The weekend had passed by calmly. More footage shot on Saturday, the Sunday, as usual, used for editing videos, overnight from Sunday to Monday to let the first video upload to Youtube, and the steady Monday routine of going to the all-girl nudist gym with Fanni for a workout, and lunch at The Patty Place afterwards. And just like that, it was Tuesday.
Plenty of work ahead for the light pastel yellow mouse woman Michelle Frelang. In fact, the hardest work was only starting. The 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle project car had been fully dismantled, now came the hard work of making all the parts ready for reassembly into a gleaming, as-new car. But this was also the most fun work. This was the work Missy excelled in, the work she had gotten her reputation as a master painter and body worker from.
First, of course, upon arriving in her garage a bit past eight o'clock in the morning, there was the ultimately important task of feeding and petting Salmon, the Maine Coon garage cat. A work day could not be started without having first taken care of that monumental task. And of course, some lights had to be switched on, such as the light in the large Mountain Dew display refrigerator, a few lights throughout the garage, and a couple in the office. The radio was turned on, the computer in the office was turned on, and some time was taken to check for messages both on the answering machine and online. After the upload of the first video for the Chevelle series the previous day, there was a fairly sizeable influx of comments on Youtube, by people expressing their interest in the project, with a good 90% of the comments mentioning how the poster's father or brother or uncle or grandfather or even an aunt or grandmother, or the poster themselves, used to have a Chevelle back in the 1970s or later, as a first car, a high school car, a project car, handed down in the family or bought for cheap - often with many details on construction year, color, interior color, engine displacement and carburetor size of the cars in question posted in those comments.
There was also some time that needed to be taken to get everything ready to shoot more footage for what would become the next videos in the series. The frame and wheels of the car were still at the powdercoater's, but the body still had to be secured on the dolly it was sitting on and the extra body panels that had been ordered and had arrived had to be laid out. Not to mention that the blasting area in the second large building had to be set up, as well as the bodywork area in the secondary part of the first large building. The disassembly hall did also serve as the metalwork room, but the applying and smoothening of body filler was done in the adjacent hall which had the equipment and the large extraction fans. So that also meant Missy had to lay out all her metalwork tools and set up cameras and lights in both halls.
Once all of that had finally been done, it already was time for the first coffee break of the day - or tea break in Missy's case because she didn't drink coffee. Not that the vanilla-colored mousette cared so much for breaks, but she had learned she should rather strictly adhere to a certain number of breaks per workday in this country of Minnaluna with its sub-tropical climate. Even if it was not yet summer so a full tropic's schedule was not yet in effect, the spring weather could still catch people out and care should be taken. Over the past two years of living in Minnaluna, Missy had been very methodical about that, as she was with everything she did and undertook, and so far it had worked out - but still best to be careful. Fortunately, with all the help, tips, pointers and advice she had received from many friendly and helpful people shortly after her immigration, Missy had devised a few routines that worked well for her. The heavier metalwork that required welding was done in just her light full-body coveralls over nothing else, the applying and smoothing of body filler could be done in the nude with just the full-face respirator. And she had also learned how to effectively yet comically blur her naked self out in the videos she edited of any footage where she worked naked, from the months-long project when she had fully restored the tour bus of the large female-only nudist resort Sunkissed Forest on-site, so she could still safely upload those videos to her Youtube channel - and the un-blurred videos went into the video section of her own company website, where no one could censor her for having uncensored videos of her working naked.
It was going to be another long day, though. The regular morning routine and the setting up of the cameras and lights had eaten up most of the morning, so the vanilla-hued mousette again got a late start on doing actual work. But eventually, everything was set up and adjusted, and it was lights, camera, action! As usual, Missy leaned sideways into frame from the side very close to the camera.
"Alright, we live? We-e-e're live. Hey ho all you wonderful people out there in Youtube land! Missy here from Mousie Motorworks, bringing you another exciting episode! Here we are, back with more work on the Chevelle project! The boring work is all behind us, now we're getting to the exciting stuff! We're finally going to actually be fixing stuff and making it all nice and pretty again to put it back together eventually! The frame's still at the powdercoater's, and I'm still waiting on the rear axle assembly that's being custom-built for me, but that's fine. Can't do nothing with that frame anyway until there's actually a body ready to plop onto it, so that's where the work's gonna start. So sit back, relax, and follow right along, right here, at Mousie Motorworks!" She counted to three in herself for an editing point, then gestured at the bodyshell behind her. "Now, you see the body sitting here on a dolly behind me, and as I showed in the introduction video, it's pretty straight. However, when you take a closer look..."
