In this episode of Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech
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00:00 In this episode of Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech, we're going to show you how
00:03 to take an old rust bucket and turn it into the foundation for a kick-ass muscle car.
00:07 In this episode of Hot Rod Garage, we're going to do something we've never done before.
00:35 We're going to build an ultimate road trip car.
00:37 That'll give you more time to break it.
00:39 Yeah.
00:40 We found this 1965 Pontiac Le Mans convertible.
00:43 This thing is straight, it's got a little bit of rust, it needs a bunch of work, but
00:47 that's what we're here for.
00:48 The idea is when we're done with it, it's going to be reliable, have some modern performance
00:52 handle, probably stop, maybe even look good, gas mileage.
00:55 It's going to look good.
00:56 So that's the idea.
00:57 And something this car does that almost none of our cars do when we start, this thing runs
01:00 and drives.
01:01 We're going to take it out because we can't be trusted with stuff that actually works
01:04 and not be trusted.
01:05 We're going to give it a little shakedown.
01:06 Got to do it.
01:07 Let's go.
01:08 There we go.
01:09 Can we stop and get me some sunglasses?
01:10 Dude, are those faux bands or ray bands?
01:13 These are electrics, bro.
01:15 Man.
01:16 There we go.
01:17 Tires rubbing already?
01:18 Perfect.
01:19 Did you check to see if the lug nuts are tight?
01:20 No, did you?
01:21 No.
01:22 Feels terrible.
01:23 Feels good.
01:24 These cars are awesome.
01:25 You know, the first GTOs are like what, some of the first real muscle cars.
01:36 Whoa.
01:37 We'll get you.
01:38 Hey, do you hear anything?
01:39 You hear that?
01:40 You hear that?
01:41 This car has some issues though.
01:42 It does.
01:43 The brakes feel good?
01:44 The brakes feel great.
01:45 I'm going to go ahead and put it in neutral.
01:46 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:47 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:48 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:49 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:50 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:51 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:52 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:53 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:54 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:55 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:56 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:57 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:58 I'm going to put it in neutral.
01:59 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:00 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:01 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:02 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:03 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:04 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:05 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:06 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:07 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:08 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:09 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:10 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:11 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:12 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:13 I'm going to put it in neutral.
02:15 The problem with this car is it has a bunch of rust in the rear quarter panels.
02:18 Do you think we're going to do that first?
02:20 I think we should.
02:21 Let's get a nice solid base of body and frame and then we can start bolting all the pretty
02:25 stuff on.
02:26 What's that noise?
02:31 Ha ha!
02:32 She picks up all right when she gets going.
02:34 So these things came with a power glide, two speed automatic.
02:38 But I think this has a turbo 350 in it.
02:41 You cooking something?
02:43 Hopefully not the motor.
02:44 Well the gauge says 140.
02:46 Yeah, that's not bad.
02:48 Oil pressure is all right.
02:49 It has bolts?
02:50 Yeah.
02:51 I think it's just really badly tuned.
02:53 Well I think this carburetor, the float level is way low and it's swishing around.
02:57 It could be.
02:58 Something's way off.
02:59 So we've got our 1965 Pontiac Le Mans Invertible back in the shop.
03:07 This thing kind of runs and drives.
03:09 It sputters.
03:10 It doesn't pull clean.
03:11 It needs a bunch of tune up work.
03:13 It's a 326 V8 car.
03:15 We're not sure if that's the original engine.
03:17 This is a nice straight car.
03:18 It's all there.
03:19 These are really hard to find.
03:20 The interior has been totally redone.
03:22 Fresh seats, fresh padding.
03:24 Everything's in really good shape.
03:25 Someone was in the middle of restoring this car and we kind of picked it up at a good
03:28 spot.
03:29 We're going to get to look like heroes without doing a lot of the yucky hard stuff.
03:32 But the big thing about this car and we're going to have to attack first, and this is
03:36 pretty rare for a California car, it's got a ton of rust.
03:39 Quarter panels are non-existent.
03:41 At some point probably the top ruptured and let a bunch of water into the trunk and sat
03:45 there and eventually ate away at this thing.
03:47 And since we're going to do a complete revamp of the suspension and the engine and everything
03:51 and now we have to repair these quarter panels, we're going to first pull the body off the
03:55 frame.
03:56 That's the answer to everything.
