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1979 Holden 1 Tonner Ute resto
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26-04-2021 7:32am#1Welcome to a new thread about working on another rusty old piece of ****e from me… the difference this time is that I don’t own this particular rusty old girl, this is my mates 1979 Holden HX 1 tonner Ute….
Now for me I prefer the look of the more traditional Ute style which has the complete rear section as part of the body like below (the one in this pic belongs to my painter) but I do like most if not all old cars so I think she’s cool
Now my mate, lets call him Bryan… because that’s his name bought this about 2 years ago now I guess & he & I have been doing little jobs on it ever since but it does need fair bit of work to get her to what he wants ultimately. He went for this 1 ton design as he does woodwork for a hobby & the large flat tray means that he can have a cool old classic yet use it as a practical workhorse if & when he needs too. The people he brought the car off claim to be “racers” & even have a family named racing business sticker on the ute… I assume it’s greyhound racing as they knew **** all about cars as far as I can tell…. But more on that the further we get into this thread as we fix stuff.
He made the mistake of telling me about some structural rust that he found when he was replacing the passenger side seat belt with a new unit, the inner lower section of the B pilar where the cab side meets the floor had some bad rust… so I wanted to fix that for him as I didn’t like the idea of where that rust was it’s not just unsightly body skin stuff but actual structural potentially… so he brought the ute over & gave me permission to attack it with a grinder & make a patch..
This was going to be very awkward to get too with the car fully assembled but not impossible… I tried working on it with just the passenger seat out but in the end I decided to pull the door off as there was some rust bubbling thru just above the top door hinge also & I figured I’d fix that too
I do like the way you can use the tray back to store parts as you go… this job started as all rust repair jobs do with some CAD work, so I cut out the cardboard to get the right shape that I needed & then went about turning that cardboard aided designed patch into steel.. I went with the harder to work with 1.6mm plate steel as this the superstructure of the car & not just the thin outer panel skin.
Coated it in weld thru primer & also drilled some holes to allow me to plug weld it to the good strong sections of the superstructure
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Test fitted & it goes in nicely…
Clamped it in & set about welding it in
Then primed it..
Now that was a very simple job & in theory that should have been it… but I’d noticed a bobble of rust along the top of the sill panel… so I quickly phoned Bryan & asked for permission to grind that back & have a look underneath, since we all know that rust is like an iceberg, if you can see the tiny bubble on the surface then it’s probably proper ****ed underneath… in this case that’s sadly exactly what it was…
I rang him back & asked if I could grind a bit more paint & what was now clearly bog off to see how far this went… he mumbled something questioning the validity of my parents’ marriage but told me to go ahead…. it didn’t get any better
Now the “racers” he’d bought it seemed like nice people & they claimed to have “restored” this car… but I found that this rust hole had been packed with fiberglass & I mean DRY fiberglass tape… they didn’t even try & make it hard, just packed it in & bogged over it
It looked like the sill beneath was in a bad way too.. so I rang him back & asked could I cut this section out & repair it… he agreed but I could tell in his voice he was beginning to regret his life decisions of letting me neat the car & he suggested that I should **** off & stop ringing him & told me to just do whatever I would do if it was mine
Seeing how bad the top of the sill looks here & knowing I had a free hand here I quickly cut that out too… this allowed me to inspect the inside of the sill which was actually in great shape
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I was also able to trim up the back side of my previous repair & make sure that was good & solid… I cleaned out the sill & coated it in a rust treatment & then set about making a patch panel… again went with 1.6mm plate for this bit too
I did this in two stages, I made up a section to go right in the back to fully box in the previous repair, it was uber awkward to get into it to weld so it’s not the neatest job & I can’t linish back the welds but it’ll never been seen & its strong & safe so that’s all that matter really
Making the sill top plate was really simple as it was just two bends..
