Week #96

Last week I had removed the damaged radiator core support material that I was to replace. I'm feeling really ambitious tonight... I'm going try to get the replacements removed, cleaned and installed in one outing.

I took me a good hour to get the parts clean in the bead blaster mainly due to the size of the lower support. If it was 5" shorter... or the box 5" bigger it would have been a lot easier. After the cleaning it was over to the work bench for some holes along the mating edges for the spot welds. After test fitting the parts I saw where there were quite a few places that needed a little hammering to allow for these parts to fit right. The combination of pulling the other parts off and these panels from another car made it a bit of work for a flush fit.

Once all the surfaces fit as they should it was time to clamp them in place for welding. This side piece offered a real challenge in this department. Most pieces until now were easily clamped because all the welded surfaces were along the perimeter of whatever was being welded... not this. While playing around with it the week before I could see that I would need a pair of really long reaching vise grips. I found a pretty good pair at the local cheap tool store... that doesn't mean they were cheap, that's just the store they were in.

The new ViseGrips just did reach far enough to get a good clamping on the parts. I tried to weld all the welds from the sides that are hidden. Of coarse this is not always possible and in those situations there is always the extra work of grinding and finishing the little bumps left behind by the weld. The side opposite the weld side almost always looks good enough to keep as is.

The side and lower support went on without a hitch. Replacing the side piece has always bothered me because it could lead some people to believe that the upper core support had been swapped... you know... VIN stamping and all. This would be a particular touchy subject with a 1 of 57 HEMI car, don't you think? But hey, I'm not worried, you people are all my witnesses!