03:57 It's like a 10 minute boom boom.
03:58 15 minutes.
03:59 That's our new thing.
04:00 Super simple, 15 minutes.
04:01 15 minutes.
04:02 Alright, let's get started.
04:03 What color is cool and supposed to be?
04:07 Rust.
04:08 Rust.
04:09 Cool.
04:10 Good job, buddy.
04:17 So the only thing we have left to do is unbolt all the body bolts, take the bumpers off front
04:22 and rear, unhook the shift linkage.
04:23 I don't know, we'll find out.
04:24 Let's go get it.
04:25 Dude, it's not a power glide, it's a turbo 250.
04:30 Somebody will want this thing.
04:32 Yeah, if you autograph it.
04:34 Yeah.
04:37 Put it down.
04:38 Super.
04:53 So we jumped underneath, we fought a bunch of the body bolts, back half of this car is
04:57 pretty rusty, we had to cut quite a few of them off.
04:59 Fuel line from the tank to the frame of the car and that's it, right?
05:03 Let me check.
05:04 That's everything.
05:05 That's it, here we go.
05:07 You got it.
05:08 Look at that.
05:21 Yeah, just that easy.
05:22 We have the body up off the frame on our '65 Le Mans project.
05:27 As you can see, there's a bunch of gross rust.
05:30 I saw Bondo, JB Weld, some epoxy.
05:33 It's just, it's a mess.
05:34 We reached out to NPD and they sent us some fresh quarter panels in no time.
05:38 We're going to push this frame out, hack out this old garbage and weld in that fresh sheet metal.
05:43 Is that heavy?
05:47 There we go.
06:01 There we go.
06:04 Maybe just take this.
06:05 So the deal is, I'm grinding down through some of the surface primer and fillers and
06:26 stuff and it's not so bad back here.
06:28 Not so bad there.
06:29 Getting kind of bad there.
06:31 Super thick here.
06:33 I noticed there was a little imperfection right there.
06:36 And then I see a couple of round spots and this is repaired back in the day when they
06:40 used to just drill holes in it and then use a dent puller with a screw in the end of it
06:44 to pull it all out.
06:45 So basically this whole quarter panel is garbage.
06:47 A couple of different ways to do it would be to actually drill out all the spot welds,
06:51 remove the quarter panel like they did in 1964 and replace it with another one.
06:56 All we have is a skin.
06:58 We have limited time.
06:59 That's really about all we can do.
07:01 But that is a lot of bondo right there.
07:03 We're at a point now that if I was building a drift car, we would just rivet on some fiberglass
07:09 and call it a day.
07:10 And you'd have done 11 of these by now.
07:12 Yeah, maybe like this wide.
07:13 But we're not doing that.
07:14 We're going to make this thing nice and factory again.
07:17 So I saw you put some tape down.
07:18 Do you want to explain that?
07:19 Yeah, sure.
07:20 There's a couple of different ways to replace a quarter panel.
07:22 The accurate way to do it, if you're doing a full restoration, would be to drill out
07:26 all the factory spot welds and take off all the components.
07:29 We're really just going to swap out the skin.
07:30 That sounds tedious.
07:31 Yeah, that's not me.
07:32 Yeah, we're not doing that.
07:33 What I did was I took half inch tape and I just put it on the car using the roll, the
07:38 body line at the top, just as a reference.
07:39 It's not an accurate measurement at all.
07:41 And I did the same thing on the replacement panel.
07:44 On the replacement panel, we'll cut in the middle of the half inch tape.
07:47 But on the car, we'll cut beneath the half inch tape.
07:49 So we know that we have roughly a half inch to adjust.
07:53 And then we'll use the flanger and then we'll punch some holes and then we'll weld them up.
07:57 Cool.
07:58 All right, well, I'll cut this while you dig into that.
07:59 Cool.
08:00 That edge you just cut?
08:24 Yeah.
08:34 So this is what's left of the inner wheel well off the right side of the car.
08:40 It looked better before I cut it off and it's actually worse.
08:44 What I did was I cut a nice straight line there, straight line there, straight line
08:47 in the back, cleaned up where there's nothing affecting how it's going to fit.
08:51 I'm going to set it right over the replacement that we got from National Parts.
08:55 Trace some lines.
08:57 When I cut it out, I'll leave an eighth of an inch or so.
09:00 I then use a grinding wheel or a sander to fit it pretty accurately.
