Category: repairs

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Footwell Repair Part 10: Fender Prep (Post #657) 6/10/2024

In this post I intended to patch the fender with a new panel. I only have a small  section of the steel sheet I bought. Before the work I started today I needed a 10″x8″ piece. My patch area was about 7 inches with a 9 and a half panel with a half inch bend on one side.

From last week we found 4 sheets of steel sandwiched on the one side. Two of those are seemingly superfluous. In between each sheet was a nice rust stuffing. So its pretty obvious all that needs to be remediated.

I got the air chisel out and went to town. I split all the steel and cut away the rusted parts. I wire wheeled as much of the rust away and in the end covered everything with the rust mitigation paint I bought.

I will need to get a new sheet of steel to finish this piece. The patch I need to make is now going to need to be a inch after the bend perhaps more. I’ll cover every piece of steel with the rust paint. I think the way they screwed the panels together might work. I can also see how I could spot weld the panels together. This would also be good experience for welding the bed back into place. I will also be covering everything in seal sealer and several liberal applications of bedliner/rhino-liner or whatever it is called.

Thanks for watching, like and subscribe, and Happy Rovering.

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Footwell Repair Part 9: Seam Sealer (Post #656) 6/3/2024

In this installment I apply seam sealer to the most recently welded “L”. Seam sealer was not how I wanted to seal this joint up. I wanted it to be welded closed. That is just not possible. It wasn’t originally built that way. I can only hope the seam sealer I’m using will last long enough for me to quit this Overlanding Hobby.

I also look at the floor patch I’m going to need to build. I talk about the two structural bends in the panel. I saw the guy on Make It Kustom [Youtube] build a jig and a tool to make these kinds of bends. You can look through his videos to find it. I’m going to think long and hard about this before I tackle this problem.

It might be fun to build the jig. I will need to buy a router bit to get the jig in the right shape. I’ll probably need to build a special air hammer bit like he did too. It would be a one off fix. I don’t think I will ever tear this apart again.

It’s a short video and I know it’s über riveting content watching me smear seam sealer. In my defense I didn’t have time to produce anything else this weekend. Saturday we visited the Evil German Dude and his lovely wife. Paparazzi Ford was there too. The Evil German Broad made brunch for us and we all got to catchup on the latest happenings and see their almost finished “cabana”. That’s what the county commissioners called it for tax purposes.

It’s an amazing space and it took a lot of forethought, planning, engineering to make it as awesome as it is. Several things I saw had me comparing how much time I’ve spent thinking about the future state of the Big White Bus. I know I’ll have some great ideas that will need additional thought and probably re-engineering to get them right.

I picked up a parts washer from EGD too while I was there. So that’s pretty cool. That’s all for this week. Like and subscribe to the blog and the Youtube channel.

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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Footwell Repair Part 7: Building an “L” for the Bulkhead (Post #654) 5/19/2024

Part 7 should have been titled, “How the hell are we going to make an L that has a big bend in it?!?” I have been thinking about this solution for two weeks on and off in my spare brain idling time.

Today’s video is me actually experimenting with bending the metal and making a sample piece. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to and how I’m going to put this thing together. The next step is to cut the strip I’m going to use for the L piece and hammer it into shape. I’ll need to do some additional measuring and mental gymnastics to sort out how I’m going to weld all this up so it doesn’t leak and dare I say it, “it doesn’t rust” or “rust much”.

1820’s Cherokee

I also mention that I went to the 200th Anniversary of Fort Towson. You can google about Fort Towson that was once known as the Chateau on the Prairie. It must have been a wonderful sight to behold with it’s limestone walled buildings and it’s blue roofs.

Life on the prairie in this time was hard. Like real hard. Death was ever present and it was not uncommon for a soldier to arrive and be dead within a year. They grew much of their own food and getting supplies from the east was inconsistent.

As a living historian, I portray a Cherokee for this period in Oklahoma history. This was the time when the creator of the Cherokee syllabary Sequoyah lived. The fur trade in “Indian Territory” pre-dates the mountain man era of the fur trade popularized in several movies like Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and The Mountain Men (1980).

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Next week will be more metal bending and welding of the support into place to get ready for putting in the floor.

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Footwell Repair Part 6: Bulkhead Repair (Post #653) 5/11/2024

Here we go again. This is Part 6, and I’m not even going to bore you with how many more parts this will take to get the passenger side wheel well completed. Let’s just say, its going to be quite a few more.

In this one I cut out the bad bits of the bulkhead/sidewall/whatever and replace it with a patch that if I do say so myself is probably better than the last one. Only time and wet carpets will tell, and probably rust. Whatever, it’s done.

I now have a solid bulkhead to weld additional part on. Parts like the patch I’m going to install for the floorboard. Still not sure how I’m going to shape the floorboard, but that for next Saturday to worry about.

Check out the video. I think it went pretty well.

Like and subscribe if you like the content. I always appreciate it. And comment! I love comments. I got a comment this week that I needed magnets.

Thanks as always for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Footwell Repair Part 5: Ugly Welding (Post #652)

Today’s episode has me correcting the crappy welding I attempted last week. First thing I needed to do was to cut the bad patch off the firewall. Since the welds were trash, the patch came off easily.

The next job was to make a new patch. This time I made the patch and shaped it to fit the curved firewall. A little hammering on the sand bag, a little bending in the vice…and boom we had a nice patch.

I took time to cut out the floorboard. I also used the air chisel to explore the rust and seem sealer on the footwell. It found more rust.

The plan for today was to get the firewall patched. I got the patch placed and began welding it. My nephew came by to do some laundry and he showed me how he was mastering the solving of a Rubik’s Cube. He can do it in just under 4 minutes. I’ve never solved one.

I got the patch finally welded into place. I painted everything again with two coats of primer. I then got some seam sealer setup in the caulking gun and went about getting everything sealed up. I was pretty sure my welds were good. But when I sprayed the primer I had some sneak through some welds. Well I put enough seam sealer on it, it won’t leak. Plus I’ll likely but the Fat Mat back down once I’m finished.

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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/bFYjszdK2D0
https://youtu.be/bFYjszdK2D0
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Footwell Repair Part 4: A complete Waste of Time (Post #652) 4/30/2024

In this very frustrating post, I report on a complete loss of a Sunday working on my Big White Bus. Yep, I spent a few hours trying to patch the firewall. I cut the fender well and investigated the rust on the shelf.

I also cut the a spot on the firewall that had rusted through. I dutifully made a template, and cut steal for a patch. I then spent about an hour welding the patch into place. All that time, hearing the welds and never realizing that something was not right.

That something…I never turned the shielding gas on. So the welds are basically trash. I’m going to have to cut that patch out and start over.

I’m pretty frustrated. I am not making the progress I want to. This fender rust is complicated. There are so many converging panels here and all of them have rust. In the coming episodes I’m going to have to bend some panels and the measurements have to be pretty close.

The tornadoes have been pretty plentiful. The day I recorded the video more than 20 tornadoes skipped across the state. You probably saw the damage in Sulphur, Oklahoma. If you can contribute to help the people affected I urge you to give to the Red Cross or one of the religious organizations that have assistance ministries.

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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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