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So big day today. I borrowed a small mig welder from a friend and attacked the rear quarter panels. Turns out I'm a crappy welder, but in the end it came out ok for the first time I have ever attempted to weld sheet metal in my life.

I have a full driver's side quarter in pretty good shape I got from a friend...


But he hasn't been returning my calls for some reason so I wasn't able to get the other side. So I picked up some cheap sheet metal at the Canadian Tire and set to basically making a mirror image of the one I have...seemed like something I could do.




Worked out fairly well but took about 4 hours.

I then cut the driver's side donor fender up and took what I needed. That was much easier and only took an hour or so to fit it up.

Here it is tacked in...



Close up of my tacks...


I did not take any pictures of the hours of grinding. It was painful. Literally.

I got both sides done and gave them a bit of Bondo just to smooth it out and then a coat of primer to keep things safe till I can finish and do some spot painting. Sorry no pics of that as it was dark when I finished. I'll take a few tomorrow.

There's my totally amateur body work debut. What do you all think?

It's great! I'm always afraid of tackling something like this for fear of failing miserably but it's nice to see that it's possible to weld stuff up decently without experience.

Check out Aaron Cake's Cosmo rebuild. He's an amateur welder but he's had to do a fair amount of patching on his project. There may be some info in there that'll help you, plus it's a good watch

http://www.youtube.com/user/aaroncake

Very cool. You did an awesome job man. I know I couldn't have done anywhere close to that good.

Very good job but how are you going to cover the head nails?(if i said it correct)As i can see from the pic their are coming out a lot from the metal surface.

DeadMaker wrote:Very good job but how are you going to cover the head nails?(if i said it correct)As i can see from the pic their are coming out a lot from the metal surface.

The tack welds? you just grind them flat

wytbishop:
Nice work BTW it looks really good especially if this is your first attempt! I know many who have been doing it for years and your work looks just as good. should turn out great

Nice work...

Good that you try to fix it on your own... i'd have never dared.

Looking good.

For the past 6 weeks or so I've been working on the body of the Purple Beast trying to identify and remove all the rust. In the process I have figured out two things. First I'm a terrible body man. Second a real bodyman is the only hope for my car and I can't afford it.

So I decided to have some fun with it and started looking into Vinyl car wraps. I have learned a lot about vinyl in the last couple of months.

I started with the basic body work which you've seen in previous posts. It's not great but I decided that the goal of the project was just to do the best I could so that i could drive the car around with being horribly embarrassed and hopefully stop the rust from progressing quickly. Then I ordered 10yds @ 30" and 10yds @ 48" of Oracal 651 Calandered vinyl in matte black and started changing the Purple Beast to the Black Beast.

First step was to paint the parts that I couldn't wrap. Door sills, the inside of the doors, the bottom of the hood and the hatch. I also put a thin coat of paint on the hood so that the vinyl would have something better to stick to.





I forgot to take a picture of the hatch.

Then I started wrapping stuff. I started with the front bumper...long story...it didn't go well. The vinyl I bought is just no good for the complex curves of the bumpers. I'll come back to that later.

I went on to the hood. The basic strategy is to cut your vinyl roughly to size, remove the backing on one side and cut it off, spray the application fluid on the work piece and the vinyl and lay it on...





Then you use a squeegy to remove the wrinkles and push the fluid out. It's much trickier than it sounds but the application fluid makes it possible.

Went on to the fenders...



This is what it looks like after I did the doors today...



Long story short...I wasn't able to wrap the bumpers so I decided I would paint them. I used the same Krylon Fusion Satin Black that I used for the other painted parts and it's not bad but it's too shiney and it doesn't hold up at all on the front bumper. So I decided to go find some of the good stuff. I found a decent deal on 3M 1080 matte black vinyl which aught to be enough to complete the job. I hope that it's the same color as the cheap stuff. We'll see I guess.

There are basically two kinds of vinyl. Calandered vinyl is made by heating up the plastic and squishing it through a series of dies to make it thinner and thinner until it's 0.0025" thick. This makes a product which is slightly rigid and not extremely conformable.

Cast vinyl is poured from liquid which hardens to a much more malleable product so it can be slightly thicker and still much easier to work with. In addition, the vinyl that is made by 3M and a few others for wrapping cars has pressure activated adhesive with air release channels. So it basically slides on the surface of the car like cloth until you press it down and the channels let the air out so no air bubbles. But it's way WAY more money.

I bought enough of the cheap stuff to cover the whole car for $97 locally. I got less than 5yds of 3M @ 60" wide for $120 + shipping. Enough to cover the whole car would be about $600.

So I'm wrapping the bumpers and redoing the hood (it has seams because the cheap stuff is only 48" wide) with the 3M and I'll use the cheap stuff on the roof and the hatch.

I'll post pics when it's done. Happy to hear your thoughts.

wow.

Sexy. Actually I love it. Looks a little rough around the back of the FL wheel well?

I'm in the process of primering my red car, I hope it looks this good. My prime is a nice satin black...

I like it. good work so far.

not bad! maybe I can do it myself!

I am going to undercoat the rocker panels and then I'll stick the JDM sides on which I should have in the next few weeks. So I didn't pay too much attention to the area along the bottom.

It's definitely a 10 footer at the moment. I'm still learning how to apply the vinyl without bubbles and creases so there are a few pretty ugly flaws. It'll look good in the end. Thanks for the compliments though.

It's actually surprisingly not looking bad at all! Good job man. You don't give yourself enough credit.

Man you have made a fantastic job so far..It looks like it's painted with black primer.Try to paint the bumper primer.You might have better results..