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82L Bodywork & Slow Build

84K views 170 replies 55 participants last post by  SupraFiend 
#1 ·
So far I've owed 7 MKII's, currently possess 4. It started out as co-incidence, but now an on purpose pattern; I like 82's. The first L-type I owed is the focus of this thread.
I don't have many previous pictures to make the back story interesting, but here goes:

I acquired the car from another member in about 2004, I forget the exact date. It got driven home, sat in my underground parking for a couple years, then ended up getting transfered out to a friends farm for another couple years.


When talking to Seamus, we looked over both of my L's, and decided this was a better choice for getting restored.
So now the car is at Seamus place, mostly stripped and washed, and Seamus is starting on analysis and work. He should have pictures and updates as it progresses.

I have most of the suspension bits, brakes, and maybe the engine, but we'll get to that once the car is ready for it.

To end, a random shot of my other L:
 
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#6 ·
Work has begun on this car, you could say I've really started to tear into it :)

I've been a little lazy with my picture posting this last half a year and thus I'm little behind. I'm preparing a thread for the last car I restored right now but I will have my first update for this L posted next week. This thread is not going to be for the weak of heart, start preparing yourself now. Its gonna get ugly :D
 
#9 · (Edited)
It begins...

2017 EDIT: Photobucket has decided to disable all 3rd party image linking unless you pay an outrageous annual fee. I don't have the time to move all of my images to another program (as many on this board don't). However there is a Chrome extension that will get all images working inline again for you. Please use it, works like a charm...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg



Ok, time to get the ball rolling here. If you’ve seen my other restorations you might have some idea as to what to expect (see DeanFuns here, and my 86 SDRs here). But then again, this one is a totaly different ball game.

Unfortunately I didn’t get an opportunity to take some good before pics before this car got stripped down. Here’s a couple from when Dean (DeanFun aka Slip) owned this car. Are any of you noticing a trend here with cars I restore? Hmmmm….





Sadly this is the best before shot I have of this car. It sat in front of my shop for some time including during the 2010 PacNW Nationals Party…


From Left to Right, that’s Cam’s 82L, Dean’s mostly restored 85Ptype (hmmm its front end looks a little heavier in that pic for some reason…), my ol’ faithful 85 DD Stepchild (yes, Dean has owned this car too) and Terry’s 82 PType now with 607,000kms (I own it but it will always be referred to as Terry’s 82) which will be back on the road in about a week.

Alright, lets get this sucker stripped down and in the shop…

This is what happens when you pressure wash cars at night in sub zero tempertures. My neighbhors love me :)





Well, it doesn’t look too bad right? Let’s look a little closer and see what we’re really up against…

uh oh






Yeah those wells are screwed.




This car has been repainted, this rust spot was here back then even.


Why do they always rust around this one impact strip hole? Bizarre.



I hate it when they rust here, I haven’t had to fix one of these spots yet.







That lower valence is toast.


From what we’ve seen so far that spare tire well isn’t actually that bad lol.

Lets check out the underside…







This is why you pull the diff and subframes out.



Just once it would be nice to have a car without squashed rocker edges from some jackass jacking the car one a hoist or floor jack at the spare tire jack points.


This is actually just from a leaky clutch slave and is just light surface corrosion so far.



This is not. This is what happens when your battery starts puking acid. Plastic battery trays are good.


This means the windshield is coming out. It’s a shame to remove it, its original and in perfect shape.



Both doors are screwed. I’ve yet to fix a set of doors like this, and I probably won’t be anytime soon as we’ve found some replacements.



The original hatch was toast of course, this is the best from Cam’s collection of Supras. Totally fixable.

Ok, we know. Really, we know. This car is too far gone. Considering we’re just 15 minutes north of Washington State, we really should be starting with a better car. In fact if I was reading this thread, I’d be the first one to point that out. But life isn’t always that simple. First off Cam has a field full of early Celica Supras, 3 of them being Ls even. We picked this one from the bunch because it was the best, and I stand by that (ok, that doesn’t say much about the other cars lol). From what we saw from the outside (pre stripped) it didn’t look too bad (it didn’t help it was sitting in an overgrown field of thorny vines). Fast forward several months, many weekends of work put in to strip it down to this level (motor was pulled too) and it’s a little late in the game to be switching chassis. That and Cam really likes this particular car. Its extremely early production, 3902 to be exact for the vin. It's very hard to find any Ls these days never mind a hard top one. Its also straight as an arrow, no signs of accidents, reasonable mileage, and the front end is fairly clean. That and there’s some financial elements that make it better to stick with this car. But at the end of the day, Cam likes this one, is aware of the time its going to take to fix it and there’s nothing on it I can’t make perfect, so onward ho!

As for what’s going to be done beyond rust repair and paint, well I’ll let Cam talk about that since he’s seriously underplayed the collection of parts he’s accumulated to stuff in this thing when the body is done. Let’s just say there will be a few improvements made on my end.

I will keep a current Table of Contents going at the bottom of this post for each chapter as I post them. This car is going to transform before your eyes in the next few months. Stay tuned, this one is gonna get crazy!