She took one of the smaller cameras and one of the flat panel lights and stepped over to the body of the car, panning along it at specific angles while illuminating it with the light.
"See, look closely, and you can see how this quarter here has some very light waves in it. And we had already seen the driver's side rocker is shot, and there's some crustiness along the rear wheel opening here. Plus of course, there's this huge blotch of primer clashing terribly with the original dark red color this car used to be. So what does this mean? Well, usually, it means someone's been plastering. The easiest way to check is like this." She set the camera and light on tripods and took a small, thick metal disk which she showed to the camera. "This is a magnet, and a pretty strong one at that. And obviously, magnets stick to metal. So if we go along here..." With a few light clunks, she stuck the magnet to the firewall, the roof, the door opening and the top part of the sail panel. "That's all metal here, because the magnet sticks. Now if we go down here..." She moved the magnet down over the large patch of grayish-white primer over the lower part of the car's rear, which covered the entire section below the belt-line from the back of the door all the way to the opening where the rear side marker had been. Each time she let go of the magnet, it dropped to the floor. "And there we go. There may still be metal under there, but it's hidden so deep the magnet can't find it. Now, Patrick Stewardson, who gave me this car, bought it like this, so I don't blame him. But the fellow he bought it from must have been a stucco worker or something, because good golly did he go to town on this car." She stuck the magnet back to the side of one of the tool chests and took a small hammer with a flat square-ish head on one end and a sharp point on the other end. "This is a welding hammer, and while it's usually used to chip excess goobers off a weld and check the weld's strength, it's also very suitable for finding excess body filler. When your magnet shows you there's such a huge patch of it, you can simply do this."
Adjusting the cameras a bit, Missy turned to the side of the car's body and started slashing at the primered area with the pointy end of the small hammer. With quite dull thuds, chips of paint and body filler started flying, soon followed by fairly large chunks falling on the floor and shattering. After a few moments, Missy turned back to the camera and flashed a cheery grin.
"About a dozen of you were screaming there, and at least four or five of you have fainted. Oh my goodness, Missy! How could you do that! What were you thinking! Look at what you've done! But no no no, people, you look at what I've done. I have taken a couple of pounds of unnecessary weight off this poor car. It's like sculpting; you take a block of marble and chip away everything that is not a naked woman. Same here, I've chipped away a lot of what is not a Chevelle. This..." She pointed at the large, wide dent that was now revealed in the side of the car's body, "is not how you repair damage on a car. When a car gets a dent, you take it out by either pressing it out from behind or by pulling it out from the front, either by welding on studs for a slide hammer, or gluing on urethane pads for a PDR slide hammer or puller, and PDR of course stands for Paintless Dent Removal, which is a technique that had gained ground rapidly over the past decade. But you don't just simply slop five pounds of filler into a dent." She pointed at the dented side of the car body with the welding hammer again. "Heckity, that dent is so huge the previous owner of this car could have just put his foot against it from the inside and it would have mostly popped out already, saving him at least four of the five pounds of filler he plastered in there. And I'm not even gonna bother fixing that huge dent, I'm just gonna cut out the whole quarter panel and replace it. Why? For one, it's easier and faster. For another, that dent is not just cosmetic anymore. There's braces behind there, folks, braces you can't see from the inside of the car because they're in between the outer skin and the inner panels, and those braces are damaged as well so they need at least some repair first before putting a new panel over them. And then there's this."
She knelt down by the rear wheel opening and tapped along the arch with the pointy end of the small hammer, going right through at most of the taps. "This wheel arch is rotten, as you can clearly see. And wheel arches are a pain in the patootie to repair, even when you're welding in a new section. So why bother when full panels are available? The aftermarket for Chevelles is huge, and the body panels are usually pretty spot-on. Plus, I did some research and took some measurements, and it turns out the nineteen seventy and the nineteen seventy-one and seventy-two rear bumpers are not interchangeable; the seventy rear bumper is just slightly narrower from top to bottom than the seventy-one and seventy-two rear bumpers, so putting a seventy rear bumper on here would leave a huge gap in these indents on the side here. But I can easily put a seventy quarter panel on here, which fixes that problem, so that's what I'm gonna do, on both sides. Now, let's have a look at any other possible problem areas, shall we?"
