Ivan's coupe: bodywork is done

[banpei]

Nice mod! Another good reason to buy a 3d printer!

[Ivan141]

Another thing that has been keeping me busy the past week: I found a spare steering wheel (missing the horn assembly)
and thought it might be interesting to see if I can wrap it in real leather (because what was on there looked positively vegan).

Here's what it looked like after spending 6 years in a box:

The picture above is flattering, heres a better look:


Off came the leatherette, which I used to make patterns, then I bought myself a nice and supple piece of cow.
Here it is before final stitching, you can see where I was to cut the foam rubber to make room for the seams (leather is thick and I hadnt heard of skiving tools yet):


I couldnt find a shade of silver in my box of paintcans (all too sparkly) so I went with a metallic black center.
Here it is all done. It is not perfect, but frankly I'm amazed how it came out for an amateur job:



The puffyness on the left is due to the leather being just slightly more thick and loose there, I could stick it down like the original eventually.

[Ivan141]

Forward we must go.. into the unknown (I swear these solvents must be causing brain damage)..

She is back from blasting. Generally speaking I am pleased to find few surprises. A few welds have shown to be ground too thin, 2 spots have little holes where I havent done any repairs, and the few bits of that old fart's work that I had done before I learned to weld myself look like shit after blasting.

She's got a nice thick epoxy coat to keep new rust at bay in the meantime.

One bad thing: even though I knew I was at risk with the big flat surfaces, I did not strip off enough of the paint and my roof and trunk lids have oil canned due to the amount of heat they put into it. Will need to address those areas with a torch methinks.. get the worst of it back in shape so it wont need gratuitous bucketloads of filler to straighten out.

[PS] Why is it so quiet in here.. give us a shout if your reading this!

[Dave W]

Whooa!, I can not believe how nice that body is! No big rust holes or Bondo patches. You are one lucky SOB. I will be watching this build. Dave W

[zenki]

Love seeing shells getting blasted and epoxy’d. Looks like all the hard work paid off.

[Ivan141]

Dave, the no big holes bit can be explained by the preceding pages of this age old thread.. Not much luck, but lots of square ft. of fresh sheet metal.

I'm still searching around for the best method of getting the roof back in shape.
Have seen an approach where a dent is raised back into position and then lightly hammering the circumference of the dent.. that's more or less stretching the metal.
And then there are approaches like raising the dent back, heating it and rapidly cooling it (found some variations on this theme).. that's shrinking I would say..

So question nr 1 should be did the blasting cause shrinking or stretching? Dont want to get it wrong because the chance I would make things worse is very large.
May even consider adding additional roof support beneath the affected areas if all else fails.. Informed suggestions on the matter are most welcome.

[edit]
Some more google-fu suggests blasting causes stretching of metal, shrinking is highly unlikely given that the media is blasted on with pressurized air that is typically quite cold.
That little nugget suggests that shrinking strategies are probably the way to go.

[mad.matt]

Got some more pics of the rear strut reinforcement and gusset?

With the question of why it's quiet here, I think forums have lost traffic due to the use of Facebook for information and Instagram for build progress.
I suppose we are just old school and hate trying to find stuff in Facebook and the seemingly instant nature of it means it's lost to 20,000 posts of people asking what oil to use...

I repeatedly suggest this forum as a good place to get information on AE86s in the UK and EU

[Dave W]

It is highly likely that the blasting did warp the roof panel. I have only try shrinking small areas. A large area has got to be a lot harder. If you try, only heat a real small area at a time, [about 25mm Dia.] before cooling the surface. Also look at making a couple hardwood slappers, that copy the roof contour. Davew

[Ivan141]

Well it would be hard not to notice the decline of forums all over the place, what baffles me is the complete lack of usable alternatives.
I dump some pics on FB, but mostly no one there gives a f*ck about cars and it will soon be buried in non-relevant nonsense.
Becoming a middle-aged fart means I flat out refuse to add an instagram account since I fail to see the point (FB is bad enough).
Forum build threads remain the gold standard as far as I'm concerned,only it would be handy if we could somehow separate build posts
and banter posts like these to make for friendlier reading later.

Af far as the shrinking with heat goes, I've had a go ad a dented door last friday and it didnt go too badly at all, but that oil-canning effect is
very sneaky. Solve it in one spot and it appears in another.. Which usually indicates that the problem was somewhere else to begin with.

I have 2 trunk lids with some blasting damage that I can use for practice.. one is quite bad so I figure it's hard to ruin it..
Get the dent to pop above the surface (pop it out so it's convex), then start shrinking the domed area back with the shrinking disc.
I figure the roof might respond better to a propane torch since the affected areas are larger. Must be cautious with the amount of heat used.
Contrary to what you often see you dont need red glowing metal to do shrinking..


About the rear strut gusset: It's more eye-candy than it is useful. You might notice I've completely ditched the original shock mounting points and
replaced them with 2mm thick boxes. Mostly because the organic shapes of the original where hard to reproduce so I figured I might as well make
new ones that will accomodate coilovers more easily. The gusset makes the square boxes look a bit less ungainly, ties the lot together and accomodates many
flared holes that look impressive.

[The Doctor]

The best idea i've seen in the past for keeping banter and proper stuff apart is having a thread for the project where only the TS can post, and a seperate reply thread. But it also makes it hard to keep up what it's all about if you're reading back the reply thread.