Table of Contents
LS Inner Quater and Hatch Floor Pan Part 1
LS Quarter Removal
LS Quarter Wheel Well Repair Pt1 & Hatch Well Corner
LS Quarter Wheel Well Repair Pt2
Donor Metal Harvesting
LS Quater Skin Repair
Floor Bracing & Windshield Cowl Area Disassembly
Rocker Removal & Footwell Repair
Rear LS Rocker, Floorpan & Subframe Rail Repair
Rocker Skin Repair and Shaving
MA6X Celica Supra Chassis Strength Analysis
Chassis Reinforcement Pt 1: Giving the Mk2 a Backbone
Chassis Reinforcement Pt 2: Rear Quarters
Rocker and Quarter Skin Installation
Door Hinge\Lower Cowl Area & A Pillar Repair & Reinforcement
Hatch Hinge Mount Panel
Rear Floorpan Repair and Reinforcement
Lower Rad Support Repair and Front End Reinforcement
Final Build Update
 
#12 ·
Found another spot that will have to be fixed.

Looking up in the PS fender I noticed this...


If you look in the engine bay on the firewall there is a hint that a problem could be there...

The cracked sealer may be a side effect or the cause of this spot. The fenders definitly had to come off now and good thing...


The cowl rust goes a little deeper then I expected.

Next up, the first update.
 
#13 ·
LS Inner Quater and Hatch Floor Pan Part 1

Ok, time to start. I've decided to start from the back and work my way forward on this car.

Obviously the lower rear valance has to come off, but by the looks of the corrosion around it the upper one has to too...




There’s obviously rust under the whole thing between all the layers where the 3 panels come together. I removed the latch plate first as there was rust under that as well.


Then the upper valance...

Plenty of rust between the panels as was obvious.


The lower cowl is a write off. I took the gas tank rear mounts with it and may replace them as well if I get a new lower valence from a donor.

Now we can look a little deeper...


The next dilemma. This side floor panel needs to be replaced, at least partially.

But rust always spreads between panels where they overlap and the spare tire floorpan sits on top of this panel (and its rusty twin on the other side). Of more concern is what I could see in and on the rails…





That seals it, the spare floor pan has to come out.


That’s a lot a spot welds to drill out.




Yeah, that RS rail is really bad, I will replace it instead of fix it if I can.

Next up the side floor panel comes out.



I only needed to replace a piece of it so template it now.


Now nip out the rotted out section of the rear inner quarter. I’m going to leave the top edge of it as a guide but also it’s a hard section to reproduce as it has a little lip on the top as well as the bend.


So I’m going to repair\replace the side floor panel and the rear inner quarter before I go any deeper. Reason being there’s a lot more I have to take apart on this side of the car and I want something there to keep the enter side of the car aligned with the rail properly. So time to make another template and fabricate this panel…




Before I can weld it on I need to clean up the LS rear rail. The plate that the bumper bolts too is spot welded in and it looked like the rust on the end of the rail was in between the two pieces, so it comes out now.

PITA. My spot weld bits don’t like going through steel that thick. I ended up using a drill, chisel and mini zip disk to get it out, not fun.

Now we prepare all the bits that are going back in. Anything I reuse gets the rust ground off, sand blasted, POR15 Metal Prepped (its basically hydrochloric acid, it eats light rust out of steel) and weld thru primer on the side that will be enclosed.



Now we put the rail back together and insure it won’t rust again. POR15 on the bottom, seam sealer around the edges of the separate pieces in the rail and another couple coats of weld thru paint\primer.




In goes the inner quarter panel though its only attached at the top as everything around it is rotten, we’ll weld the other sides together later when the rest is fixed.


And now the floor pan piece.


Normally I would finish off a repair post with pics of the sealer applied but there is so much welding to be done in this area yet I’ll leave it till later so I don’t have to redo any of it.

And that’s the first section repaired. I ended up removing that middle rail too so I could sand blast it and clean up the metal between it and the cross brace it attaches to.



That rear end is getting a little light, but not light enough yet :D Stay tuned for more carnage.
 
#14 ·
Wow...mad skills! Will you have to worry about the car being 'in line' and drive straight when you disassemble like this? I had a Mazda MX-3 GS that was hit in the rear end and when they did this same repair, they put it on a rack with laser alignment to make sure it would go straight down the highway. Will you need to worry about such things?

Can't wait for another update...great stuff.

Chadrick
 
#15 ·
Nope not an issue here, I'm not touching the rails between the subframes. This car is straight to start with so I'm not expecting any alignment issues. I'm just taking precautions to make sure the panels all go back on straight. I'm mostly reusing the external ones so its very easy to realign them perfectly as I just have to line up the drilled out spot weld holes.
 
#19 ·
I have plans for this for my car when I eventually take a pass at it, but not subframe connectors. I don't bandaid things, I rebuild them the way they should have been built in the first place. I've been discussing some of my ideas with Cam and he's considering what he wants done (will add time to the build).

