Over the hump

  I hope. Clearly, looking back- I should have done the rear body braces before I replaced the sheetmetal in the rear seat riser. That certainly made the rear body braces a LOT more difficult.

  In our last installment, we fabricated new braces. Now was the time to install them. As much as cutting, grinding and welding are a huge thrill, when you're lying on your back, in a confined space, and working over your head- a lot of the fun drains right out of it. But hell, if this stuff was easy, anyone could do it.

  When you're welding upside down, you get an extra safety concern- your welding puddle, which normally lays right there in the work area, can sometimes be overcome by gravity. When it does, you don't want ANY part of your body directly beneath the weld zone. If you're wondering if I learned this the hard way, yes I did. The worst burn I've ever had in my life was incurred while repairing body braces on that blue and white '59 Chevy you saw the picture of in an earlier post.

  So, I put on a  cap to keep debris out of my hair, and got the biggest eye protection I had, and ground the surface for the passenger's side brace clean. Of course, I had to cut off the end of the new brace to get it into place, but welding it back together won't be a problem. I did a little trimming, and then tacked the brace into place.

  The darker gray rectangle running from top center down and slightly to the right is the new brace. It's disappearing under the tabs on the frame where body mounting bolts go through.

  For the driver's side, I had my new spot weld cutter to use, and now that I've used one, I can't believe I haven't had one before now. It's hard to take pictures under the car, but when I get to some work out on more accessible areas, I'll show you just how well it really does work.

  It took less time to get to the same point with the driver's side.

  With both braces tacked into place, We can now move forward. I need to do some more repairs to the top of the seat riser, since I did some damage removing the braces. Once that is done, I'll finish weld the braces, and then we'll be on to replacing center body braces and rear footwells. And we'll do both at the same time, which should go a lot faster than the rear braces.

  And, I have a new side project. When I got this car, I really hoped it would be a family project. I've encouraged the girls to get involved as much as they want. 51Chick seems to be happier doing parts searching, and 51Kid seems to enjoy getting hands-on (and hands dirty).

  During the body brace work, 51Kid wandered into the garage one day and said she thought she was ready to learn to weld. Needless to say, work on the car stopped cold right there for that day!

  Within a half hour that first day, she was doing decent tacks with the MIG. The next weekend, she spent another half hour or so doing tacks on 16 gauge, and was consistently getting very good tacks.

  If you look close, you can see that there are welds from both the top and bottom of the workpiece. Notice the ones from the other side have excellent penetration.

  When we get back to the sheetmetal work on the inside of the car, I'm going to have her do some welds that will actually be putting the car back together. It's starting to become more of a true family project!