Econopoor's 67 8 door.

After selling Rip Van Arkie my 64 8 door window van I didn't think I'd ever own another 8 door.



Well, about two months after Rip bought it I found this 67 8 Door on ebay. Looked pretty good and the price was right so I bought it.



My wife and I loaded up and made the trip to Missouri and picked it up. We met up with Rip and Three Van Man in Kennett MO on the way back. I was taking some parts to Three Van Man for a project he was working on and they wanted to check out my newest Econo. Here is Rip Looking it over.



It was late by the time we got home. Drove straight there, loaded, drove straight back with only a lunch stop in Kennett. Not too bad. About a 14 hour trip. Got up the next day and cleaned it out.



Gave it a good look over and checked to see what all I bought. Turns out It was pretty good. It had all the pieces except for the missing engine that I already knew about. Came with a set of long arm rectangular mirrors, A new radiator, A new set of tires on nice painted Econo wheels, Back up light, and a lot of other stuff. The story goes that it belonged to the man's mother in law. She was a kinda hippy chick and owned it since the 60's. Made several trip to California in it over the years. Originally green, She had it painted a light yellow. After she passed, Her son in law took it to a local body shop to get it repainted as he wanted to fix the old truck up. Problem was, He paid the shop in advance. They messed around and didn't make much progress on it. After a lot of bugging by the owner they finally just tossed a sloppy paint job on it and called it done. This started a lot of litigation between the two. The van just sat while all of this went on. The engine was stolen in this time. After it was all done, the owner was so fed up with it all he just wanted out. That's where I come in. Now it's up to me the fix all the poor body work. I'll start with the nose. It had as much as an inch of bondo above the right headlight. Took a pretty good hit here



I shot some black paint on it to show the damage. Pretty poor body work.



They just hammered over the holes for the Ford letters on the nose so it would hold bondo.



When I was in Rhode Island getting my new interior, Fred let me have this nose section from a parts van he had. It was very rusty but the part I needed was good. I got it down to this.



I started cutting into the nose to put this patch in. I stripped the dash. Pulled the glass and doors. When I got into it I discovered the door jam has a lot of damage as well.



That was a kinda blurry picture. I wished I'd saved the door jam that was on this nose section. Oh well. I have a couple of other around here. Now I'm getting to the putting it back together part. The hit even bent the dash a little.



Well. Here's where I'm at. I got the seams cleaned up. Cut out the damaged floor sections. I need to find a good section of floor between the wheelwell and toeboard. I have a NOS toeboard but I might try and hammer out the one that came out of this truck. It's solid, just dented. If anybody has a floor section drop me a message. I can sure use it.



This shot shows the rust and heavy pitting on the floor section. I need it from the center of the doghouse to the footwell, from the toeboard to the seam under the seat.



This is why you better know who you are dealing with. The body shop that did this horrible job just put regular masking tape over the rust in the rear pan then filled one of the six recesses with bondo. That is why I went to Rhode Island for my interior in my red truck. You have to have somebody the loves our trucks to do the work. If they hate what they are working on this is what you get. Masking tape metal work!! I'm going to have to go over this whole truck. LOL.



I'll keep updating this as I go along. I have a long way to go and I'm no Carl Owens. I can't rebuild a truck by lunch like he can. LOL. Might take me a few years. Thanks for looking.

Duane in Tennessee

Yeh, but that Carl Owens ain't no body-man either!
I can sling a wrench, but bondo ain't my bag!

Good luck with the build, and here's to cooler weather to work on it in.

I remember this van from ebay, glad it found a good home

Man, I need to come see what progress looks like, been so long since I've made any I'm not sure what it looks like up close! Maybe we can both bring our 8doors to PJ one year, all nice a pretty!

Later,
Rip

Hey Duane,glad to see you pulled the 8 door out of the stable & workin on it.The ol' van is not in that bad of shape,just goin over and redoing shoddy work,sucks.Keep us posted bud.

Great work Duane, it will be one happy van when your finished with it!

Man, I sure hope the past owner took that shop for every penny!
That work is worse than most amateur jobs!

