Fino's 1970 Mini Build Thread

practical yes - visually disturbing to my OCD nature means I really don't like diagonal mounts....plus, its still shorter than the windshield and roll bar, and we don't have many trees to worry about around here. The only problem is the spare tire - its hard to see in the pics from the rear, but the tire is tilted with top toward the tailgate, and that is a really poor design for trying to utilize any space between the tailgate and the tire.....

 

In honor of Big Johns Bday...I decided to try and fix the crunched rear corner....The little mishap in Moab back in April left the rear looking like this:


My initial attempt to 'make it better' probably only made it worse...but this is how I left it for a few months:


and I moved the fuel filler from the side to the rear which I really like:


But as the cj is sitting with no front hubs and knuckles - waiting on kingpin bearings as well as some tools to finalize the the knuckle stud conversion, I decided I might as well try to fix the body damage....Doesn't seem like much, but just getting this stuff cut out, and the inner top of fender panel somewhat back to where its supposed to be is a start:


I may still cut out a strip of the tail light panel along the seam (its already had some of my repair work done, especially down at the body mount - which all that stuff ripped back apart from the this incident). Thinking I can make the strip for the tailight panel and bend the 90 edge for the seam in the small brake I have, and then it can spot weld it to the corner panel....trying to keep the rear seam so it doesn't look too weird....no matter how I do it, its probably going to be a bit rough....HBD John!

 

Don't know if this was really needed, but since it probably won't look all that pretty no matter what I do, I at least want it to be solid....the top of the fenderwell was so smashed in that I couldn't get it reshaped and stretched back in place enough that it would sit against the corner panel - its supposed to contour along the inside of the corner panel and is spot welded to it. I added a small strip of metal that I welded to the end of the fenderwell top, and while its still too uneven and damaged to make smooth contact, it did at least allow for a few spots of contact that I could spot weld to the corner panel...


Then it was cut the corner panel to fit etc....starting to look a little better...still quite a bit of welding to go and a lot of grinding....I did the spot welds to the fenderwell top from the outside as its really hard to get up behind there, and the OEM spare tire support piece is there....I figure a bit of grinding and smoothing on the outside of the panel won't be the biggest issue...


it wasn't perfect to begin with - had been damaged from the OEM spare tire and had some sort of patch that I think was a lead job, then lots of bondo before the PO repaint...it looked ok on the outside, but then I crunched it....so even if its not perfect, seems like I am headed in the right direction.

 

I bought it from classic enterprises....$155 for rear 1/4 corner panel B...it goes all the way over the rear tire but I cut that off and just used what I wanted/needed...not cheap but quality piece with proper trim edging on the bottom lip and end lip up against the tail light panel. And I just didn't have a way to deal with bending the round corner in sheet metal...worth it to me to have a doable solution for me.

 

Didn't seem to get much done today...had trouble with the wire feed on the hobart welder, had trouble with welding on the zinc weld-thru primer (never had an issue with that before), it seemed HOT and gritty in the garage today...so I did finish up welding the panel seams, and got the body mount welded on and in position:

did a bunch of grinding on the seam welds - its slow and tedious so as not to overheat anything too much (although i did notice the outside seam is bowing out just a bit - no big deal from my POV). Then when I hit the frustration point, I just felt like the entire garage needed some cleaning and organization...its got the 58 project going, the front knuckle stud project on the cj as well as the body panel work....The sbc machine shop work finished up today, so I have to go pick that up and want to have a good, clean work space to assemble it. I am actually going to leave it at the shop for a few more days (mostly due to travel), but its also easier to keep it there in their clean space while I finish up cj projects....off to CA for some hiking and backpacking...

 

always good to know where the danger zone is....

 

After finishing the knuckles...back to the rear corner...Jen is pretty good with this kind of thing, although she has never worked on auto body before - mostly artistic stuff and of course wall and ceiling repair, plaster and whatnot. She is nervous she is going to screw it up, but when compared to the alternative (me), I told her that no matter how bad she thought she did, it would still be way better than me. I think its going to be great!

 

just in time to crunch it again...hopefully not...we are done smearing filler around, let it sit for awhile and either sand it a bit tonight or tomorrow morning. Maybe get some primer and paint done by the end of the weekend. Last time I painted some patch panel work, I found the closest color match I could get at FLAPS - and it was sorta okay when compared to unfaded sections of paint, but exposed paint has really faded to blue (even moreso over the last 5+ years), so wondering if I should used the same paint I did last time, which will really not match along the side and will be very visible, or try and match the faded blue paint at the local hardware store...mostly, as long as its relatively straight and not rusted out, it'll be good.