Rising back to her feet, Missy leaned over the rear end of the car's body a bit and tapped the pointy end of the welding hammer along a row of small holes running from the corner of the rear side window to the corner of the rear window, and all along the channels of the rear window. Small slivers and chips of rusty metal were knocked loose, and every now and then the light yellow mousette even poked a hole in the metal with the small hammer. The same also happened along the channel of the trunk lid and around the area holding the trunk latch, and the area lower down where the opening for the fuel filler neck was hidden behind the pivoting license plate holder. When she had reached the right side of the car's body and tapped her way along a similar row of holes from the rear side window to the rear window, along the top of the wheel arch and all along the line of the roof towards the windshield pillar, Missy turned to another camera.
"Back there, that trunk channel, is a very common spot to rust out. Leaves and crap collect in there and just sit there and trap moisture. And as this was a vinyl-top car, moisture has also been trapped down along that side where the trim strips were, and all along the drip rail up here. Fortunately, the vinyl was removed at some point in time, so the damage was limited. There's some rust, but the only real rot is only in some sections of the back of that trunk channel, so all of this is relatively easy to fix. Not worried about that, but I am worried about the A-pillars here. Those usually get chewed up on vinyl-top cars, those of you that have seen the video series on Patty's Ford Fairmont may remember there was some serious damage to the roof and the A-pillars on that one, so let's see if the ones on this car fared any better."
With the entire front clip of the car not being there, Missy had lots of room to stand right in front of the windshield opening. Leaning close, she ran her fingers along the upright windshield pillars, softly pressing and pushing here and there and lightly tapping along them with the small welding hammer as well. They were indeed crunchy and crusty, but fortunately the only spot where the point of the hammer went clean through the metal was where the pillars connected to the cowl.
"Well, that's not too bad," Missy commented to the camera. "Don't get me wrong, it's bad, but it's less bad than the damage on Patty's Fairmont. And I got that fixed, so I can definitely fix this. From the looks of it, this will only need a small patch at the cowl here, and that's the best area to repair because there's plenty of good metal around to weld to. Finally, let's take a look at these floor pans. Cover your ears, folks, because this is gonna get loud!"
Standing by the side of the car, Missy leaned in through the passenger door opening and started pounding on the floor of the car's body with the flat head of the hammer. She kept her large round ears folded flat against her head, because she did indeed make a mighty racket of loud clanks and thumps, causing loose chips and bits and pieces to dance around and puffs of rust and dusty dirt to fall from the bottom of the car's body. Eventually, she stood back upright, unfolded and perked her ears and grinned at the camera.
"You guys have no idea how freeing it is to do that, just as that hacking I did over on that side with all the filler. In my previous job, I worked with high-end supercars and exotics, and you couldn't even breathe too hard on those. So, was it really necessary to pound those floor pans as hard as I did? Hell no, but it was fun! At least with cars like this I can be a bit rebellious against the super top tier standard of work quality I've had to deliver for a large part of my adult life. And it gave good results too, because look!" She pointed a camera into the inside of the car's body. "Good solid floors, there's only a bit of rust in the usual spots in the footwells, and that is super easily patched. I don't even need the replacement floor pans I ordered, so those can go into storage for any next Chevelle that may need them, bonus! This rocker here is also shot though, but that was to be expected, and that's an easy fix as well. So now that we've seen what this car needs in repairs, we can get started on that!" She held up a paw and grinned again. "And I can hear about six or seven of you typing in the comments already. But Missy! What about the front? You didn't check the fenders or the hood! What if those need repairs too? Well, cool your jets, folks! Remember, I'm gonna make this Chevelle something special, and part of that is putting a sixty-nine face on it, for which I will need to modify the front fenders, upper valance and hood. Remember I mentioned that in the intro video? And lookie here..." She took the smaller camera and stepped over to one of the large racks against the wall. "See those flat boxes there? That's brand new reproduction panels from Year-One; a sixty-nine and a seventy-two hood, a sixty-nice and seventy-two upper front valance panel, and a set of sixty-nine and a set of seventy-two front fenders. Those are the ones I will be modifying, because as I said, I'm not gonna be cutting up original panels. So I also don't need to check the original hood and fenders for damage, because I won't be using them. Besides, the previous owner put an SS hood on this car, which is the wrong kind of hood so I wasn't gonna use that either way. But anyway! Put on your shades, folks, because it's time to throw a whole bunch of sparks!"
