Rust repairs.

I cut away the piece of trunk floor that connects the trunk floor to the quarter panel.  The plan is to try and rebuild this part to look close to factory made. Measures can be taken from the left side witch is in better shape and re fabricate right side part to resemble.

In order to "mirror" the part from the left side of the car a template out of paper was made.

Something like that.

I wanted to try and make stiffening beads to the  repair piece! Not that they are needed but would look nice. Should have made the beads before bending the plate!

Made a groove in a piece of plywood and tried to form the sheet metal by hammering and using the plywood as mold.

The result was terrible!

In an attempt to rescue the situation I called a friend with a bead roller and went over to him and made the beads now the problem was that I had bent the repair piece witch limited the movement when using the bead roller. 

Well now I have beads not exactly as on the original piece but they will have to do!

Hammered the "lip" that connects to the quarter panel on free hand towards a piece of wood! As the edge of the metal is not in a straight line it causes the piece to get bent.

I don't have tools for shrinking and stretching sheet metal so the "lip" was cut to enable bending as needed.

Mocked up. It Looks OK!

Before welding in place the surface that will be facing outwards towards the quarter panel was painted with rattle can spray for rust protection as it might be hard to access later on.

Tack welded in place.

I wanted to try and make a "real" repair piece although this part will not be visible on the couch. The piece came out far from perfect but I'm still quite happy with the result.

Customization

Removing parts and welding shut the excessive holes on a car body like trim holes, antenna holes and what not is probably one the most common and old modification methods around.

The donor car was a Dodge Dart 170, the base model but I want to make the couch look as it is of a Dart GT! So as a small side project to the ongoing rust repairs I decided to weld the trim holes on the sides shut as those don't exist on the GT model.

Dart GT

Dart 170

I tried a couple of different techniques to weld the trim holes shut.

What worked best for me was to have a small piece of sheet metal in the hole and welding that in place that gave least distortion and required least grinding.

Some pictures where I tried to catch the shrinking that has happened when welding holes shut.

Unfortunately I ended up making an unplanned patch during this job as the metal was so thin so I only burned holes in it when trying to weld.

The patch was made on an dent I had tried to straighten out already earlier so the shape of the metal was not optimal from start and adding a lot of heat to the area didn't improve the situation.

Now the trim holes on both sides are welded shut!

Rust repairs, getting started!

My earlier experience of sheet metal work is very limited! To get started I have purchased 2 square meters 1.0 mm cold rolled sheet metal. This should be fairly easy to shape I've been told.

I bought a used MIG welder for my iceboat project that will be used here also. 

I could't help the temptation to purchase a small sheet metal bending tool.This one is small and can only (barely) handle max 1 mm sheet. Also the width is limited to 760 mm.

Manufacturing of repair pieces.

The "leaf spring fastening point".

The welding was started where the smallest repair was needed, left sub frame. Hoping to gain some experience before the more demanding repairs.  

The welds looks like crap but it will not be visible on the ready couch! Hopefully the welding quality will improve before the quarter panel needs to be welded.

As the right side sub frame was in worse shape I welded a temporary stiffener before cutting away the damaged part.

New piece of "sub frame" in place.

I rebuilt something that would look like the rear leaf spring fastening point even if it is basically not needed now. I'm thinking it might come in handy when installing feet or wheels or combination of the two under the sofa. Also it looks better when both sides are alike.

Next on the agenda is to try and bring the right corner back to life.Starting with re manufacturing the piece below. 

Planning the cut.

A couple of thoughts about cutting the car.

When to cut the car to it's final length?
The rear end cut of for my project is too long as it sits but even if the bottom of the "car" is very rusty it stays together quite well due to the strengthening structures behind the rear seat. So I'm thinking I should work on the rust and support frame before cutting it to final desired length.
Therefore I need to decide where to make the final cut so that I can do repairs within the area that will be used for the couch as there is no point in fixing rust on the part that will be cut away!

Where to cut the car?
 There seems to be two main versions when browsing pictures of car couches.
1) One basically uses the sides of the car and the back rest of the sofa is the end of the couch.
2)The other version is to cut a little bit longer piece of the car and leave a short piece of the trunk lid behind the back rest. This looks better in my view but the sofa will take more room and you need to either make a piece of lid or cut a piece from a trunk lid.

As the donor car was very rusty there will be extensively more welding work if going for alternative two. Also the space where I'm planning to put the sofa is not so big so I'm moving forward with alternative one.

How to cut the car?
I'm thinking of taking advantage of the sub frame of the car, meaning cutting the car completely, not just using the sheet metal. This enables using original bumper fastening points and hopefully support frame build wont be as extensive as all the main measures are already in place.

Main Dimensions!
I have taken some measurements and made some calculations to determine main dimensions of my couch. The height of a sofa in my home is 44 cm from floor to seat pillow top, the depth of seat pillow is 52 cm. Backrest height is 46 cm and the backrest angle should be about 100-110 degrees.
Total depth of sofa should land somewhere between 70 cm and 80 cm depending on the angle of the backrest. The width of the sofa is determined by the trunk opening!

A tricky part was how to determine when the car is in level witch is needed to enable taking measures. The hat shelf seems to be quite in level so I will at least for now use that for determining when rear part is in level.

As I have no bumper for the couch project I took some measures of my 65. 

A small side comment. I'm hoping to get hold of rear bumper and tail lights of a 65 Dart, but the same from a 66 will also do fine as they are almost as good looking. The advantage of using a 66 bumper would be that the bumper completely covers the sand plate witch is missing from my project and also the 66 has integrated licence plate lights in the bumper when if made working would look nice.   

The plan is to have couch upholstery end where the measurement tape shows 2 cm. That will make the gap between body and bumper disappear and I'm hoping the bumper is close enough to not interfere with legs of the person sitting in the couch.

To temporarily mark where I will do the cut in the future I use masking tape witch unfortunately is almost identical in color with the rest of the car.

Tried to make the tape more visible by drawing with permanent marker on it but I think it only made the situation worse.

Inside trunk. The spare wheel bay will be completely removed.

So now we have a plan and can start rust repairs! I have a feeling those might require several posts.