I trimmed all the rusted bits off the corner section I’d cut off & welded the good clean piece back in… sadly I’m just not good enough to have made this whole complex section in one piece
Then I set about making the patches to replace the missing metal… I got to use my new uber long clamp for the first time, I now own a larger more varied array of clamps that all but the largest of German BDSM clubs I reckon
Don’t let how simple this little curved section is fool you… it curved in two different directions & was blood hard to get right… but luckily I had the chrome sill trim to use as a guide to be sure I got the profile right
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Then it was the much simpler straight flat front piece… I have to admit I sat back with a fresh cup of tea at this point & I was pretty bloody pleased with myself, it almost looks like I knew what I was doing… well if you squint anyway
I love how good shiny metal looks but sadly you have to paint it… so I did
Now as I have a horrible affliction that means I can’t leave old cars alone I went around to the drivers side & pulled the chrome trim off….
Hmmmm….. that’s not looking good, but I’m sure it’ll get better once I’ve hit it with the grinder…
Bugger… looks like the exact same work needs to be done on this side too… Now the engine needs work on this Ute as it’s got more rust issues on other sections of the body so I set about a plan to convince Bryan that doing little jobs every few months on this car is not the right way forward & I used all my fancy sales pitch training to get him to agree to let me pull this thing apart & fix all the body work for him… we’ll pull the motor too & get my engine builder to rebuild that to a spec that Bryan chooses… so once I have the engine back in the GTO & I have some space back I’ll get Bryan & his son over & we’ll strip the Ute down…. & of course I’ll update this thread as we go….0 -
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Right… so we put in a long day on Sunday & made some really good headway with the Ute.. Bryan was over with his almost 13yro son who’s taken a massive interest in this project & who worked really hard with us to start the strip down… little does he know that he may well be on the road to future financial ruin now if he takes up cars as a serious hobby…
Usual stuff, drain the coolant whilst spilling just enough in different spots under the car so that you get to lay in small pools of it at different times during the day as you’re undoing stubborn bolts etc.. then we pulled the bonnet & the bonnet hinges off to give us more room to go disconnecting all the front end wiring & anything connecting the engine to the car
Unlike with my projects I insisted that we label everything this time, every wire is labelled as to where it lives & all the bolts are put into small containers & marked etc… for my builds I had just relied on photos & now a few years later this method of using my memory backed up by photos has failed.. so we are doing this one properly, once we had the rad out I decided that we would look to pull the whole front clip off the Ute
Being under the GM umbrella the old Holdens of the day are also designed that you can unbolt the front guard (or wing or fender, depending on where you live) along with the inner guard to give you clear access to the side of the engine… you can also unbolt the whole front support panel.. this means that an engine & gearbox can be lifted only a few inches & then just pulled out the front… it makes removal & refit of the engine & box as a unit real easy… so off with the guard
We’ve left the inner guard bolted to it for now
Not having ever stripped down one of these before & not owning a workshop manual & having our hands too filthy to be bothered googling where all the bolts are we spend some time trying to find all the nuts & bolts.. top tip they hide 4 on the front guard, two you get to from inside the car & two as it bolts to the front… we got lucky in that they all came out in the end, I did fear some rusty fights that would end in a sheared bolt but that never happened… next off was the bumper & then whole front panel
The parts pile on the back of the Ute was growing..
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Figured we didn’t need to take the other wing off just to get the engine & transmission out so I lay in strategically placed pools of coolant & trans fluid & undid the tailshaft & the trans mounts & speed/shifter cable & then we hooked the engine up to the crane & played the game of testing the tensile strength of what ever bits you’ve overlooked & forgotten to undo..
Turns out we hadn’t missed anything.. easiest engine removal ever with the front clip off, definitely doing this when I start the Camaro resto
Now just need to undo everything that’s bolted to that drivers side guard & unbolt that
Right well that’s all the hanging panels off then… the front half of the chassis looks really good, actually the front panels look good too (won’t know for sure till I take the paint off) I think that it’s really just the cab itself that in a bad way with rust
Last job was to separate the engine & trans
The trans looks like it’s had some work, I think that’s an aftermarket or at least very new bellhousing on it & the torque converter is definitely not stock.. I’ll pull it off to see if there are any markings on it that might explain what stall it is etc..
