blue72's '70 510 SR20 Project

[blue72]

I'll try not to make the story too long, but here's what I know about the history of this 1970 auto trans PL510.

 

 

Perhaps six or seven years ago my father spotted a forlorn little two door 510 for sale at a tow yard. He has done a lot of business with the owner/operator of the towing business, and it turns out he had picked the car up years ago as an 'eventual project'. Needing some cash the tow driver drug it out to the street hoping some other enthusiast would give it some attention.

 

For $200 my dad simply couldn't refuse. The seller even delivered the car on his tow rig at no extra charge.

 

To delve even further into history, my father had a friend in high school who drove a hopped up 510, and perhaps dreamt of recreating a little of his adolescence. Unfortunately, as with most of his project vehicles, it sat on the side of his shop mostly untouched. Sometime around 2006 he got ambitious and disassembled the interior then yanked out the motor and trans. As usual, work got in the way of personal projects, and the little 510 was pushed back outside again to it's accustomed resting spot in the gravel.

 

Over time he decided an SR20DET swap would be the best bang for the buck. To this day he's still on the lookout for "the deal" on a good red top. Again, big plans, but very little time or ambition after a hard day wrenching on other people's cars for a living.

 

I've watched all this happen from the sidelines, but recently decided to get involved and jumpstart the project for him. With the recent economic downturn and consequent lack of anything better to do (and an empty bay or two in the shop) I figured I'd do something nice for the old man and have a bit of a gift ready for him at the end of the chemotherapy treatment he has been going through. Plus, I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a vested interest in the car so I could drive the thing when it is eventually completed.

 

On to the pictures:

[blue72]

Appearances can be deceiving. From a distance the exterior seems passable, but there are many hidden 'features' under that sheetmetal and pinstriping.

 

This is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago (2-13-09) when I aired up the '79 Civic's crusty tires and shoved it out of the way to access the 510. I'm a big fan of the battery powered car pusher.

 

 

And here's the Fred Flintstone inspired braking system.

 

 

You'll notice the original steering wheel is in that last shot. Yes, it is the bare steel hoop. All of the plastic rotted away in the sun. The wheel that's on there now I grabbed from a junkyard 280Z.

 

I got lucky and found a guy back east who makes replacement floorpans. A quick inspection led me to believe that only the fronts would need replaced, so that's all I ordered. They're not the same pattern as the original pans, but they are ribbed for reinforcement then cut, trimmed and bent to the right shape which saves a lot of time (I don't happen to have access to a sheet metal brake). I'm pretty happy with the product that I got.

 

[blue72]

With the 510 defrosting in one of the bays, I removed all the interior bits which had been piled inside the car when it was unceremoniously evicted from the shop back in '06. Here are a couple of views of the still damp front floors.

 

 

 

Yep, lots of room for improvement there. Luckily the support rails were still in excellent shape structurally.

 

I don't want to give it all away yet, but 60 hours of labor, eight cutoff wheels, one tank of gas for the MIG and a couple of 4 1/2 inch angle grinder wheels later and all of this has been repaired and more, so stay tuned.

[blue72]

Before I got too serious with the floors there was some cleanup that needed to take place, so out came the shop-vac.

I know this picture is fuzzy because of the built up goop on all the windows, but do you see all of those yellow things at the base of the windshield?

 

 

I don't know why the yellow jackets decided this would be a great spot to die, but that's the only place in the car where I found them.

 

Another item of note was found in the glovebox. Inside I found a nice inspirational button that got me to wondering what sort of people had once loved the little dime.

 

 

With everything cleaned up, the first order of business was to lay the new pans into place and see what needed to be trimmed. It was immediately evident that a few areas of the pans themselves would need to be cut away because they didn't yet sit flush.

 

 

I started with the passenger floorpan, and trimmed a little here and there from the new metal to let it lay flat on top of the old floor. Pulling out the old industrial sharpie I made some quick marks and began slicing up the old floor. The passenger side had remained mostly intact aside from the rust holes where it met the firewall, so finding all of the depressions created by the spot welds was a simple affair. This would not turn out to be the case on the driver's side which was a giant rust ball.

 

 

Then more cutting, trimming, chopping, beating, drilling, etc... to get the replacement to fit correctly. All of the holes for the spot welds were drilled through the new pans so that I could fill them in with weld later, and with some persuasion everything lined up nicely. Ignore my momentary lapse of attention when trimming the firewall edge.

 

 

One of the toughest parts for me is having the patience to let the welds cool to prevent warping, but luckily this was a large piece and by the time I came back around to the beginning it was ready to be zapped again. The replacement pans are the prefect thickness as well and made it difficult for even me to burn through them.

 

Here's the passenger pan already installed and ready to rock while the driver's side floor area is getting prepped.

 

 

I laid out the old floor pieces side by side with one of the new pans so everyone could visualize just how far gone these things were.

 

[blue72]

Everything seemed to be progressing swimmingly so far, right? Not so fast. I had a big hurdle to overcome when it came to the driver's side of the vehicle.

