stts

Been kinda busy with all the craziness going on but Im making progress. I drilled out all the welds of the stuff that was crunched. Even drilled out the pasenger side cradle anchor plate that was hopelessly crunched backwards. The passenger frame stub was was crunched over but I used a 10ft steel pole for leverage to bend it forward again and that big C clamp to sandwich the buckled sheet metal its made of to make it flat and straight again. Now I can weld a donor frame to it. The firewall is pushed in somewhat but that metal is light weight and I been banging it back out with a rubber mallet. The spot weld drill bit I got has been awesome. It says to keep speed under 200RPM and I have drilled out everything here and not worn out the first cutter head. I suspect it will cut all the welds on the donor car too without breaking. The speed is critical to keep from burning the temper off the cutter. I put a speed control on my drill so it cant go over 200rpm. I also put a heavy spring on my drill and hook it on anything near the spot weld. That way the spring is applying the drill pressure and I am really only keeping the drill steady. Saves my arms wear and tear. Especially while drilling the welds underneath the car. Ill start drilling the frame off the donor car in a week. The right strut nest was fine but the left one had to go. Ill drill out only the welds that makes the whole assembly drop off. So I wont have to drill out as many. Welding will be a snap. Ill use the same jack stands on the donor car and cut off steel tube pieces to wedge under the frame to remove. Then Ill use the same pieces to keep the spacing identical when I move the frame to this car. That way the frame alignment shout be pretty close for camber bolts to correct. Its just awesome that theres not a speck of rust anywhere on this 2006 car. Dad really kept it dry and clean. Before I start to weld, Ill bolt the body panels on so I can tap the frame into fine alignment so panel spacing is perfect. The sound mat on the firewall will hide all that banged out metal so I wont spent time making the firewall like factory. But i will be painting everything in the front end with rattle can silver to make sure it is as rust proof as possible.

Oldblue

Progress, good work

stts

I made more progress. Cut off the frame from the blue car, removed the rust and painted it up. The passenger bolting pad for the engine cradle was also removed since dads one was hopelessly crunched. Now all I have to do is slide all this into place, prop it up with the spacer I made to set the alignment, and weld it all together. Ill bolt the bottom cradle on and the side fenders also to be able to fine tune the door fender spacing before I start welding. The blue car is completely gutted at this point. Just sheet metal. Ill keep or sell all the parts. Even the wiring harness is intact and stuffed into a plastic storage bin. I think I will pull dads harness out and put this one in. It runs the bigger 2.4 engine. Also its got traction control, and heated seats. Wiring thats not in dads car. I can gut all the plastic inside in a few hours. it mostly all snaps together. Ill do that after the front end is half put back together. Ill have to swap all the wheel hubs or figure out how to add the sensor. I would prefer just adding sensors since dads hardware is like spanking new. I already cut both windshields out and threw dads smashed one away. Ill transfer the blue shield if another better one doesnt come along. This virus thing has kept Pick Your Part in my town off line sale wise. I figured out an easy way to get the windshield out without stressing it so I want to get a better one if possible. Heres a windshield trick. Ebay selles the cheap remover kits with a roll of stainless wire. The wire alone breaks often trying to rip it thru the window glue. But if you clip a battery charger on the wire it gets really hot and quickly melts right thru the glue without any more pesky wire breaks. It only heats up between where you place the battery clips. Ill get a resistor from the surplus store and hook up a cable to use an 18v battery pack from my cordless nut driver. I have a voltage reducer at home that i plugged the battery charger into. I turned down the voltage so about 2 amps was going thru the wire. Thats the right heat that doesnt start a fire. Without the voltage reducer, Id have to get a resistor for the battery charger too. Ill make a little tool to put wire on to hook to the battery charger to use the heat wire to melt all the glue off the car. Thats better than scratching the paint and making a future rust problem. I wont have the wire red hot, just hot enough to melt thru the glue. The leftover glue is about 3/8 inch thick and has to be removed. I wonder if somebody has already patented this idea.

donbrew

Glass guys use a special knife.

stts

Yup, one of those was in my cheap ebay kit. The only things in it useful was the wire, the 2 wire handles, and the long blade wire inserter. Heating the wire made all the difference. Now that I dont break the wire any more, that roll could do a 100 windshields without breaking a sweat. I couldnt dig out the plastic moulding without getting really rough with it because it was set into the urithane glue. But the hot wire melted right thru that too. Now that the broken windshield was off, I used pliers to get at it and rip out what moulding that was left over. But I will have to make a narrow hot wire tool to get the leftover glue off. that stuff is really stuck hard. I wont have to clean out the glue down to paint but rather just get most of it off. I would have made more progress but a new sport came to town since the virus shut down all the fun. Street drag racing in the city streets after midnight. Guys from all over were showing up doing organized races for a money pot. 40 races a night on the weekends. 0 to 160mph in the city street on a 1 mile stretch. They had a camera setup at the 1/8 mile mark. Been like this for about 2 months until cops finally figured out what was going on. Now the Street Outlaws, as they call themselves are heading out to the boonies to finish the summers scheduled racing for the pot. All those cars have turbos, super chargers or Nitrous with racing slicks. The do the burn out fluid and everything. There was a crowd of hundreds that kept showing up. Till cops surprised and arrested 2 spectators that went and did their own race. They both are loosing their cars. The street racers have lookouts tweeting in cop locations. But now cops are all over the area since bars are closed, so the real racers moved on. So now Ill get more work done. :)

