Guesstimate on rust repair?

Mikael is right, learn to weld, mig welding is not hard, tig a little harder. Sharkey is right not a problem, the cost of that one repair is the cost of a welder!

I want to thank Rocky for the shout out on my restoration thread. Photo bucket has my pics in hock now - they want $40 / month to allow 3rd party hosting (which would allow the pics to be seen again). George warned me that this could happen.

If someone could advise me on how to do it - I would be willing to cough up the $40, then "archive" in some way the thread from the beginning till now. I just don't have the time to start over.

Let me know if any of you have suggestions to help me get my thread out of hock. Rodney

A lot of hosting companies. I use pair.com
Register a domain and link a directory through them. You can host all the photos you like and create/dispose of email accounts at will.



Have one email for personal use, another for comerce and dish em out to family members.

Make web pages.

Control your space.

Rodney,

Since you posted the original links, if you have your photobucket URLs, try this hack on the photo address:

After the .jpg before the [/img] put ~original ,or otherwise stated: .jpg~original[/img]

This will get all the PB photos showing again, for the moment at least! It worked for me.

Also, I saw this on another Forum:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...fegnfnflicjjgj

Allegedly it can be used to fix the Photobucket problem by redirecting the links.

It is an add on to Google Chrome so you need to have Google Chrome to make it work.
I have tried it and I see all the photo's that were blocked.

I have an intense dislike for Photobucket. They will never see another nickel from me nor will anyone that advertises with them if I can help it.

I've since started hosting all my photo's at one of my own hobby domains. It's about $100/yr and I host a website, with, email and various tools, and oodles of space and bandwidth.

Best,
Kelly

Kelly -

Great tip! (We will have to see how long it lasts before PB figures out what we are doing)!


If you follow the link (below) you will see a repair to an issue similar to the one asked about in the first post of this thread. Hopefully the pictures will remain available for a while!

Repair of Upright

I think the original poster has passed on the car, and is no longer following this thread, but this may be of value to somebody.

Rocky

quote:

Mikael , What model MigaTronic welder do you use ?

MigaTronic Automig 183i

Thanks for the tips! I'll see if I can get this fixed.

Sorry - didn't mean to hijack the thread. Rust repair is largely a matter of what do you have more of - time or money? Paying for restoration quality work gets expensive because it is so time consuming.

Costs will be around $20
https://www.amazon.de/Learn-We...cation/dp/0785832327
;-)

RJK,

You should get in touch with Cullen. He has sheet metal pieces you need.
http://pantera.infopop.cc/eve/...041009066#9041009066

My question to you, is what are you looking to do with the proposed car. I've done more mods to a pantera "frame" than most people in here. Its not hard, frankly the frame doesn't even need much bracing if you have a decent car. As said before, the hardest part is getting decent replacement sheetmetal, I just gave up and fabbed my own after a while.

Depending on your goal, and the price of that car it could be steal. For instance if you're wanting a project car and plan to customize it.

If you're trying to get it 100% back to stock, thats a bit more of a pain in the rear, but still doable, as long as you understand its going to take you longer than you think.

Again, think of this as potential. Example: you wanted to restomod a car, now you have found a good car to back-half so you can get a Graz transaxle to fit nicely. Its potentially far enough in the grave everyone will be complimenting you for bringing it back to the road, no matter that its no longer stock.

This group will always be here to give you advice if you get in a pinch too

quote:

Originally posted by garth66:
RJK,

You should get in touch with Cullen. He has sheet metal pieces you need.
http://pantera.infopop.cc/eve/...041009066#9041009066

RJK. I do have a pair of wheelhouses available that have no rust at all, and I do need to get them moved. Ironically, I have been trying to get them sold for months, but within the past few days I have three leads now. which is good, but I need to communicate with several people to make sure I don't step on any toes. Please let me know asap if you are interested. originally asking like 4 grand for the pair. will take less but shipping might be a pain. thanks!!

quote:

The hard part these days about welding is to me the fabrication of the replacement metal to be welded in.

Yes, I quote myself

Just as an example, here's a patch that took me quite some time to produce, just started fixing rust on the Longchamp. This patch took not a long time to cut out or weld in, but it took me half a day to create the metal piece to put in. It had to have the curve of the fender, the edge had to be curved like the door to create equal gap, there's a 1 cm 45 degree crease, it has to have a 180 degree bend obviously on the left and finally the right edge has to lowered approx 0.9mm so the main part is flush and needs as little filler as possible. I'm sure a pro could have made an even better patch if I paid him by the hour, but I can't afford that...

(Please ignore the miserable weld at the bottom, a one hand weld needed to fix the patch in place)

Fully welded, but not cleaned up yet. Gap to door is not 100% perfect, but up to normal DeTomaso gaps I think? (It looks a bit worse than it is because the door is slightly open) If I did that patch again, I don't think it would be any better, this is the limit to my skills :-)

But thankfully I have lots of another needed thing: patience. You can't hurry welding

Other patches like in rocker panels where the black stuff will used over, they are made with less accuracy.

So hope this will inspire somebody to start welding instead of spending $$$ to get others to do it. We here in this community do most other things on our cars ourselves.

Don't get me started on painting I have painted cars myself, but these days I have something better, a friend that's a pro painter, so I don't paint anymore

Another one where creating the patch took longer than cutting out the old and welding the patch in. Many angles to consider

Welded in...

I know most like to present their car's bodies as perfect, straight, never welded, never dented, so straight the factory didn't need any filler(!). Well I like to show it warts and all. And here's a picture of a subset of what I cut out of the Longchamp. I found quite a bit of rust in the following areas: front fenders (no inner fenders), rocker panels (no holes to let water out), rear fender lips and area below the gas tanks (hoses leading water from rear window and water/gas from filler areas deteriorated so water ended inside trunk). That's the bad news. The good news is almost no rust in doors, no rust in hood and trunk lid. And the areas where I've seen some Longchamp areas really being bad, rear lights and area below rear window, no rust at all.

So it took me 5 weeks, being between jobs currently so plenty of time to do it proper, saving a fortune compared to having it fixed.

Also have now drilled plenty of holes to let water out of fenders and rocker panels and front lower grill support (totally gone). And used 3 canisters of sealer and so far 2 canisters of rust protection. When I get it back on the road, I'm driving to the local rust protection people to have the remaining cavities that I can't get to filled with rust protection. This is not a show car, it's an (almost) daily driver.

Anybody want to buy some original Longchamp material?

Well done Mikael!
I'm (not) looking forward to do the same with my Deauville. Will probably find at least the same, but it still looks good from distance.