09:15 So Lucky went through and cut the inner fender up into a nice patch panel that replaces all
09:19 of the garbage rusty metal that we cut out.
09:21 Fits in really nice.
09:22 We went and tacked it in and now I'm going to stitch the whole thing into place and it
09:25 will be one solid piece.
09:41 I'm going to lay down some etching primer across the bare metal here to make sure this
09:44 doesn't rust again.
09:45 Lucky is coming through with some weld through primer on this lip that we made here so that
09:50 it's sealed and we can still weld through it.
09:57 I'm just practicing with our hole punch flange tool for what we're going to do on the Le Mans.
10:02 The metal that we left on the car, I'm going to come through and I'm going to put a nice
10:05 flange on it.
10:06 It's going to leave us a recessed lip to lay in our new panel and that will basically leave
10:11 it flat and give us a nice place to weld.
10:13 On this end we'll have punched a couple of holes so now we have a nice flat fitting piece
10:24 and we can spot weld right through those holes.
10:26 What's our plan here?
10:39 We're going to putt into this.
11:07 While Tony's welding in the background, here's a hoedown of everything we did.
11:10 We cut the old quarter panel skin off.
11:12 We cut off the inner wheel well, just the part that was corroded.
11:14 We had to do that to evaluate exactly how much corrosion there was.
11:18 It was obvious the car sat maybe half covered in a carport or half covered somewhere and
11:23 the back half got the worst of everything.
11:25 We then took the replacement quarter panel we got from National Parts Depot.
11:29 We fit it to the outside.
11:31 We took a scribe, scribed all around the edges and then we cut it.
11:34 We flanged it a little bit in a couple of spots.
11:37 Did some plug welding.
11:39 We're going to end up butt welding the entire thing.
11:41 It's structurally a lot more sound.
11:43 Fit the whole thing on there.
11:44 I left a nice little gap all the way around because Tony's a master welder and he's going
11:49 to fill that gap all the way around.
11:51 So all that's left to do is everything I just said and more on the other side.
11:55 Join me, won't you?
11:57 [Music]
12:21 On this project we've used some plug welding, some butt welding, some flange welding, some
12:26 stitch welding and some more plug welding.
12:30 Here's Tony with the Lincoln Tech Tip to tell you what they do.
12:33 [Music]
12:36 Hey guys, welcome back to another Lincoln Tech Tip.
12:38 Today we're replacing the rusty quarter panels on our '65 Le Mans with some fresh sheet metal.
12:42 There are mainly two ways to do this, either butt welding or lap welding.
12:46 There are pros and cons to each method and it's up to you to decide which one is best for you
12:50 and that will depend on your access to tools, skill level and welding prowess.
12:54 Let's first talk about butt welding.
12:56 A butt weld is when two panels are cut to butt up against each other for welding.
13:00 A professional is almost always going to use this method and let me be clear about this,
13:04 if done correctly, butt welding will yield a better result.
13:07 A butt weld leaves no room for future rust and corrosion.
13:10 It leaves a single ply panel that can be worked easily and should take less time to prepare it for paint.
13:15 However, welding a butt weld is much harder and you have to make sure that the cut and
13:19 fitment is exact and that there are no gaps between these panels.
13:22 Now on to lap welds.
13:24 A lap weld is a flanged dual-layered joint where the two pieces of sheet metal overlap
13:28 and they're usually seam welded and spot welded as well.
13:31 This repair is easier to fit as the overlap gives you some room for error in the trimming
13:35 and you can use a cleco to hold it in place.
13:37 The lap joint is far easier to weld as there's a channel to weld in and there's two ply of metal
13:41 to reduce burning through the panel.
13:43 Sounds easy, right?
13:44 Well, the drawbacks of a lap joint are that it leaves a channel here that can be susceptible
13:48 to future rust and corrosion and be really hard to seal up.
13:51 It also leaves a thick ridge of metal that's really hard to work and it will take more time
13:56 to get this panel ready for paint.
13:58 Now that you've got the lowdown, grab a couple scrap pieces of sheet metal and see what works best for you.
14:02 Okay, back to the shop.
14:03 Lincoln Tech can teach you how to have a career working with cars.
14:07 See lincolntech.edu.
14:09 These are rear inner wheel well extensions.