Just replacing all of the rotted out panels makes a huge difference obviously, but when you put a car back together with mig welds instead of spot welds and with so many patches and extra welds put in certain places it will stiffen things up quite a bit too.
 
#20 ·
LS Quarter Removal

Time for another update. With the LS rear quarter of the car anchored properly, its time to dig deeper again. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to do this as it’s a lot of work, but the symptoms made it pretty clear what had to be done next…





That spot on the C Pillar above looks like this from inside…





The combination of all these spots, and particularly the C pillar rust and the rust around the wheel arch, all mean the quarter on this side has to come off. Now I’ve known for a long time that the roof panel and the quarters were joined at the top of the C pillar as you can see the seam from the inside of the car. However I assumed they were spot welded together under a layer of filler but Toyota had a more graceful solution…



The panels are brazed together, no filler. I was hoping to be able to remove the entire panel complete with no cuts but that isn’t really an option. It turns out the B Pillar is part of the quarter and extends into the roof, and more surprising, the C pillar doesn’t end at the brazed seam, it also extends into the roof and is connected to the B pillar. You would have to remove the roof to remove a quarter panel whole (drilling out the spot welds only). I also didn’t want to weld anywhere where I couldn’t access the inside to clean it up and seal it after reinstalling, so I cut just below the B pillar….



I choose this line as there is a reinforcement plate welded to the quarter under the B pillar that I wanted to cut around. Alright, off it comes…




Here’s that plate…





Apparently there was a dent repaired at some point. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an insurance claim for this damage and the old owner worked a deal with the shop to get the whole car repainted. The car was already pretty rusty at the time as I’ve found several old repairs. The back corners of the rockers were actually solid bondo with a bit of fiberglass…




This unfortunately is pretty standard practice for the average bodyshop. You get what you pay for, if the shop quotes you less then 5grand for paint and rust repair you can expect this sort of work.

Now we can take a peek at what’s hiding underneath…







Next Update will be up in a day.
 
#22 ·
LS Wheel Well Repair Pt1 & Hatch Well Corner

Time to finish with the back left corner of the car. This spot is now ready to be fixed…



And at the same time I’m tackling the bottom corner of the wheel well so I can add some more rigidity to the back corner of the car before I remove more big sections…





With the rusted sections cut out I can make my templates…


Now these patch panels are going to benefit from a new tool I just picked up…


It’s called a Punch\Flanger and its very handy for this kind of work. It lets me bend flanges the thickness of the sheet metal I work in very quickly instead of having to weld on a strip of steel onto the back of my patch panels. You never want to have to do butt welds on steel this thin. The punch just saves time drilling holes for the edges that would have been spot welded from the factory. Here’s the two replacement panels all ready to go on. You can see the punched holes and flanges on them…


I also employed a few old school panel beating tricks to form these parts. I won’t pretend to be a pro at panel forming but the guy in this thread certainly is...

http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=usetharch&action=display&thread=70135

I’ve learned so much from this thread, its gold! Great reading if you want to learn how to replicate factory sheet metal. Luckily most of the bits on the mk2 that rust out aren’t that complicated but this guys methods really help with what we need.


Ok, a quick test fit with the old rear valance before finishing welding in the new piece confirms everything is lining up right, just need to keep those spot welds centered.




The hatch section will get a little filler at the bodywork stage and the other piece will be covered by undercoating so the finishing doesn’t have to be perfect.

Next up, more carnage!
 
#23 · (Edited)
LS Quarter Wheel Well Repair Pt2

Next up on this corner of the car is the Left Side quarter wheel well. The inner half of it along with the upper spring perch were pretty rusty, so out they came...



You can see the rust that was under the spring mount.



Now I can fix the remaining rust on this corner. Not all of it is exposed completly yet...




All ground off and coated in POR15 Metal Prep...


The corner of the rocker end was removed for better access to the rocker and to get at the rust on its backside. I had to replace a section of it...


I can't weld it back in till the new inner well half is installed.

A few shots with all the rust removed and the smaller stuff rewelded back on...




I have some plans for reinforcement that will fill in the remaining holes on the outer well half, more to come on that soon.

Oh and I got a kick out of this. Cam has a bit of a sweet tooth so its kind of ironic that I found this on his car. The bodyshop that did the paint job used this for a cardboard template to mold their bondo over on the RS rocker quarter lol...
 
#24 ·
Suscribed! Starting work on my 85 soon. Have most of the same rusty bits...and some that you have that are rusted/ing don't exist anymore on my car **Namely back half of rockers, and lower half of quarters. They're currently dispersed throughout the driveway.**

Keep up the awesome work!
 
#27 ·
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the comments. It takes alot of time to put these posts together and sometimes it doesn't seem like that many here are terriably interested in them. I'm trying to cut down how many pics I post per update and how much time and info I put into each one but if people are actually finding this useful I'll try not to cut them back too far.
 
#28 ·
Are you crazy?? This stuff is gold! I throughly enjoy reading and seeing our cars in this condition, some the things you take apart and touch I didn't even know you could! The only real scary things about your threads are the places you find rust! Makes me cringe at the thought at what must be lying in wait......yikes!
 
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