Good to see that someone who CAN fix it IS fixing it!

Pretty!! I don't know Steve, It would be a lot prettier with a white nose than a blue patch job. LOL.

Duane in Tennessee.

I cut this piece of door jamb from a 67 Supervan we cut up last year. It will provide the section I need to replace the smashed jamb. I think I'm going to replace the bent section of the dash with this corner. It would be hard to get it right again. I think it would be easier to finish the welds a few inchs in from the jamb. Got most of the seams cleaned today. Drilling spot welds bites. I'm making plans on where to splice it in. Should get it in this weekend.



Duane in Tennessee.

Wow, I`m impressed, major surgery!

econopoor wrote:I cut this piece of door jamb from a 67 Supervan we cut up last year. It will provide the section I need to replace the smashed jamb. I think I'm going to replace the bent section of the dash with this corner. It would be hard to get it right again. I think it would be easier to finish the welds a few inchs in from the jamb. Got most of the seams cleaned today. Drilling spot welds bites. I'm making plans on where to splice it in. Should get it in this weekend.



Duane in Tennessee.

Way above my talent level there, Duane. Looks like you might be needin' a longer trailer next Labor Day weekend!

Put in a real good day cutting and welding. Everything went well. I cut out the damaged jamb and prepped the patch piece. I decided to use as many of the factory lap joints as possible to preserve strength. I ended up with about a two inch butt weld in the a-post and that is under the nose skin so that helps. All others on the top joint are lap welds. Here's the original a-post prepped. The bend in the post is where the dash meets it. I didn't want a butt joint above the as it's a highly visable area and finishing it might have been too hard.



In this shot you can see where I folded the metal back over and ran some sheetmetal screws to hold everything in place. The bottom seam will have to be a lap joint. No way around this. It will be reinforced though.



Here you can see under the dash where I spot welded the lap joint back together. The a-post slid down into the new patch piece. Below this you can see the finished butt weld at the bottom patch. Going nice.



Dash is all welded up. It may have been easier to work on the end of the dash and fix all the dents. The dash pad covered most of it. I was worried about making everything smooth in such a tight place. I'm happy with the dash now. Simple butt welds to finish. No problem. I am using a steel glove box door instead of the padded door that came on this truck. The inner jamb is all in place and welded up. Next comes the outter skin.



I hung the door back on it just to be sure it all lined up like it should. I'm probably going to replace this door as the lower hinge is bad and the inner panel has several dents. I have better doors here. Fuzzie picture again. Sorry,



This is the brace that holds the inside edge of the right side turn siginal panel. It was pushed in about a inch and a half from the nose hit. This is 16 gauge metal and it doesn't like to move. About a half hour of beating and a little heat from my torch it finally agreed to go back where it belonged. This is galvanized metal so be careful and don't breath the fumes it produces when it's heated or welded. Toxic Zinc!! No good for you!!



I'm kinda on hold now. I want to POR 15 this metal before I cover it up. I'm going to cut into the lower part of the door jamb and do some work in there. This is a problem area on Econolines and I had a ton of crap fall out of this one. I may just drill some holes and spray some POR 15 inside here to stop any rust. I need to start small and see where I go from there. At least it needs a better drain hole. Whatever I do here I probably won't be able to do the other side as I don't have any repair to do there. We'll see. I have to start making plans on splicing the nose. I have a lot more prepping to do. That will help make that decission.

Thanks for looking.

Duane in Tennessee

Duane looking good

Lookin' good! I'll call you tomorrow!

Later,
Rip

That A pillar looks good Duane.You had a good day to work in as well,weather was great.Comin around great.

great job d you have mad skills brother

Workin around all those front sections drove me crazy... I couldnt cut the rust out or cut off dented panels without distorting the good ones... mine had a kiss on the chin. That lower set of welds below the floor is tricky! I still don't know for sure how I'm gonna get it all together and straight!

Damn Duane! When you jump in, you jump in with both feet! Kuddos for tackling such a project, most would have left that one for dead.