14:17 So the car originally had a reinforcement under the floor on one side and it left a gap,
14:22 like a little compartment in each quarter panel where only dirt and moisture could get.
14:27 You couldn't put anything there and you couldn't clean it out.
14:30 We're going to eliminate that.
14:33 [Music]
14:37 [Music]
14:41 [Music]
14:44 [Music]
14:57 [Music]
15:00 [Music]
15:09 [Music]
15:18 [Music]
15:21 So I used a couple different sanders to sand down this weld bead between the panels.
15:38 It's pretty flat and then I laid in some etch primer right along that seam to kind of get in there
15:42 and stop any future rust.
15:44 Lucky is going to hit this thing up with a DA sander, take sort of just the top layer off,
15:48 and I will start mixing up some body filler for our first application.
15:51 [Music]
15:54 [Music]
16:08 [Music]
16:11 [Music]
16:36 Date night!
16:38 [Music]
16:41 With the panel sanded and smooth, the last step for now is to put a little primer coat on.
16:49 Or if you're actually finishing off a project, here's where you would send it off to the paint shop.
16:54 [Music]
16:57 So now that we have the body of the Le Mans all fixed up and rust free, ready to build on,
17:02 we turn our attention to the frame.
17:04 Now these convertible frames have a box frame stock.
17:07 It's a little bit more stiff, but we want something even stiffer, even stronger,
17:11 so we can put some serious grip into this thing and not have it be all twisty.
17:14 So we reached out to HPI, these guys at the Canada that make this cool frame bracing kit.
17:18 They sent it over, we measured it up, trimmed it up, and now I'm going to weld it in.
17:22 [Music]
17:25 Thanks for my help.
17:28 Alright, it's stacked in.
17:32 Dude, it's a pretty wicked fit right there.
17:34 [Music]
17:37 So every nut so far is a different size.
17:59 This one's a 5/8. Even though they seem very confident when they work on your car,
18:04 it's hard for me to trust people.
18:06 Here's a perfect example.
18:09 That's a stud to hold your wheel on. It should never be loose like that.
18:12 It's, uh, that's sketchy right there.
18:14 The upside is we're not using any of this.
18:16 It will be available at the Long Beach Swapmate.
18:19 You ready?
18:21 [Gunshots]
18:24 Fry's are done.
18:26 [Music]
18:29 We used our lift and some jack stands to remove the front spring safely
18:39 by slowly lowering the unbolted control arms.
18:42 You can do a similar trick with a regular floor jack if the car is supported on jack stands.
18:46 [Music]
18:50 [Gunshots]
18:51 [Music]
18:54 That's heavy.
19:02 [Music]
19:05 Hopefully, hopefully fry's are done.
19:12 [Music]
19:15 Whoa.
19:17 Whoa, whoa, whoa.
19:19 Whoa.
19:20 [Music]
19:23 Last thing to go was the rear axle and suspension.
19:27 With the frame completely stripped, it was time to take it to the sandblasters.
19:31 [Music]
19:35 Work smart, buddy. Work smart.
19:39 Let's get it done.
19:43 Let's get it fun, man.
19:46 [Music]
19:49 We've got the frame of that thing stripped all the way down bare.
19:54 We've got the HBI Customs brace kit installed, welded up.
19:57 We're going to take it over to a sandblasting shop now.
20:00 They're going to blast it all down.
20:01 We're either going to have them paint it, or we'll drag it back to the shop and paint it ourselves.
20:05 [Music]
20:08 Stand clear, everyone.
20:15 [Music]
20:18 That's it.
20:28 [Music]
20:42 So we've got the new quarter panels on the Le Mans.
20:45 The frame just came back from the blaster, and with that new brace kit and all painted up, it looks awesome.
20:49 That's it for this episode of Hot Rod Garage, presented by Lincoln Tech.
20:52 What?
20:53 That's it.
20:54 What about...
20:55 This stuff is going to have to wait until next time, buddy.
20:57 That's not right.
20:58 Don't forget to check us out on social media.
20:59 Between episodes, the show is Hot Rod Garage Show on Facebook and Instagram.
21:03 I'm Tangelo96 on Instagram.
21:05 He is...
21:06 Mobile Tech Lucky.
21:07 We will see you guys next time.
21:08 [Clap]
21:09 [Laughter]
21:10 [Music]
21:14 [Music]
21:18 [Music]
21:22 [Music]
21:25 (whooshing)