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I did a little more yesterday. I injured (not too badly) my wrist at basketball through the week so I wasn't feeling like sanding. So I started attacking the prem front. The car has the Kingswood front on it, but came with a spare Prem front and radiator support.

I pulled the nose cone from the rad support to find the rad support is cactus... lots of rust!

So it looks like I'll be cutting the headlight cup area from the rusted rad support and grafting it into the kingswood rad support. more work!

Anyway the Nosecone was also pretty ordinary, There was damage on the bottom passenger side up into the headlight and indicator area. So I cut up the Kingswood nose cone and re-used the lower half with the join line behind the bumper I don't really need to go too crazy hiding the join where I've welded it, also gives me a good chance to practice more welding without getting too much heat into the panel...
I did end up having to cut into the indicator area to repair where the twin headlight one was damaged.
So far I've just done the welding and I'm starting to grind down and clean up the welds. pics tell the story:

Did some more on the nose cone. It's almost done, just gotta rub back the hi fill and rivet the bit under the passenger headlight.

If you have any stretched panels you can just tap them up heat them cherry in the centre, ice cold rag On it and shrink them, it's a bit of an art but you sort of usually have to do it if you do a bit of welding and beating because you get that ripple. It's very hard to repair without filler if you cut out a lot of panels, I've used 3litres of flyweight in my coupe :s good job tho I know how s*#t it gets making panels and welding them, at least h series holdens are 1.0+ mm thick steel, Gemini that's been rubbed back and painted a few times is probably down to 0.6!

Yeh it definitely helps with the 1.0mm steel!

Did a few hours over the weekend, Sanded the drivers side rear qtr and front guard. Threw a light coat of etch over them just to have a lok and see how clase they are... not too bad.. still a few slight gentle highs and lows but I think I'll get the rest with high fill primer. That will be next weekends job.

I also Stripped the spare pass side Front guard I had. This time I hit it with paint stripper then the paint stripping disc to get rid of the last traces... found a few trolley dings in it which I easily removed using the slapstick and dolly. Removing small dings with the slapstick was awesome, literally 2 minutes of hitting and you can see the ding rise in front of your eyes. There were 4 spots on the guard with bog, 3 of them I beat out completely perfect. The other is on the lip of the wheel arch which I think I'll bog again just because its a bit of a tricky shape. I don't want to make it worse and it's only a tiny ding anyway.

just 2 pics today of the etched repairs. I'll take pics of the other guard tonight maybe...

Wish i had half your enthusiasm when it comes to working on my gem, great work saving this beast man. Look forward to more updates.

More progress... spent a few hours on Saturday tinkering away...

I stripped the front Quarter last week back to bare metal. there were a few spots where the paint had been chipped away to bare metal previously that I sprayed with rust converter, the rust was just surface rust so it wasn't too bad. anyway I wiped the convertor with a damp rag and it sort of smeared over the whole guard and made it all go black, I guess it doesn't matter, just looked funny. I ended up snading most of it off except for the problem areas.

Anyway the Quarter was pretty sraight, as I mentioned in a previous post I dollied out a few trolley dings and I also welded up the antenna hole as the next few pics will show...






I put KBS on the inside edges of the guard, there was some extremely light surface rust in this area, but it was almost perfect really. The KBS is just a preventative measure.



This is it after 3 coats of high build primer, still needs to be blocked back for final primer



I had some paint left in the pot so one coat of high build on the rear quarter, looks fantastic compared to what I started with:




So far I'm really liking this high build primer, goes on really thick and heavy and I'm guessing it'll be really easy to sand. It is very orange-peely but I'm guessing that's because I'm mixing it thick for the high build effect. I'm hoping when I mix it thinner it will spray on smoother then after the wet sand it will be mirror flat hopefully!

Heaps of progress over the long weekend...Had my Cousin helping me on monday which was great. Ran out of gas on the MIG tho so that's slowed me down a bit!

paint stripping the passenger rear guard


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This shows an area that was filled with bog. There was a large-ish dent that was just bogged straight over, maybe 5mm deep. Can't have that!

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All stripped!

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We Massaged the dent out, got it almost perfect but it wasn't easy as the hole cut for the old LPG filler was making the panel behave a bit weird... I think it creates a loose point maybe... hard to explain, it's like the metal isn't as tightly stretched as it needs to be...
Anyway we got it prety close, I tacked a fill in panel where the filler hole was, when I weld it in fully then I'll do a bit more work on the dent, if I can't get it perfect I might need to put 1-2mm of filler in there, I'd rather have a 1mm low spot than risk going too far and causing a high area.