donbrew

I have never done it but I have watched several times. I think there is technique to using the knife, I've only seen the wire thing in videos

stts

I made a little tool that holds wire that I hooked to a battery to try out. I was hopeing it would effertlessly melt off most of the excess Urethane glue but it didnt work. Urethane doesnt melt. It burns. So the tool is useless. But a razer window scraper works pretty good any way. You cut the urethane to get a grip on it then pull as you cut and it zips off pretty easily. Putting power on the wire that cuts the windshield off works good by weakening the urethane so the wire cuts thru it. That will also make winter windshield removal possible since its heating up the glue.

stts

Anyways, now to the fun stuff. The difference between plain wheel hubs and the ones with sensors is just the sensors pressed in. So if you find plain hubs really cheap, you can pry the sensors out and transfer them. But if they are corroded in heavily, It will be tougher. The rusty chopper disk poped off by prying with that skinny screw driver. It bent the steel but it was easy to smash flat again. The sensor with the connector was pressed onto the bearing on top of the chopper wheel. You dont see the wheel till you pry the sensor off. I used that bearing seperator to get ahold of the edge of the sensor. Then I banged on it lightly to work it off the hub bearing. Then I cleaned off the corrosion, coated the sensor metal with anti sieze paste, and pressed the chopper wheel on the new hub and then pressed the sensor over the top of it. There was a slot on the side of the sensor so you can see the edge of the chopper wheel when its press far enough. That way you dont press the sensor down too far and mash the chopper wheel. Its not a hard press as the sensor is made of light sheet metal. Just taping it on with a small hammer would work well too. I have not gotten to the rear wheel drums yet but i suspect its a similar arangement.

stts

Now to the really fun stuff. Dads car has a new front frame. I tried to use my Tig to weld it on but it was a mess. I practiced on the donor car but I kept setting the paint on fire. I set the Tig up with 1/4 hertz freq and 50% duty cycle so it would act like a spot welder, but nothing worked. The plasma is just too hot to weld painted metal. And the metal has to be painted on all sides or water getting in between will start terminal rust at the welds. I looked it up on the internet and the factory used computerized spot weld machines that will weld painted panel. There is no plasma in that process so the paint doesnt burn except right at the spot weld. Only on the weld does the paint vaporize and the surrounding paint is unharmed. So when body shops have to repair these sheet metal cars, The factory calls for a cold bonding process using rivets and glue. So thats what i did. I used stainless steel pop rivets and gorilla super glue. with the sheet metal up against each other, the super glue gets sucked in and the pop rivet pulls the sheet metal joint together. I used 3/16 rivets and had to make 2 foot extender handles to get enough leverage to pop those size rivets. Id need a power tool to use rivets even bigger. But those rivets had shear strength over a 1000 pounds and I used over a 100, so I have 100,000 pounds of rivets holding the front end on. Then theres super glue on every rivet. So theres no way anything is coming apart. On top of that, the glue seals up the bare steel from the drill hole. So water cant get into the joint either. After I got the frame anchored pretty good, I used it as leverage to pull the fire wall out to meet the frame. Now theres no gaps and I sealed up the wheel well with body sealer. Next Ill get the proper color of paint and paint over the silver on the frame thats exposed with the body panels on. Then its just a matter of putting everything back together again. I already put on the craddle and suspension so I can move the car back to where to crane is. Ill paint it at work too since the place is already dirty. Unfortunately the blue body panels were trashed by golfball hail so Im going to have to wait untill PickYourPart opens from the virus shutdown. It may not be till next year. Ill probably put the blue body parts on till then. Its just a few screws. I already tried the body panels to make sure the frame was positioned correctly, so the whole front end is easily within a 1/4 inch of what it used to be.

stts

Heres the rear drum brake hub. It looked like is was going to be easier to move the sensor. With the dust cover pried off, you can see the chopper wheel in there. So its just a matter of prying the sensor off one hub and moving it to the other. That glop in there is just grease and doesnt hurt anything.

But there was a surprise. They made a substantial change to the sensor. Its not made of sheet metal. Its a more substantial part with a smaller center shaft. It looks like aluminum but its magnetic steel so the computer should be the same. So I have no choice but to swap out the entire hub instead of keeping dads low miles bearing. But the old hub is super clean inside and the grease looks as fresh as what comes out of the tube. I could press it apart and swap things around but Im not going to put those bearings thru that trauma.