Gutting the doors - MyBad's way

phantomjock said:
BangkokDean said:
Let me get this straight, remove 50 lbs and add a 150 lbs roll cage plus no windows in rainy season FL.
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For me? Yeah - and spend as much money on a rebuild/mod as buying a new car! :bonkers:
As to making it a track car, and going racing - I could have bought a used one cheaper too! :suicide:
At least Karsten is planning on keeping his doors - mine are for sale - I can use the cash - now why is that? I wonder... :banghead:

Cheers - Jim
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The little crazy things we do ..... :D

How long can it possibly take to swap doors ?? Can't be that bad, so if I get tired of it I can swap the doors...... Besides, I don't remember the last time I drove the car with the windows up, it doesn't have AC either, another silly thing to do in Florida :lol:
 
MYBAD79 said:
Progress: cut the inner shell, re-welded all the corners, sandblasted .... Almost ready for epoxy primer
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Why don't you paint them blue and put them on as is, you could save another 10 lbs. Plus the interior would be cooler.....:devil:
 
Ok, little more progress: finished blasting and welded the driver side lower hinge pocket .... My blaster removed what seemed to be JBweld covering a few rust holes .... Now it's all solid steel ..... Both frames are now coated in grey epoxy primer/sealer - almost ready to glue the door skins back in place :D

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MYBAD79 said:
Damn I should have taken more pictures and weighed the doors and the parts that i cut out...... oh well..... apparently I'm not very good at guessing the weight :chinese:
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Didnt C3s get added door crash hardware at some point? I know the 78-79 doors are way heavier than 82 doors.
 
Made another mistake...... the doors must be unbolted from the hinges first, can't get to the bolts that hold the hinge to the A pillar..... My initial plan was to leave the hinges bolted to the doors and swap the hinges with the doors, too bad that won't work....
Maybe I should have looked at this before I bought another set of hinges :crap:
 
MYBAD79 said:
Made another mistake...... the doors must be unbolted from the hinges first, can't get to the bolts that hold the hinge to the A pillar..... My initial plan was to leave the hinges bolted to the doors and swap the hinges with the doors, too bad that won't work....
Maybe I should have looked at this before I bought another set of hinges :crap:
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I didn't know that. I have kicked around removing the steel shims on the hinges and replacing them with a similar thickness piece of aluminum.

Thanks for the info.
 
I'm currently stripping the paint off the hinges that I got on Ebay, I'll likely end up blasting them because the stripper is nasty , doesn't work much and makes a mess .....

Anyways ... Made some progress on the door skins:

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Almost ready to glue the skins to the frame, then more primer and paint .....
 
MYBAD79 said:
I'm currently stripping the paint off the hinges that I got on Ebay, I'll likely end up blasting them because the stripper is nasty , doesn't work much and makes a mess .....


Almost ready to glue the skins to the frame, then more primer and paint .....
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(1) The stripper is nasty and messy. But my opinion is that it works. It's methyl chloride. Because of liability, etc concerns I think some of it today is diluted and mixed with other less effective solvents. If you're not concerned about time, just keep soaking it, it'll eventually all come off.

(2) Another "solution" is to take them to an engine rebuild shop and have them hot tanked. This will get rid of all paint. The hot tanks use sodium hydroxide and perhaps a little methyl chloride.

(3)A nother "solution" is to find a furniture stripper business. They strip varnish, paint, etc off of wood furniture. Their stripper fluid will also get rid of your paint. The furniture stripper I use is pretty picky about grease and oil. The parts are to be grease and oil free. With number (2) technique, the hot tank guys are not picky about grease and oil.

I've used all three above techniques. With elaborating more, I think these chemical treatments are better than sandblasting.
 
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Nowadays it's all eco friendly which is not a bad thing, it's just that I now have to use a gallon where a quart used to get the job done .... These hinges are soaking in stripper inside a Ziploc bag since last week - I'll see what the progress is tomorrow night :)

I bought this stripper for the door skins that I did not want to blast - obviously blasting fiberglass will cause extra work with filler and high build primer .... The stripper does take that paint off so i hope it killed the paint on these hinges by now ....

I chose to use stripper on the hinges because they're small and I didn't feel like running the 60 gal compressor to blast for maybe 5 minutes, i also thought since they fit in the bag it will keep the stripper from drying so it should work .... Also the bushings and hinge pins seem to be in good shape, didnt want to destroy the bushings with the blaster ...
 
The stripper took most of the red paint off the hinges, a little more wire brushing and some fresh shiny black paint and these will be like new .....
 
Another update: found a small box at my front door today, since I did not expect anything I initially thought it's just some more crap TT bought on Ebay :D

In the box was a pass side door latch in perfect working condition that Larry (BBshark) sent me - THANKS !!!!!!

I finally figured out the difference between the newr and older style latches:

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The little bracket that pushes on the release lever is different, no big deal at all as these need a slight modification to work with the gutted doors anyways ....

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Got the hinges cleaned and in primer..... Like new :)

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Good ole 3M 8115 to glue the skins back to the frames

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Used pretty much every clamp I cold find around the house

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MYBAD79 said:
Another update: found a small box at my front door today, since I did not expect anything I initially thought it's just some more crap TT bought on Ebay :D.
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:suspicious::suspicious: I don't buy crap.. them's all some fine parts you gotz there man :D

Are you going to do something to the sheet metal so you don't cut yourself?
 
I hit all the sharp edges with a sandpaper disc, it was only sharp in those areas where I cut..... should have the inside painted soon, then I have to get these doors on the car for final fitting, i hope the gaps are close to being "good"
 
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