Re: Is it just me, or is this happening to a lot of vans lat
Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2011 8:59 am
That is SHARP! It'll be good for another 24 years at least!
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Very slowly.tbhager94 wrote:hows the re assembly coming along??
James:6spd_monte wrote:Very slowly.tbhager94 wrote:hows the re assembly coming along??
Looking at the date of my last post, I can't believe it's been a month already! I feel like I've gotten next to nothing done on it. At first I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand. That surprised me, because I'm no stranger to big projects. I've had cars this far apart before at work, and once with one of my own.
The first few days I would just go into the garage and stare at it, look it over and wonder what to start with. I also began looking in detail at the repaired side. I was a little bummed to find a few things that I felt are not as good as they maybe could be. Everything looks great to someone who's not going to look under and behind things, which is probably most people. But somebody like me, and I suspect most of you, is going to look at every aspect of the job.
One thing, probably the biggest, is that the floor isn't as flat as I had hoped it would be. Don't get me wrong, the giant crease that had formed behind the b-pillar is gone, but I can clearly see lots of hammer sized dents where it was. It looks like they went at it with an air hammer and that's fine, I just wish that they'd finished it a little better. It looks kinda like cellulite.
So that's where I decided to start. I bought a cheap hammer & dolly set and went to work trying to flatten it all out.
Then, I learned about thing called "oil-canning". It describes the phenomenon you get with too much hammering. Basically what happens is that when the metal is dented it gets stretched a bit. When you hammer the dent flat it gets stretched a bit more. Before too long the metal has actually expanded so that now it's too big for the space it has to fit in. It will either bulge up or down, making a metallic popping noise like when you squeeze an empty oil can. Hence the name. According to the interweb it is frequently encountered by novices getting over-zealous with the hammer and dolly. Sounds like a nice way of saying that I've brought this on myself.
Anyway, after the initial session of hammer & dolly I ended up with about three larger dents that I couldn't get rid of. Also, there was a large area that I could push down and it would go "pop" and stay down, too low. Or I could push it up from underneath and "pop!" it would be too high.
Back to the internet.
I learned that heat can be used to shrink the metal back into place. I don't have an oxy torch, so I ended up using a heat gun to warm it up and then quenched the area with a wet rag. Repeated a few dozen times, and it actually made a big improvement. The area that I could pop up and down before I started, now I can push it down but it takes much more effort. It doesn't move as far as before, doesn't make any noise and it won't stay down. I need to work on it some more but it's a very encouraging start.
Here's a YouTube video that I found illustrates the process pretty well.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mptiiRLEJs0[/youtube]
Keeping up with Rule 6b, here's some pictures:
As a reminder, this is what it looked like after the accident and before it went to the body shop:
This is what it looked like when I brought it home. Much better, but still lumpy:
And this is how it is right now. After the hammer/dolly work and after the heat shrinking:
I removed the filler neck cover panel for a couple of reasons. First, it's the only way I can reach the other side of the floor to work on the dents. Second, the flange where it meets the floor was still bent too and I couldn't work on it at all with the cover in place. You can see I boogered up the edge quite a bit when I chiseled the spot welds, I'll fix that too.
The floor is not as flat as it looks in the last picture, the lighting is poor but if you look closely you can still see some small waves that I need to work out. I'm not expecting it to be perfect, but I think I can still make it better than it is.
Something that's made me quite happy is that everyone who has seen it has had nothing but positive things to say about it. I usually have the garage door open when I'm working on it, because it gets warm in there. Two of my neighbors have commented that it looks great, and one of them who saw it after it got hit walked up and said "That's not the same van, is it??" He then went on and on about how much he loves the color.
So, that's where it's at. Once the floor is done I'm probably gonna dynamat the whole thing. Might as well while it's all apart, right?