The engine itself is just a mass of oil leaks, I don’t think that there is a single seal on it that isn’t leaking…
But it’s on the stand now, so it’ll get drained of what little oil is left in it & then we’ll strip it down to see what needs doing to it depending on what Bryans HP/reliability goals are
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Because I have multiple projects on the go… I needed to play muscle car tetris again, so I’ve parked the Ute & it’s parts in the corner now as it will probably be a few weeks before we get back into it…
The next steps will be to completely strip out the interior & tear down the engine…-1 -
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A little more progress has been made on the Ute project now… we’ve started pulling the engine down to see how good/bad it is & to see what needs to be redone. Now of course what needs to be redone will be determined by Bryans performance goals & his budget… so we pulled the heads off
The heads look fine.. lots of carbon buildup to be cleaned up clearly & if they are to be reused then they will have hardened valve seats cut in to allow for running on unleaded fuel without the need for any lead additives to protect the valve seats. It’s a little hard to tell from the darkness of the pic below but the cam lobes have more wear on them that I expected to see, but we believe they drag raced this Ute so I expect that the wearing is do to heavy loading & poor oiling… the oil galleries in the block are not great, they have a lot of crud built up in them & they would have been impacting oil flow for sure
Took one of the crank caps off to check the bearing shells & removed a piston too for the same reason & you can see that the bearing shells are burnt & have some scoring.. luckily the crank is fine & will come up as good as new with a light linish.
With the piston out we could look at the bore & it’s not great but not terrible, there is some pitting & some minor scoring.. depending on how the others look we might get away with just a rehone.. but I suspect that it will need a slight overbore (it’s a virgin bore, so heaps of room to go oversize)
Now where the ****up fairy may well have visited is in how the heads had been last put on.. some of the head bolts came out easy & some needed my big braker bar as even my big ugga-dugga gun wouldn’t break them loose, the torques were all over the place… now the Holden block has a design feature I don’t like & that’s that two of the head bolts on each side are cast into tiny buttresses that protrude into the intake space… seen here between the bulges that the pushrods run thru
Well once we had the heads off we could see that the side of one of these buttresses has sheered off… this is clearly not a good outcome
Now we do have the broken piece too
BUT welding cast iron is not a simple task… also I’m not sure that we can weld/repair it & then have it drilled & tapped so that it can take the torque retaining force required for a head bolt. My engine builder should be here on the weekend to start the GTO so I’ll ask his advice before reaching out to my local machine shop.. but it’s possible that this tiny fractured piece of metal may mean that this block is now a wine rack or a coffee table going forward…0 -
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No, that’s not an option.. since this is a buttresses or a web casting section. If you look at this section side on you can see where it angles back sharply just below the break point.
If you look at where the screwdriver blade is placed here you couldn’t drill any lower than that or the drill bit would drill out into fresh air, the tap that would have been used here would have bottomed out at that point.. so we can’t drill it any deeper, it’s weld it up & re-tap or nothing I think.
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Right this old girl has been sitting for a while now, so time to get back into giving her some love... first up strip out the interior, so seats & center console need to come out
Then pull the carpet & underlay out... Fingers crossed that what we find under here it good as there is some mold in here on the underlay from what I assume was a heater core leak.
A bit of surface rust, but I'm very happy with how it looks, you can see above that the front section of the floor has already been replaced, so I guess it rusted out before.
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Removed the rear window from the Ute today, it had been glued in at the corners... you can see why, it obviously you can see how it was leaking in those corners
There is a lot rust on the flat edge too that will need to be fixed up before the glass goes back in
There is also some bad rust in the rear panel section, not sure why it's so bad in only one spot... but just glad it's only one spot I guess
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Next job was to remove the dash, this is a job I normally hate on old cars as things tend to be brittle & it's so easy to break something that's made of pure unobtainium.. but this all came out pretty easy I guess
First step, drop the lower panel
Then the gauge surround
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The front window will have to come out too... so first up the trim has to come off, the side vertical trim is just held on by screws
The top & bottom strips are held on with the usual clips that all Muscle cars at least seem to use
But with the correct tool it's easy to get them off with no damage
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There has been a rust bubble on the cowl that's been annoying me forever, so I quickly got ahead of myself & ground it back to see what was under it... you know it's going to be good when you have this much bog to grind thru...