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Got a different front quarter instead of the one I butchered, My old one wasn't too bad so it'll make a good spare to hang in the garage.
The new one is taiwanese though so it'll be interesting to see how it fits.
It was sprayed in some sort of primer, with baby blue underneath, black primer under that! Paint stripping revealed all the layers!


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gave it a light coat of etch then ran out of daylight.

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took a pic of the car outside with no front, its weird to drive it in and out of the garage with nothing in front but the engine!

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Between stripping and paint drying on the guards I was cutting and unpicking spot welds on the rad support. The Prem one was rusted pretty bad as the pics show:

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So I carefully cut a section from the single headlight Kingswood support panel and grafted it to the premier support panel.



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That's about all for the moment. Next on the list is more bodywork on the passenger rear guard, finish welding the rad support and trial fit all the front panels.
I also scored a new passenger front door, the old door had rust in the skin, this one has a tiny hole on the inside bottom edge. easy fix. much easier than dealing with the doorskin.

man your making some great progress, these pics bring back memories for me when I did a similar restore on my LH Torana

didn't do much this weekend. busy with other stuff.

finished welding the old lpg fillerhole. Also finished welding the Rad support. came up great, I ground the welds down so it'll be hard to spot the repair after paint.




In other exciting news, My uncle is a mechanic and he had a customer years ago who put a brand new chev crate engine in his WB stato. Leaving the old Blue 308 behind. My uncle has had it under a tarp for a few years. It was running when pulled out, is still in ok shape despite sitting so long. He is selling it to me cheap, comes with a Turbo 400, convertor, pacemaker tri-y's and a felpro gasket kit, acl bearings and rings.
So I'll be giving it a freshen up and whacking that in! stoked!

I never really look in this section

Saw Sheel had a "Zed" and thought it was a 240/260 Datsun...

Does sound good in the writing (blocked pics at work)

Hi Guys,

Did a little bit on the weekend. Was a bit under the weather so only did a few hours...

I basically just cut and patched the rear quarter/ door frame on the passenger side. Plus a bit on the dog leg. With the inner metal pice on the door frame I decided to wire brush all the loose rust off then give it the full KBS treatment. Used the convertor then the black sealer paint. Then welded in the new metal over the top. Through the week I'll hit it with another coat of the sealer paint on the inside of the cabin vent to be sure!

Pics tell the story:





dog leg pics, I forgot to take a pic of the inner panel painted in KBS sealer, but I did seal it all up before welding in the new piece.

update time,

Bodywork on the rear panels continues... high fill and long sanding block are the order of the day...still need a bit more but they are getting close to straight.

Started bolting the front on to see how it all lines up.

Drivers side gaurd is the Taiwanese one, needs some work around the top corner, the gap is rubbish and the top inside bolt doesn't line up. will have to cut the nut off, drill a new hole in the correct position then weld a new nut on.
It will be ok with some work so I suppose I'm happy enough with it.

Passenger side is great. Nose cone and rad support are great. pics tell the story:





Here is where I don't like the gap and the bolt hole on the inside:



Front trial fitted



only half bolted up on this side:

*thumbs up*

Them cheap guards are horrible. A mate had an f Truck repaired and had the same trouble they didn't really fit at all had to cut and shut them. Your body work is top notch. I can't believe how well that fuel cap repair came out, usually the panels distort to the s*#t house when you weld them or is that just thin steeled cars!

I had massive panel distortion on a front guard I tried to repair... ended up not using that guard and the Taiwanese guard is it's replacement! not sure what's worse!!haha. To be fair the taiwanese one does look like it will come up ok with a bit of work. I'll probably have to spend maybe 2-3 hours cutting/welding/beating some area's to get it to line up which isn't great but at the end of the day I should be able to get it perfect.

With the rear quarter, the key I found is to work very slowly. It took me about 3 hours to completely weld that filler hole. One tack at a time with a few minutes cooling time between tack welds. lots of cool damp rags and air blowing on it too. painstaking, but 3 hours spent here means I spend 3 less hours with filler and sanding...

There is about 1-2 mm of bog on that guard tough, there was a big dent about 6 inches toward the rear of the car from where the gas filler hole was... pictures show where is was previously bogged up. I removed about 5mm deep bog, pushed the dent almost all the way out which my pics show, then used 1-2mm just to finish off a few ripples where the metal was stretched.
I could maybe have tried shrinking the metal but I thought I'd just live with a small amount of bog. I'm pretty happy with it but I'n not sure if it is good enough to paint the car a dark colour yet... So i might end up painting the car white if I'm not happy after some guide coats. Time will tell.