Doors
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Now for the doors. After scouring the local pick-a-part salvage yards, our son finally located a donor 61 Falcon 2 Door Sedan. He took both doors off as they were in much better condition than the original doors. This is the driver door. They also had the stainless wing vent trim.
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The replacement driver door has a small spot of rust that will need to be fixed.
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The donor doors were next on the list for me to tackle. Evidently the donor car was painted a least three times, twice in different shades of red and once in blue. There was also a gray sealer layer and a final thin filler layer.
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The inside of the replacement driver door. It's in very good shape.
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The bottom edge has some surface rust but no big holes.
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Even the corner is just surface rust.
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When sanding down the donor door, these are the paint layers that I found: gray
primer, red, brown primer, red, blue, and red.
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Now to fix that minor hole in the outer skin.
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The problem area was opened, revealing all the rust inside the door.
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The inner rust was cleaned up and treated. Once the hole is sealed the inside
of the door will be treated with POR 15.
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The rest of the door cleaned up nicely.
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The welds ground down on the patch panel on the skin.
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Prepping to spray epoxy on the driver door. The passenger door still needs rust repair.
We used tape to block off the stainless trim that we had not figured out how to
remove yet.
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The driver door, now in epoxy.
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The mirror holes did not match the replacement mirrors and there is a break
in the metal at the edge of the wing vent. We will fix these once the door
is back on the car and aligned with the main body again.
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Now for the replacement passenger door. Unfortunately, the bottom was rusted
through in many spots.
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Remember the stainless trim? We finally figured out how to remove it, and, yes
there is a trick. Start at the hinge area, on the back outer lip. A chisel
under the edge and a few taps with a hammer and it will release. Then work
your way around the outer edge. We had been trying the top and the latch
corners as they had been easier to get to with the door on the car. Our son
discovered this with the door on the workbench.
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And it's a good thing, considering the rust underneath. Oh, in case you are
wondering, the red is the original, single layer of factory Matador Red paint.
Evidently during the previous color changes, they had not bothered to remove
the stainless. Or they didn't know how.
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We cut out the corner to reveal the problem area.
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The entire bottom edge had to be replaced.
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These pieces, due to the complex nature, had to be hand fashioned at home
using wooden blocks. No easy metal brake here.
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The middle area of the door with new metal.
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And the final corner exposed.
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This is the old metal. Note the swiss cheese effect.
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The window setting channels from inside the doors. The
rustier one is from the passenger side.
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You should not be able to see through the window setting channel. The holes will be filled as the channel is still very usable.
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Hood
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At Spring Carlisle in April 2019, Dad and I located a donor hood. The front of the original had rust holes and this would be much easier. There is one spot of rust in the support area, but that will be much easier to fix.
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The donor hood, ready for stripping. And guess who got that job?
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A closeup of the rust on the hood. It literally is rusting from the inside, pushing the outer skin out until it broke the metal. There is a reinforcement here for the latch that probably held water over the years.
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There were a few minor dents and dings in the hood, but otherwise, the donor hood is in great shape.
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Once the hood was stripped, the hinges were bolted into the engine bay to trial fit the hood with the donor fenders.
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After some minor adjustments, the fit was perfect.
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The rusted section of the inner skin for the hood was cut away and the rust was removed. Then the area was treated with rust encapsulator.
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Every area that could be reached inside the structure of the hood was treated with rust encapsulator.
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New metal was welded back into the hood
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The repaired hood in epoxy primer, ready for body work.
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Bed Repair
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Any truck bed has a corrugated floorpan to add strength. Recreating
this stamped form by hand is not too difficult - with a bit of ingenuity.
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Recall all these holes after the water blasting? Time to fix all these,
however, note the specific shapes needed.
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Closeup of rust-eaten other half of the bed, the removable panel. It has the
same strengthening ribs that need repair on this end, which is nearest the back of
the bed and joins the previous picture.
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Taking a page from one of the professionals on TV, we decided to make a die to stamp
out small replacement pieces. This is the die for an inset square.
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Both halves of the die and the resulting square. Looks like this will work to repair the rusted out capture nuts for holding down that removable panel.
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Another "stamp" to be used to form individual segments. The two spacers are to
allow for the thickness of the sheet metal.
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Both halves of the die and a resulting segment. This will repair that corrugated
floorpan.
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The die as one unit. This and a two ton press should do the trick.
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The repaired bed viewed from under the car, before the welds were all ground down.
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The repaired section of the bed from the top, showing those inset squares and one segment.
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The unrepaired piece set in place to check the support underneath.
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The rust line was behind the brace that support the cab side of that panel. The
original brace was almost completely gone. Since there is a
new plan for this dead area of space, the work on this
repair is shown there.
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Finally repairing that removable panel in the bed.
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The edge had many small holes, so it was easier to replace the
strip than to repair all the little holes.
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The repaired panel.
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The removable panel for the bed was first coated in Mar-Hyde to seal the rust.
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Then the panel was coated in POR 15 to protect it. Eventually it will be sprayed with a color matched bedliner like the rest of the bed to protect it while still making the bed useful.
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