46 Power Wagon Restoration pt. 2

[Desoto61]

In for a penny...

While I wouldn't call myself good at this body work stuff, I'm not afraid (or not smart enough) to start cutting metal. So I took the body saw and cut along the edge of the roof, then used a chisel and the drill to remove the edge attached to the roof pillar.

Once I cleaned up the exposed area I hit it with a coat of weld-through primer. Then I bent up a small strip of steel into an L. A HD shrinker stretcher would probably be the best tool for this, but I don't have one, and not sure it's justified for the small amount of curved work I've needed. So my solution to get the bend was similar to my other repairs and I cut some slots in the piece to make it flexible. It will mean additional welding but should do the trick.

It will take some more grinding and fitting before it's ready to weld in, I also have to repeat the roof seam repair on the opposite side of the cab.

[Desoto61]

After lots of welding the final product seems plenty strong, and once the welds are dressed shouldn't look too bad either. It's not stock, but it maintains the look, at least from a distance.

One problem area was the end by the drip rail. I couldn't get into it with the welder so reluctantly I decided to cut out the portion of the drip rail for access, finish the area and then re-weld the section of drip rail back in. However this revealed a new problem.

The drip rail moved more than I expected, which ended up being because much of the metal it was attached to was gone. After drilling out all but the last one or two spot welds I found the extend of the bad area. This is the portion of the roof that rolls under and attaches to the door structure.

[gmharris]

"Well that's disturbing, but good to know. Guess I'll need to sand it off of the couple of places I've applied it."

A professional body guy working for me would just wet a cloth with the Ospho and dampen just the discolored area after the rust had been sanded down. I think the problem might come when the area is drenched with the Ospho.

Somewhere, maybe on the House of Kolors website, they cautioned against using the converter under their paint because of it's acidic nature. But, the body guy said it was necessary to "kill" the rust. So, I think it's important to wash, or at least wipe down with water, the affected area if you are going to paint it.

[Desoto61]

Eastwood rust converter got us in a pile of trouble on a project a few years back. Huge out of pocket expense to get that one straightened out. I did some reading on their Q-A forum at that time, and quickly saw that multitudes of folks had similar issues. The Eastwood techs offered no sensible answers at all, basically said you are on your own. Obviously they knew their product didn't work as advertised.

Long story short; I wouldn't touch that stuff with a 10' pole. I simply doesn't work as desrcibed in their instructions, and they couldn't care less when problems arise. They are after your $$, not your loyalty.

Well that's disturbing, but good to know. Guess I'll need to sand it off of the couple of places I've applied it.

I'm at about the same stage of a project as you are. If I had the cab off, I would have the cab primered at the powder coater.

The thought has crossed my mind. But if I'm going to do that I'm definitely going to wait till all my repairs and modifications are done so that I don't have to sand off and re-prime the areas I fixed/modified.

[gmharris]

I'm at about the same stage of a project as you are. If I had the cab off, I would have the cab primered at the powder coater.

As it is, I don't like leaving metal bare for any length of time. If I could, I would spray the cab with something like House of Kolors KD3000 which is a high-build epoxy primer/sealer. But, thanks to the air quality regulations, we can't get it here in California. So, I'm using an AQMD compliant primer which doesn't have the same anti-corrosion properties as the KD3000.