1950 Mercury custom build

Well my furnace finally died completely so I had a few days of down time while I looked into what needed to be done to fix or replace it, obtain parts and get it going again. I hate working in the cold so it was a necessity and it is now operational again.

My plan is to attack the rockers next so I needed to get the door and front fender off. The fender was no problem but the door was a bit of a project but I finally got it off. And the result, not surprisingly, is lots of rust.

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I cut the outer rocker off between the door post.

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And I started making some replacement parts.

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More rust removal and more making parts. Bottom section of door pillar

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I am going to have to do the inner rocker in sections. The front section tapers from the front to about 18″ inside the door opening so I started with that.

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Inner brace. I want to epoxy prime this before assembling to at least get some corrosion protection inside.

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I am trying to decide what to do with the very inner panel for the rocker. It is part of the floor and then folds over and runs straight down. I really don’t want to weld a 6ft seam on a flat piece of sheet metal so weighing my options. I am thinking of cutting it off about with about 1″ or so hanging down and then using a panel adhesive and spot welds to attach a new piece flat piece but I am trying to decide if I think that will be strong enough so I sit an look at it. LOL

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Thanks Guys. So I am still unsure how I am going to go about replacing the lower flange on the front section of the rocker so while I dwell I decided to look at what was going on behind the B pillar. It was not pretty. The previous owner had welded the entire rear door into the space, frame and all, so there was all sorts of stuff going on. I decided to take some of it out and just leave some of it there. The floor was rusted out in that back area and the lower panel was completely shot so it all had to come out. I was a bit worried about the B Pillar collapsing if I took everything out so I braced it as best I could and welded in a filler panel to try and give it a little bit of structure before I started cutting everything out.

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Then I cut all the bad out. Left a BIG hole.

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I made up the pieces to fill said hole and started welding things back together.
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I need to get some primer on these inner pieces to hopefully slow down any future corrosion before I go too much further.
 
Nice stuff. You don't appreciate how much time goes into making all those little inner rocker and pillar pieces until you've done one, eh? Not that hard fabrication wise, but a ton of time spent making each piece the proper size and shape. Going to look really good.
 
Yeah it is time consuming John. Doesn't help that the factory had a door here that was poorly filled in so I have to decide what to remove and replace and what to just get rid of.
 
The inner part is done on the passenger side. I still need to clean up and finish welding inside the rear wheel well but the wheel needs to come off and there are a couple of lug nuts that won't come off so I am soaking those in liquid wrench so I can get it off and finish it up. I also have to figure out what to do above the rocker. On the normal coupe there is a panel that closes off the inside of the car from the inside of the quarter panel but with the remnants of the rear door still in place I am not exactly sure how I am going to tackle it. So that will be my next project.
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Well I lied I still had one more structural piece to make for this back section and it was a bitch. Had to be pretty precise as this is that the quarter follows and it has a step in it and one side is higher than the other. Needless to say I spent WAY too much time on it. Oh and I got the rear tire off so I need to do a better job of cleaning up the inside of the wheel well now that I can access it.

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I have moved on to the front. I thought the back was a mess. This was worse. The guy had boogered welds all over everything. Took me about 3 hours to get this mess out and all his excess welds cleaned up.

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I have decided to leave about an 1′ of the floor panel hanging down put a step into it and then glue and weld a straight extension onto that. I started working on that and got this done.

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I am not able to get the flanger in behind the A pillar so I decided to jog this section of the piece up, fold it over and weld it into the floor.

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Great job you are doing. I just replaced some rusted out pieces in the floor of my project and it took me hours. I do admire your tenacity :)
I would have gave up at page 1 lol
 
Like many others have said, what a great job you are doing on your project, as well as sharing out to all of us!
There has been many pointers taken from your posts. Thank you!
Greg
 
Just looking at all the stuff I missed...this looks great...I had to do similar stuff. What I found out was a lot of my rust was from water coming into the back window pocket that the back window rolled down into. There was a drain hole there but im sure it plugged up soon after the car was new. Water worked its way into the inner structure channels and rusted them out.I ended up drilling drain holes in all the new pieces because I fully expect the window well drain holes to plug up again so I’m giving the water another way out....keep er going.
 
Thanks again guys. I took a bit of a break this week. Had my son home for spring break so spent time with him and had some actual job work to do this week as well so haven't made a ton of progress but got some done.

First I finished off the front part of the door pillar section I was working on previously.

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Then I started the nasty job of fixing the rust behind the brace that is on the upper section of this area. It is spot welded in so it took me a few hours to drill out about 20 tack weld and remove the brace which left me with this mess.
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So I cut that all out which left a big hole. I braced the outside edge before I cut it out to keep some sort of strength seeing as the hood is attached there and still on the car. The inner panel was probably enough but I wasn't sure what was left of the tack welds in the upper section so didn't want to take any chances.
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Made a patch.
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And welded it in place. Unfortunately on most of these patches I don't have enough access to the back of the panels to clean them up enough to TIG so I have to resort to MIGing them in place. Not the cleanest work but it will do for an area no one will ever see.
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Now I have to clean up the bracket and weld it back in. I have also been trying to figure out how I am going to do the outer rocker panel. I have the patterns made up for it but I need to figure out how I am going to shape it. I may have to get a rubber upper wheel for my English wheel (I tried cutting up an inner tube to use as a rubber band but it was a little bit too small for my wheel) to put the curve in it as I don't own a slip roll but I am not sure yet so we shall see.
 
So it looks like moisture rolled into that area under the hood and on top of the fender and got trapped
A very nice repair indeed
 
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