 

With some sheetmetal from the floorpan out of the way it was quickly becoming evident that things weren't lined up like they should have been. Using a box wrench I proceeded to break off the heads of each bolt that held the driver side fender on (after soaking them for three days in Kroil) and this is what I found underneath it:

 

 

This vehicle had been in a semi-serious left side collision at some time in its past. It happened back when the car was still pea-green and before it had been repainted burgundy with pin striping. The affected area had been repaired at the time, but by now all of the welds that had held the repair together were rusted through or broken. This left the inner fender and front strut tower unsupported, which led to the weight of the vehicle slowly forcing them inward and upward.

 

Here's a view inside the fender well showing how far apart things had spread, and this is with the vehicle supported on a lift. Everything pushed much farther apart with the 510 supporting its own weight. All this without any drivetrain to press down on it either.

 

 

The body shop that had executed the questionable repairs simply pop-riveted the inner fender and another support piece back in position. Needless to say, those rivets were no longer intact.

 

This is what the fender support looked like:

 

 

It had been chopped up and mostly replaced following the accident, but not enough thought was given to the longevity of the repair, and rust quickly lay hold on the exposed metal and welds. The cancer had also spread to the inner fender mounting surface.

 

 

 

My solution? Grinding, welding and a Hi-Lift jack.

[blue72]

Curious as to what use a Hi-Lift would be?

 

 

I used it to push the strut tower back to where it was supposed to have been in the first place. The front frame rails that support the engine were straight, so I only had to push the top of the tower over against the support. It popped and groaned but moved smoothly.

 

Looking around for something to re-create the rusted out sections of the fender support I spied a dented valve body pan in the trash from a vehicle we had repaired earlier in the week.

 

 

It worked great. The lip I wanted was already built in, it was thick steel and there were holes in it that I could fill with weld as I had done with the spot welds inside the vehicle. I spent most of two days just straightening and rebuilding the inner fender and fender support.

[blue72]

With everything in close approximation to its final location I decided to finish the floors. Here's the driver side almost completely welded in.

 

 

In that picture a couple of bolts can be seen at the far end of the replacement floor. They were being used both as alignment tools and to make sure the pan stayed in close proximity to the floor support when filling in the spot weld holes. The outer edges of each pan were given a similar treatment, drilling and filling in the original spot weld holes which were spaced about every 6" apart. If you are super observant you'll notice that the driver's side was a little rustier to begin with, so the edges of the replacement pan were left mostly intact while more material was removed from the remains of the old floor instead.

 

Here's yours truly grinding down all of those excess weld beads and trying to make even the unseen underside of the vehicle appear new and tidy.

 

 

With much perseverance (and lots of tiny little burn marks on my head because I was too engrossed to bother with a hat, but instead donned a shop rag) I finished the two front floors.

This is what the finished product looked like before it was cleaned and coated.

 

 

 

With all of that out of the way I readied the final straightening of the front end. After double checking the mating surfaces to be sure they were straight and grinding off some overlooked welding beads, I re-positioned the Hi-Lift. With one hand pushing on the handle and the other holding the welding gun, the two pieces of metal were fused to each other again.

 

 

 

Much better.

[blue72]

I took a little haitus from posting updates on the 510 so that I could visit the junkyard and gather some more Z related parts. I've been busy cleaning and cataloging my hoard as well as rebuilding a distributor or two.

 

Let's get back to the story though shall we?

 

With all of the major straightening and floor repair taken care of I still had some minor stuff to fix.

The rear pans were in good shape but they each had some rust holes beginning to form around the rubber drain plugs. I recycled bits of the floorpans both old and new for my small patch panels. Nothing too serious after what I'd already tackled thus far.

 

 

Step 1: Cut out rusty piece

Step 2: Trim new piece to fit

Step 3: Hold new piece level with cleaned edges of old metal

Step 4: Weld into place

Step 5: Smooth it all out with grinder

Step 6: Find different pinhole you'd never noticed before and curse its existence

 

 

There, the area where the passengers rest their feet is taken care of.

 

 

After I made sure there were no more pinholes or thin spots hiding it was time to break out the orbital sander and 150 grit to get everything ready for a couple of coats of POR-15. I had an old can that was mostly gone, but there was enough to do a base coat on the rustiest areas before it ran out completely. I let it set up overnight before driving out to the storage unit to retrieve my backup can.

 

Aah, so nice and clean before the tide of enveloping darkness is applied with a 99 cent paint brush.

 

[blue72]

I've been waging keyboard stroke to keyboard stroke combat with a nasty computer virus lately so I didn't feel confident in posting the latest couple of updates here until all was secure again. Here's a little one to show how everything looks now that its protected with a couple of coats of POR-15. I am not going through the trouble of doing all of this work only to see it rust through and break down again.

 

Repaired inner fender support structure:

 

Nice gloss black floorpans:

 

The next item on the list of repairs is general dent removal and straightening. I found some spare sheetmetal out behind the shop the other day from a '78 Caddy. The 67-72 Chevy truck parts like that inner fender already have a home or else they'd have been cut up already.

At least the one scrap fender I do have will give me a little something to work with when repairing the lower fenders.

 

After that I'll be yanking the crossmember for either a flip or to weld in some box sections so the SR pan will clear. Then I'll be playing around with those ZX struts. Much more to come when I get a clear bay in the shop for a bit.

I'm waiting until this crusty old thing is out of my way: