Car update with advice need on roof approach.

[AkumaNoZeta]

Well, I'll start off by saying I haven't been on here for YEARS so none of you probably don't know anything about how it's been going. Well I'm happy to say it's finally on a rotisserie, has been for the last few months. When I bought it, it was a clean looking early 260Z with an L28 and 4 speed. I drove it around one day and I couldn't get it running, never did until I put a E12-80 distributor and 390 Holley on it. After a few months I starting nit picking, literally picking at bubbles in the paint and finding lots of bondo and quite a few holes.

 

Drove it for 2 years with no wipers and having to jerry-rid the front torque boxes to keep the T/C rod from bouncing off the pavement when you hit the brakes. After I got another car to drive I started tearing the Z down to the nitty gritty with everyone I know telling me I'll never get it done, which made me work harder on it. Well it turned out that there are no floors, what was there was nothing more than tin foil held in place with screws. There is no outer rocker, and only half the inner rocker was salvagable. Someone has fill in the cavities with expanding foam with duraglass over it, and finally the bondo and paint. I have to give it to them, whoever did the body work before was damn good at shaping bondo. I think I'll just let the pictures do the rest of the talking. At the end I'll show my concerns about the roof and would love to get any tips or advice.

 

 

Here's the roof.

 

This is BAD, but not my main concern. I should note, on the back of the car there was 3 inches of bondo where at some point in the car's life it was rear-ended, Hard. This shows how far the damage traveled.

 

This is my main concern. It's got heavy surface rust, big pits but no holes yet. From the passenger side there's a 24" long strip of it, the a 2" clean spot, 4" of rust, 8" of clean, and another 3" of light surface rust on the driver's side. I'm thinking I'm best off replacing the entire roofline there, but I'm afraid of messing something up and the windsheild not fitting right anymore. Plus in my opinion any blemish across the hood and roof will stick out like a sore thumb. So, anyone have any input?

[rturbo 930]

Welcome back.

 

Everything I've read suggests that it is extremely difficult to patch the roof and have it come out straight. I can't really see any detail - your pictures kinda suck (sorry!), but if it's only the roof skin that's damaged, I think the easiest (relatively) thing to do would be to replace the roof skin.

 

That said, that big dent by the C pillar is from accident damage? Have you checked to see if your chassis is straight? Looks like you've put a lot of work into that chassis (looks good, too), so it would really suck to find out your chassis is tweaked.

[AkumaNoZeta]

I was pretty anal about it. Took me 3 days to get the twist out of it, and brace it up, before doing any cutting, and everything I put in is straight and square with exception to the the factory front crossmember I welded back on. It's an 1/4" out of square from it being 1/8" off from left to right, but it doesn't match anything anymore so down the line I'm going to cut it back off and make a new one for heimed control arms and modified rack mounting. The hatch itself open closes fine, I bolted it back on last night actually, and has a perfect gap down the passenger side and across the top until it get to that big, holey dent. And the driver's side gap narrows in the center with the corner of the quarter being 1/8" shorter than the corner of the hatch. I'm just assuming the damage is related, probably happened before I was born so it may be from seperate accidents. Maybe I should try CarFaxing it. Haha. The good news, I'm 80% sure the fenders and hood have already been replaced with new ones because there's no signs rust or dents by looking on the back sides.

[AkumaNoZeta]

I should also note that I made sure to have a complete new "frame" from to back before putting it on the rotisserie. I didn't want it to bow. And sorry about the photos, I have the cheapest digital camera you could get from Walmart 3 years ago, but if you see the marker marks, I circled the rust and put "L"s in the low spots.

Edited November 11, 2015 by Grim

[AkumaNoZeta]

So far I'm thinking about blowing the dust off my oxy-acetylene torch, getting some mild steel rods, and using that to weld in new pieces that I'll make. I have some scrap that I can practice on. Then I can use my new hammer and dolly set to planish and stretch the beads out, that is if the slapper will fit between the roof skin and sub-frames.

[cgsheen]

+1 to replace the roof skin.  You'll end up with a much better looking product and it could actually be less difficult than repairing the existing skin...

[AkumaNoZeta]

Where do you even get one?

[V-Fib]

Where do you even get one?

Donor car. Post a wanted ad in the classifieds or browse craigslist.

[seattlejester]

I wouldn't be too afraid of working on it, the curvature might be hard to replicate on the top of the roof, but putting the glass in I found out that you have quite a lot of leeway with how the glass sits.

 

You could do the old transfer tape or butcher paper and magnet trick to get a nice template and find someone with an english wheel to get the right curvature into it.

 

Re-skinning the roof is quite the process, but looks like you have the know how to do it. 

[AkumaNoZeta]

I couldn't  cut up a donor car like that, especially knowing that car is likely to have been a lot better shell to start with.

 

I've always wanted to learn how to use an English wheel, it's just been too slow at work to justify getting one. For the time being I went back to working on the bottom of the car again.