How To: C15a Wire-3 restoration

[Phil Waterman]

Originally Posted by Jordan Baker

So much welding....hed. My plan is to drill a hole in a spot that will be covered once welded to the box. Once I'm ready I'll use a small funnel and pour POR into the channel. Then I'll rotate it all around to cover and soak the inside. I did that with the doors and it worked rather well. This also means I won't be burning any off from welding.

Next up will be finishing the side channels and then welding them on. The bottoms of them are open so I'll be able to spray POR inside them once done.

Hi Jordan

Which POR poduct are you planning on using? POR15 does not stick well to fresh steel, it just peals off. Also bare steel has coating that needs to be clean off before the steel is etched to get a good adhesion of the paint. If what you are planning to use is self etching then it should work well.

On box tube truck beds I've welded up over the years I followed a similar plan of drilling holes into any closed compartments and filling them with oil and then draining the oil out. Seamed to have worked, the body on my old plow truck is 30 years old. On the platform bed for my C60S did a similar thing but put plugs in holes, couple of years later went to renew the oil coating when unscrewed the first plug water ran out. One of my welds must have had a leak on the top side. Any way removed all the plugs blew out the closed sections, then filled the closed tube with oil again. Drained again an left the plugs out, since then every couple years use a compressed air syphon gun to blow oil through.

Great thread enjoyable to read.

Cheers Phil

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Phil Waterman

Hi Jordan

Which POR poduct are you planning on using? POR15 does not stick well to fresh steel, it just peals off. Also bare steel has coating that needs to be clean off before the steel is etched to get a good adhesion of the paint. If what you are planning to use is self etching then it should work well.

On box tube truck beds I've welded up over the years I followed a similar plan of drilling holes into any closed compartments and filling them with oil and then draining the oil out. Seamed to have worked, the body on my old plow truck is 30 years old. On the platform bed for my C60S did a similar thing but put plugs in holes, couple of years later went to renew the oil coating when unscrewed the first plug water ran out. One of my welds must have had a leak on the top side. Any way removed all the plugs blew out the closed sections, then filled the closed tube with oil again. Drained again an left the plugs out, since then every couple years use a compressed air syphon gun to blow oil through.

Great thread enjoyable to read.

Cheers Phil

I think the risk with oil is that it may leak out and form a nice dark stain on your matt paint (unless you use semi or gloss). Filling and shaking with POR would fix this. I wonder why there is no POR type paint that will take a final coat. You'd think the manufacturers would expect much of their market would want to do exactly that.

[Jordan Baker]

Thanks for the suggestion on using oil. However I'm not keen on doing that for the reasons Bruce brought up. With the bottom edge of the top channel only stich welded there is a number of minor gaps were the oil would leak out and stain everything. My plan is to wash out the channels with the marine wash and then etch with the metal prep. Any POR that seeps out will get wiped away or covered up when doing the final painting.

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Jordan Baker

Thanks for the suggestion on using oil. However I'm not keen on doing that for the reasons Bruce brought up. With the bottom edge of the top channel only stich welded there is a number of minor gaps were the oil would leak out and stain everything. My plan is to wash out the channels with the marine wash and then etch with the metal prep. Any POR that seeps out will get wiped away or covered up when doing the final painting.

POR inside the doors, POR inside the gas tanks, POR smooshed into the hard to reach places the sandblaster can't get to. POR at $85 a quart has become a significant expense in vehicle restorations. The last time I did a gas tank some of the POR leaked out onto my asphalt lane way and that spot has been doing better than the tar blacktop I usually use. It may be expensive to POR the whole lane but maybe worth it as it will never need to be done again...

[Jordan Baker]

Got a couple of hrs in tonight in the shop. They were spent carefully cutting the channels for the side panels. I had bent them up previously. Once I had the angles down it was pretty straight forward to cut them out using a zip disk. Tomorrow I plan on cutting out the other three and then working out how to do the indentation and getting everything welded up on the sides.

[Bob Carriere]

Hi Jordan

Yoiu might want to check the recent postings on cargo box construction under the Hammond barn .......

[Jordan Baker]

Yesterday afternoons progress. I got three of the side channels done and welded them onto the right side panel.

I plan to use a bit of a JB Weld product to smooth out some of the imperfections on the inserts.