After putting back the camera on its tripod and adjusting a couple of them as well as some of the lights, the vanilla-colored mousette took a pair of large ear protectors and a pair of safety glasses and two angle grinders, one with a cut-off wheel on it and one with a grinding disk on it. She lay all of that inside the body of the car, knelt down to set the brakes on all the caster wheels of the dolly the car's body was attached to and even secured the dolly to the arms of the car lift with a couple of ratchet straps. Once everything was solid and secured, Missy took a small stepladder and climbed into the bodyshell of the car, sitting on her knees and putting on the safety glasses and earmuffs.
"Always, always use your PPE, folks! You may think, eh, just a bit of cutting and grinding, that's not too loud, I can handle that without all that ungainly and uncomfortable stuff on my head. Sure you can, even when you're as big-eared as I am. But that doesn't mean you should not use it; you always should. I'm only in my mid-thirties, but I already lost four points on my hearing because of the noise in my previous workplace, and that wasn't even always noise I made myself. So don't fool yourself, just be safe and take care of your senses, believe me. But! Enough jabbering, let's finally get some work done!"
Leaning down, Missy took the grinder with the grinding disk and turned to the few small holes in the driver's side footwell of the front floor pan. Sparks and dust flew as she started removing the black coating and the spots of rust around the holes, cleaning all over and around the holes until a fair patch of healthy bare metal was visible. She took the other grinder with the cut-off wheel and threw more streams of sparks as she started cutting out the affected areas; not hole by hole, but an entire strip of metal that contained all the rust holes. The same was done on the passenger's side, after which the vanilla-hued mousette lifted her safety glasses to her forehead and turned to the camera on that side of the car.
"It may seem a bit excessive what I did here, cutting out whole strips while there were only a few small holes. But this just makes things easier, I only have to make one patch panel per side, and you should always cut well around a rust hole to make sure you have good, solid metal to weld the patch to. And when you have a larger patch like this, there's more metal to dissipate the heat so there's less risk of warping while you're welding. Of course you should still be careful when you weld in the patch, do only small bits at a time and keep them far apart, but this reduces the risk of warping even more. Now, let's take these over to the workbench and make some patches!" She picked up the strip of metal she had just cut out of the passenger side footwell, and immediately dropped it. "Ooo, hot! See, there you go; always be careful, folks!"
With a light grin, Missy first climbed out of the car and set the grinder with the cut-off wheel on the tool chest before putting on a welding glove and picking up the two strips of metal she had cut out of the car's floor. Waving them back and forth a bit, she stepped over to a pair of sawhorses near the back of the room, upon which lay a sheet of metal with several pieces cut out of one side of it. Not needing the glove anymore as the metal strips had cooled down enough, Missy lined them up with a side of the sheet of metal and traced them with a marker, after which she cut out the shapes with the grinder with cut-off wheel. She marked one with "top D" and the other with "top P", plus an arrow on both pointing towards the side that should face the front of the car, tossed them into the car's bodyshell and rolled near a large welding cart holding a large yellow welding machine, three huge gas bottles and a couple of smaller ones, and a small cabinet with a metal bar welded to the top of it which held a welding mask with a stylized "MM" on both sides and a funny mouth with whiskers, small buckteeth and a tongue dangling out on the front just below the dark visor.
From the cabinet, Missy took a couple of triangular welding magnets and a pair of side-cutters and lay them in the car. She also took off the ear protectors and safety glasses and put on the welding helmet instead, flipping it up to send a smile at the main camera while gesturing at the welder.