This is going to be fun
There is no metal under the window... it's all bog... I just wonder how bad it'll be when I have the glass out & I can get right in there with the grinder
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Next up the heater needs to come out... on the XB this lived inside the car under the dash & came out in one piece, but Holden did it differently. First you unbolt the front section off
Then you go inside & unbolt the back half
Right so that's the heater & all the vents out
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Ok... so it's a bare shell now except for the front windshield, I need to find my screen removal tool & get that out.... but now I can crack into the old girl with the grinder & find out just how bad things are.... fingers crossed I've already found the worst...
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Speaking of rust... lets get her ready for stripping... so out with the engine & trans again. If I had a dollar for every time I'd pulled this engine in or out I'd have.... well $3 actually, so not much of a retirement plan..
We're into spring finally here & the weather is looking up so I've decided to do the paint (read bog) removal outdoors
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Right so we know that the drivers side of the upper cowl is bad where it joins to the window channel...
Lets take bets on how good the passenger side is.... hmmmm 6-7mm of bog you say, well that can only be hiding pristine metal I'm sure
WTAF! some muppets just shouldn't be let near a car... I mean they just bogged in the holes, no advanced repair techniques here like balled up paper, fiberglass or chicken wire... nope just pure Bogatti & if you're going to cover it in that much bog why not weld in some new metal... I mean it's not like you even have to get the shape close if you're going to sculpt the fecking body line out of bog afterwards. Who in their right minds does this & then drives the car at speed.... sorry.. rant over
Found out why the drivers side door sagged when opened... on a positive note the door hinge is probably fine & doesn't need to be rebuilt... in other unrelated news, the B-pillar is cracked when the support plate for the hinge bolts up. I have seen this on other Utes of this era so I guess its a common weak spot
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Time to play a game... a game I like to call rust roulette or bog bingo maybe, you choose. The idea is that I walk around the car & look at areas that I'm convinced will be bogged over rust under the paint... then I grind the paint & presumably bog to see just how bad it is... I'd already repaired the Passenger side lower B pillar & we know that the drivers side lower B pillar is just as bad... but lets play....
Drivers side lower A pillar.. yep bog & rust...
Passenger side lower A pillar... nope, all good actually
Passenger side sill panel
Drivers side sill panel
Now for the really fun bit... passenger side roof
Drivers side roof
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Got the rest of the cab stripped back now..
This uncovered a new horror previous repair to the front of the sill
Again... I'm not trying to claim that I'm any good at this stuff, I mean I'm not metal finishing panels... anything I work on will still need .5mm-1mm of bog skimmed over it.. but WTAF... these guys saw this hole & filled it with silicone that then then smoothed out & bogged over that...
The people who sold this Ute claimed it had been lovingly restored.... well may a hive of flesh eating termites infest their rectums
The cowl is pretty good other that the two edges I showed above
The roof itself (again other that the horrors shown above) is ok
Someone has cut out the small hole that the roof aerial would have had & welded in a patch of steel... I'm assuming not the previous owners as they'd have used paper & bog I'm sure
Next steps will be to fire up the A-Team montage music & break out the grinder with a cutting disk this time & cut all the cancer out of the old girl
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Took to the Ute today with the grinder & the plasma cutter to remove the first sections of rust I plan on attacking... the drivers side lower B pillar, this will be a copy of the repair I did on the passenger side earlier on in this thread...
The sill top & the inside sections will again need to be worked too
Then I moved onto the passenger side roof rust... cut that out & now we can see that the superstructure behind is rotten too... so that gets cut out too... I'll have to replace that first with some thicker 1.6mm plate I have before I replace the section of roof skin with 1.2
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Then went to the drivers side roof rust... cut that out, same issue with the superstructure but this time the cut to fix the roof skin rust isn't big enough to get to the issues behind so it needed to be enlarged
Once I have the repairs done on these bits then my plan is to inside the cab & unpick & remove this central panel that will give me access to the rest of that superstructure to see if it needs any attention & means I don't need to cut anymore holes in the roof as no one wants that...