DEAD!! Gee Carl. It's not that bad. I guess with a stud gun and a couple of body hammers the nose could have been saved. A little creative bondo work would have helped. I went this route because I didn't want to repete what the last body shop did. When I get done it will not have any bondo filling dents. It will just be used to level out the body. Besides, I like doing this. It's fun!!

Duane in Tennessee.

econopoor wrote:DEAD!! Gee Carl. It's not that bad. . .

Duane in Tennessee.

Yeh, but most of us don't have those mad-skills when it comes to slicin' and dicin' on the body! Can't wait to see what happens next.

Great "how to" Duane..... gives me the inspiration to tackle anything!

Duane,

I have a project for you...

Sure thing Jim. I can start right after I put a new engine in my red truck, get my 67 pickup back on the road, finish this eight door, scrap out my a-100 pu, get something done on my 5 window pu. get my 57 F-350 tow truck running, finish building my barn, concrete my driveway, restore my 59 panel, fix my boat, and a few other things I'm sure I'm forgetting. Should be able to start right after Christmas 2056

Duane in Smartasville Tennessee.
Exit 83 on the interstate.

I got a little more work done on it this week. The initial cut on the nose was just a starting point. Just to gain access to the door jamb. I started getting closer to the actual seam. It's not the ideal place to splice the nose but I'm having to deal with the damage on the original nose and rust issues with my donor nose. While cleaning up the donor I had a couple of rust spots bust thru on the lower edge. I could have seamed it right down the middle but that's a terrible place to try and seam one. A large flat area would be impossible to keep from warping. I decided to cut thru the drivers headlight recess. That gives me some reference points to keep everything in line. I had to angle the bottom seam over to cover the rusted out areas of the donor. It would have been better to continue straight down instead of what I did but that's the way it goes. Workin with what I got. :-)

Anyway. I'm here today to talk about seam separating. I thought some of you have never done any spot weld removing so here it goes.



We'll start by marking the close cut on the panel I'm removing. I set the patch in place and scribed the cut. The nose wasn't in the final position but it was within a 1/4" This is good. I wanted this next cut to be a little long as I will do the final trim latter.



This is the windshield lip. Hard to see the spot welds with all the paint on it.



Hit it with a Scotch Brite wheel and the spot welds stick out.



This is a Scotch Brite wheel mounted in my drill. Takes the paint off but leaves the metal alone.



Now I hit the welds with my Spot Weld Cutter. This is a pretty nice tool to have. It cuts thru the outter metal and not the inner. It has an anvil that goes behind the weld and uses air pressure to force the cutter into the weld. You can use a regular drill with a spotweld cutter but it's a lot harder to do. A lot cheaper too! The air cutter is pretty expensive but it makes quick work of this job.



Here's a shot of the cutter.



This is a spot weld when it's cut thru. You can see the inner metal showing. There will be a little discoloration in the metal when the bit goes thru the top layer. That's when you know to stop.



This is another one of my favorite tools. This is a seam splitter. It's used to seperate the two layers of metal.



You insert it between the metal and tap thru the welds with a hammer. They make a pneumatic version but I like the manual version. Easier to control. Maybe if I was in a shop putting panels on for a living I would have one. Not for what I do. Slow and sure.



For the floor welds I just drill them with a regular drill and bit. Think I used a 3/8ths on this. You need the holes so you can plug weld the floor back together.



Run around the flanges with your hammer and dollie and straighten out the metal. Hit them with a 60 grit sanding disc to clean up the remains of the spot welds.



Caption this picture.

Air Conditioning!! I don't need no stinkin Air Conditioning.

This outta solve my overheatin problem.




I put the patch on for a progress check. Still need to trim for the final fit. The patch still needs to go another 1/4 inch to the drivers side. Getting close. It will be on and off several more times before it's time to weld it in. Takes a while to get it just right. Get it wrong here and you will have to live with it forever. Stuck a grill in to see were I'm at. Happy so far.

I hope I was able to share some useful information about spot welds. I still have a long way to go. Making progress though.

Duane in Tennessee.

Impressive Duane! Thanks for the workshop on spot weld removal. Almost like being there!

I can't imagine me ever taking on a project like that. Kuddos my friend, kuddos!