"This may look a bit different from the welders you folks have in your garage. That's an ESAB Rebel industrial welder, it does MIG, pulsed MIG, TIG and stick, and those are the largest gas bottles you can get because I often have so much welding to do I burn through a lot of gas and I can't afford to have to stop and get my bottles refilled all the time. And because this machine does both MIG and TIG, there's several gas bottles on it. I don't use the pre-mixed gas for MIG, I prefer to mix it myself depending on the materials I'm welding." She pointed at several gauges and thin transparent upright tubes attached to the different bottles. "That's why each bottle has its own regulator with a flow meter on it, so I can precisely regulate the flow of gas to the amounts and the mixes I need, depending on what material I weld and how thick the material is. Of course, on a car, you're mainly dealing with mild steel, so you're perfectly fine with the standard seventy-five to twenty-five argon to carbon dioxide mix. Personally, I prefer to lower the carbon dioxide by about one to two percent and mix in one to two percent pure oxygen as well. Another thing to keep in mind is the size of the nozzle on your welder. The ones you folks have in your garage usually come with a half-inch nozzle; this one here is a mid-tier industrial welder so it has a five-eights nozzle, and that means I need a much higher flow rate on my gas. Standard flow rate for a welder this size is thirty to thirty-five CFH - that's cubic feet per hour for those of you not familiar with acronyms - and since I weld indoors in a controlled environment, I keep my flow at about thirty-two CFH. Now, as you can see, all these regulators have a metal line attached to them that come together in this collector, which has the connector for the hose on the other end. You can also see there's more than one hose with a nozzle at the end on this cart; the orange one is for MIG, the green one is for TIG, and that other orange one with the dots on it is also for MIG, but for pulsed MIG as it requires a different wire feed. All these hoses attach to that connector, so I can use different types on the same machine and provide different mixes of gas for the kind of welding I'm doing. As I said, for cars, it's just mild steel, so that's a mix of seventy-five percent argon, twenty-y-y... let's say three carbon dioxide because I'm welding a floor pan, and two percent oxygen." Turning the valves on three of the regulators, Missy pointed at the upright tubes in which small balls began floating in front of a measuring scale. "Nothing mechanical here that can fail or get stuck, these work purely on gravity and pressure of the gas so they're much more precise and reliable." She took the nozzle of the orange hose connected to the collector and gave the trigger a quick squeeze to extend the wire coming from it, and clipped off the mushroomed end with the pair of cutters. "All set, let's go throw some more sparks of a different color! Shield your eyes or put on your shades, folks!"
The vanilla-hued mousette climbed back into the car and started fitting the strips of fresh steel she had cut out into the holes she had cut into the floor pan after putting a magnetic light to the underside of the dash panel to illuminate her work area and adjusting one of the cameras. Every now and then she ground the strips along the sides a bit, until they fit as good as perfectly into the holes. Securing them in place with the triangular magnets, Missy lowered her welding helmet over her face with a short, sharp nod of her head and leaned over, throwing some blue and orange sparks as she placed a few tack welds at the edges of the strips. She lifted the welding visor and inspected the tack welds, pressed down on the metal strip here and there and nodded, lowering the visor again and beginning to weld in the strip with short bursts of the nozzle.
Zap zap zap zap zap, down to the opposite corner, zap zap zap zap zap, up to the other opposite corner, zap zap zap zap zap, on and on just like that and constantly changing the spot where she was welding while letting the spots she had welded cool down in between. Every now and then she firmly brushed the welds with a small metal brush, inspected them again and even tapped them with the pointy end of the welding hammer, before resuming her area-concentrated zapping. Within a few minutes, the strip of metal was welded firmly in place, and the light yellow mousette lifted her welding helmet again, blinked a time or two and took one of the smaller cameras to look at the welds from close by.
"There you go, see? Nice consistent welds, good penetration into the surrounding metal, but not too much heat, as you can tell from these purplish-blue spots radiating out from the weld points. Let me buzz in that other one real quick, and then we'll smooth these and move on to the outside of the car."
She did just that, scooting over to the passenger side of the car and repeating everything she had just done in the driver side footwell. Once the other strip of metal had been solidly welded into the passenger footwell, Missy firmly brushed the welds with the small metal wire brush again and took the angle grinder with the grinding disk on it after changing her welding helmet for the ear protectors and safety glasses again. Once again throwing showers of sparks, the mousette ground the welds completely smooth so eventually, only the elongated spots of bare metal showed where something had happened.
Hopping out of the car's body, Missy closed the valves on the gas bottles and rolled the welding cart out of the way. She adjusted one or two of the lights and the main camera again and pointed at the dented-in side of the car.
