  After you've spent days with your flux core burning up metal and grinding down mountain ranges, only to have to repeat the process, you'll see exactly what I mean.

When someone pretends they're not trying to take the cheap route, they'll often fall back on, "B-b-b-but, I have no way to transport it!  I don't have a truck or a van!", as though they have an endless supply of money, time, and materials.


I have none of the above.  Welcome aboard, bottle!

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Potemkin, WA

If you are looking for an exercise in frustration, and would prefer that you spend as much time as possible stuck in a demolition derby-style death arena of idiots on the way to and back from it, come to sunny Seattle.  You'll have the pleasure of maximizing your experience now that DST has concluded. 

Once quitting time rolls around (apparently as early as 3PM for much of the city), every entitled ape with self righteousness in place of their sense of self preservation charge nose-up and eyes-averted into the narrow streets that were poorly designed to barely accommodate the population in the early 20th century.   The only difference with DST having ended is that it's pitch black out by the time everyone everyone has left their cells to begin walking, biking, and cargo cult driving into the streets with little to no regard for law, civility, or danger.

Spending 30 minutes to make a 2.5 mile drive is enough to make many people tap out, but if you're really big into self-loathing and/or masochism, try working on something that isn't some form of computer and attempting to find supplies anywhere in the city.  Metal stock?  Sure, so long at it's in the hobbyist rack at Home Depot or you put an order in on a website and don't need it within the next 24 hours.  Welding gas?  You can buy bottles during banker's hours, but trying to do a cylinder exchange or bottle refill at a store with the words "welding supply" in it's name will net you blank stares that are followed by someone talking to you like you're an idiot for expecting to get welding supplies at the welding supply store.

See, despite being a major port city with an incredible amount of construction underway, there is little in the way of industrial material or support for true "DIY" work that doesn't involve a paint roller or a goddamned Arduino.  Oh, and they started salting the damn roads when the temperature drops too close to 30°F (vs. several years ago when the city wouldn't salt due to concerns about what effect the  runoff would have on Puget Sound).

So that's it for my long-winded rant/thinly-veiled excuse for things taking forever with this project.  To the point of status updates: Gremlin floors are 90% there and waiting on shielding gas to finally be finished, which will require a drive to Auburn  in the morning.  Eagle's still doing it's thing, but was running into a little bit of trouble as fall progressed.  I'll have a separate post up here shortly that's focused on that situation. 

In closing: Go to hell, Seattle.  I hope I've finally left by the time your next tech bubble pops.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Forgot a title again. Make up something you want to hear and pretend I wrote that.

Welding 22ga sheet sucks my ass.

I considered ending this post there, but I don't want to waste people's time by having them look at a one-sentence update.  It's just rude.

At this point, welding of the floors has reached roughly 80% completion and is expected to be wrapped up before the night's over.  Most of the work done has been grinding off the mountain ridges of filler material I'm leaving behind after each pass, which is testament to my lack of skill in metal joinery.

The grinding was presenting a pretty significant time sink until I remembered I have sand flap wheels.  Once that occurred to me, I found myself with one less reason to ever have to use grinding wheels (a welcome discovery), because removing the evidence of my use of a tool I am unfit to wield now takes only a quarter of the time it had before.  Of course, it'd be faster if I was just better at welding. 

Then again, it would be even faster if I didn't need to do any of this work in the first place.  Or any of the work to come, for that matter.  On that note, here's what's next:

  1. Hitting the inside of the frame rails and possibly the new sheet with Ospho.  I'm thinking this will be easier done than said, as my current plans for getting the stuff in there involve a rechargeable aerosol can, some tubing, and a welding tip that's been drilled out to make a 360° spray nozzle.  Or a hand pumped garden sprayer.  I'll let you figure out which route I'll probably take of the two.
  2. Hint: it's both, because next comes the POR-15.  I'll be using the overly-complicated spray can assembly to spray the inside of the rails, while the new floor surfaces will be a mix of brushing thinned POR into seams and tight spots, followed by using a mix of POR paste and fiberglass sheet to ensure I've made every attempt to keep this from happening again in my lifetime.
  3. Drill a few holes to mount my console brackets on the transmission hump (and treat them).
  4. Replace the floor mat with rubberized tar roof mat from the hardware store (seems to be the same shit as the insanely expensive automotive sound deadening mat, though at a fraction of the price).
  5. Put my goddamned seats back in. Again. One more time.
  6. Install fuel and trans cooler lines.
  7. Same, but with an engine and transmission instead of lines.
Then it's off to the exhaust doctor for the Gremlin to get side pipes plumbed to the headers.  Then the fun begins once it returns.