Beware of the Project Car Gods

[Magee]

For those who believe in Karma, you may relate to my story below. After several days making good progress on my project car, I had small argument with my wife over something stupid and went back to my garage to cool off and work on the car.

What looked like a very small repair under the sill. (Only visible from under the car) No rust visible, but just suspicious small bubble about 5 mm diameter, but still thought must be repaired as didn't want it coming out later.

Turned out to be very poor repair by some previous owner where they had bashed in the rust and bogged over top. By the photos below I reckon they went through a small can of bog and even stupidly blocked a drain hole.

It is repairable but will set me back about a week. Moral of the story is always be nice to people because you never know who is watching.

[Terry Turbo]

Mate, Id be having a very careful look to see if there are not more nasty surprises lurking on that car.
Not wishing you bad luck, but if the previous owner di that, I doubt its the only "repair".

Just saying......

[Magee]

Had something similar with the RH front guard and had to just cut end off and weld in patch panel from Rare Spares. Have already welded in new floors and new rear firewall and made patch weld repairs to front firewall and front of LH and RH sills. Over all the car was pretty good for rust and was I ready to park the mig when I found my latest trouble.

Amazing thing was how good this guy had finished the bog. It was very straight and he even put in the style line to make it look like the original.

[Pedro]

I saw a 69 Mustang that a guy brought in from USA and had been dropped off at a repair shop to have the door cards under the rear side windows replaced with new ones.
When the left hand card was removed it revealed the lower part of the original B pillar including the door lock pin was smashed back into the void (result of crash) and a new B pillar had just been cut and fashioned into place.

[snap0964]

Yeah, if you don't remove or treat ALL of the rust, it just comes back.
A proper repair wouldn't have taken much longer.
Is that corrosion on that inner section ? I guess grind as much as you can get to, treat/fishoil as much as you can. A simple right angled panel piece stitched in under the existing sheetmetal with the spots ground flat and a thin layer of filler, and you'll have a much better repair than the original repair. Add a drain hole or two, and some access holes inboard with sealing grommets for fishoiling.
All of this you already know.

[jandj]

Originally Posted by Magee

For those who believe in Karma, you may relate to my story below. After several days making good progress on my project car, I had small argument with my wife over something stupid and went back to my garage to cool off and work on the car.

What looked like a very small repair under the sill. (Only visible from under the car) No rust visible, but just suspicious small bubble about 5 mm diameter, but still thought must be repaired as didn't want it coming out later.

Turned out to be very poor repair by some previous owner where they had bashed in the rust and bogged over top. By the photos below I reckon they went through a small can of bog and even stupidly blocked a drain hole.

It is repairable but will set me back about a week. Moral of the story is always be nice to people because you never know who is watching.

Mate I feel your pain , I bought my 70 Mach 1 ( about 10 years ago ) off a car dealer in gold coast area.

Bought the car with my heart and not my head, started collecting/buying parts . A couple of years latter when I started to work on it , I realized the car had been in a accident and bad repairs had been performed.
It's a life lesson for me.

Cheers Jason.

[Wretched]

D'oh. Hope it doesn't uncover anything else, fingers crossed.

A few years back I was in the process of buying a '69 Mach 1 for what seemed to be a good price. Ready to hand over the cash, i had the car inspected. Mechanically fine, a couple of rusts spots here and there that i was expecting, but the deal breaker was the floor pan had been damaged very severely in a car accident and had been pop riveted in.
I was devastated but thankful I hadn't paid for the car at the time. Lessons learned.

[Magee]

I didn't plan to start a thread on my project but some guys might be interested in how I have gone about this specific repair.

I never made such large patch and thought its too big to bend by hand so I have found on the internet a $66 sheet metal bender. It can bend up to 450 mm and up to 1 mm thick but the pressing plate needs to be clamped down which means set up takes longer. The result of the final product was pretty good and I was able to match the bend angle of the original sill as per the photo below.

The repair method is pretty much what Snap has advised in his post I have cleaned the inner sill with a wire wheel and treated with rust converter then painted with zinc rich weld thru primer.

Second photo shows the 3 patches I have made to weld in. The thin strip is from a roll that I cut to length and will weld to the inner sill. The second photo shows a larger strip that I cut out of .95 mm sheet with my jigsaw and will weld inside the outer sill having it over lap for easier welding. Third piece is made with new bender and will be like a cover that sits over the second patch and have the effect of double plating the sill. This will make it super strong and only need a thin coat of filler to get the surface flat.

[bundy bruiser]

it makes you wonder why old mate didn't spend the time to fix it properly.

[XRtowcar]

Cave and pave they call it.
My 66 Mustang had both doors done this way.
Fitted new door skins.

[Vesper Martini]

Used to be pretty common, you had to take a magnet with you when car shopping.