This is going to be an exercise on metal origami as it's rather complex in how the different layers join up... once the superstructure is done then the metal that would have come up from the Qtr panel needs to be made & that attaches to the superstructure & then the new roof skin needs to be made to come down over that repair piece that comes up... then the drip rail needs to be reattached to the roof skin... this will be tricky I'm sure... to try & explain the overlaps better see the pics below, I'll aim for slightly better tolerances on the finished article
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Right well cutting out rust is fun but at some point you have to start putting new steel in... or just fill the hole with a kilo of bog, either/or really. I had some 3.5mm plate laying about so I patched the inner structure with that, not fussed with how this bit looks for obvious reasons... it should never be seen again.
I forgot to take pics of the shaping process & some of the tools I use, but I'll be doing the passenger side tomorrow so I'll capture that then... started roughing in the shape of the patch
Then started slowly tacking it in.... you have to be super careful with welding roofs, it's very very easy to warp them from putting too much heat in.
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Then very slowly work your way around finishing all the welding
This isn't perfect, but it's pretty close... would only need less that .5mm of bog.... or in my case I to lead wipe the join between the Qtr & the roof anyway so I'll lead over the whole patch to make it seamless. I haven't finish the bottom join where it meets the drip rail, I leave that till I have the cab off the chassis & I can turn it over so it's at a more natural angle to work with.
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Worked on the passenger side roof repair today, I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to tie the roof rail gutters back in again just yet... they are a complex layering of metal, I've opted to cut them off for now & I'll refit them when I have the cab off the chassis & I can have it on it's side simply because it's easier to work & weld when it's not above your head.
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Repaired the inner structure first
Then I had to shape up the roof skin patch, to do this I used my sand bag these are awesome for shaping metal.. this is my small one, I have a larger one too. I then have these rounding dollies that I use to put a curve into the metal... I start by pounding the curve I want into the sand bag & then place the flat metal onto it & use the dolly to hammer the metal down into the shape in the sand. Then when I have the start of the shape I put the dolly the vice & sharpen the curve up.
I think that that looks pretty good... I'll metal finish it with some lead after I've figured out the drip rails.. but for now I'm happy with that.
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Pulled the windscreen out & did a little more investigation on the cowl rust issue... spoiler alert... it's not great
Right, lets see what's behind cowl door number 1
At the risk of overquoting Chernobyl not great, not terrible
There are a few overlapping panels here so I'll have to work out in what order to start building up the new metal to get the max amount of strength without having to remove the whole cowl
Right... I've probably cut enough of the old metal out, time to start putting some new metal in... the lower drivers side B pillar has been cleaned up, rust treated & primed... now to make some repair sections up & rebuild this area.
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Got the outer skin of the B pillar sorted today... this took a few hours to get the shape close, I've used as much of original section that I could to help get the guide for the shape..
The chrome trim fits, so I know I'm close to the right shape... I'll metal finish it with lead when I get to that stage.
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I've cut the top of the cowl off the passenger side, this piece is rusted & needs replacing but I was confident that it was fine under there
Turns out I was right... it's perfect, means I can use it as a good reference for repairing the other side too
Speaking of the other side.. time to cut out all the rust bits
Also need to remove the hinge support plate that needs repairing
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Now to start stitching it all back together... first step is to rust treat & prime inside, you may have noticed in the pic above that Holden never painted this area from the factory... no wonder it rusted.
Then start welding metal back in
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For a moment today I was thinking of just making a single patch piece for the plenum rather that the two that Holden had done as you'll never see it again.... but I couldn't bring myself to do it, this old girl has had some shite repairs thrust on her in the past, least I can do is try & get it less half arsed.. so using the other side as the reference the fist section went in.
Then trimmed out the section of the window frame/dash that is too far gone to weld to...
I started making up the next repair section to go in this tonight but it was getting late so I'll finish it off & weld it in tomorrow...
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Finished up the plenum repair.. now I'm just still waiting on the cowl rust repair panels..
I want to keep the project moving so it's time to pull the cab off the chassis so I can work on the floor & the inner sills... I'm sure this supposed to be a multi person job but I don't have people.. so my plan was to use my engine hoist & the leveller bolted to the floor using the seat mounting bolts
Even with the leveller the cab was very front heavy, but it worked & I was able to get enough height to get the cab off in one piece with no damage.. so that's a win
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