"Let's tackle the biggest job next. As I said, I will be replacing both quarter panels on this car, on this side because I will have to get to the inside braces as well, and so I will get the proper bumper cutout on both sides for the nineteen seventy model rear bumper. Here's one of the replacement panels." She took one of the large flat boxes from the rack, opened it and slid out a large, semi-gloss black panel, holding it up against the damaged side of the car body. "As you can see, it's a full panel that includes part of the sail panel, and even the inside of the door aperture where the striker and latch go. I won't be using that part, because these reproduction panels, while good, are just made of a slightly thinner steel and I prefer keeping the original steel for such a structural area as the door aperture." She ran an index finger over the front of the black panel, just behind the door opening. "I'll cut it here. Now, this panel doesn't have any provisions for trim except the rear side marker, so if I would use this whole panel, I'd lose that row of holes there where the trim strips for the vinyl top go, and that one there for the lower side window trim. But that's easily measured and drilled, and using the full panel here will make it a lot easier to right away fix those rot spots by that trim strip. So I'll probably use the whole panel, that way I won't have to make small patches for those rot spots and do a whole lot of fiddling to get all the curves and lines correct, because this panel already has them. And why make things hard on myself? This is just a personal project for a bit of fun, I'm not aiming to win any awards with this car once it's done. So! Let's make some marks and do some cutting!"
On went the safety glasses and ear protectors again, the black panel was put on a pair of sawhorses, and Missy took the angle grinder with the cut-off wheel to carefully cut along the front edge of the black panel. The squared part forming part of the door aperture clattered to the ground, and the vanilla-colored mousette held the panel up against the side of the car body again, running a marker along the line she had cut at the front, and along the top of the panel, about halfway up the sail panel between the rear side window and the rear window. Setting the panel back down on the sawhorses and taking the other grinder, Missy ground away the paint and primer on part of the line she had drawn on the sail panel, eventually lifting her safety glasses again and taking one of the smaller cameras to zoom in on that area.
"Now, see how handy that is? That panel lines right up with the factory seam. You can get these panels relatively cheaply, though of course you pay a bit more when you get full panels rather than just skins from larger suppliers like Year-One or AMD, but the extra cost is worth it because the panels are better quality and have a much better fit. I can just cut right along the factory seam there, and the replacement panel will fit right in with all the body lines aligned correctly." She leaned on the tool chest and sent the main camera a cheery grin. "And I can already hear you folks again; Missy Missy! When you worked on those other cars in your other video series, you had the cars acid-dipped so they were all bare metal and much easier to work with, because you could see all the damage right there and everything. Why aren't you doing that now? Why give yourself more work by grinding off that paint and all? Simple. Like I said, this is just a personal project, it's not a customer car or a show car. Besides, if I was to have this car dipped, that would lose me a whole week. The closest company that does acid-dipping is in Fillamy, and I would have to bring the car there which would take me two days, it would have to stay there two days for the whole procedure, and then I have to go back here which takes another two days. Not worth it, folks, not for a car that is just a fun little project for myself. It's not all that much work grinding down the spots where I need to weld in patch panels, and for the rest I can easily media-blast this shell myself and keep up the work flow. And speaking of work flow, we gotta take a small step back now before we get into butchering up this quarter here. First those rockers need replacing, because the quarter butts right up against them, and we need something way more solid to keep this car nice and straight and squared. So let's get to that, and this may be a timelapse."
The black panel went back on the sawhorses, and the grinder with the cut-off wheel came out again. Initially, it was used to cut a length of square tubing to length, which Missy welded into the side of the car across the passenger door opening, and she did the same on the driver's side. Two more lengths of square tubing were cut to length and welded in across the width of the car, between the front kick panels and between the structural supports of the door jambs. Once that was done, the vanilla-hued mousette took some time to carefully cut out the outer rocker panel below the passenger door opening, and after some brushing and inspecting, the inner rocker panel as well.
There was a little bit of a search through the number of boxes laying in the rack, but eventually Missy found the two sets of replacement inner and outer rocker panels she had ordered. The ones for the passenger side were fitted, a bit of light grinding here and there on the panels and the floor and lower door aperture of the car to get a perfect fit, then Missy tack-welded the panels in place with a good number of tack welds.
"That'll do for now," she told the main camera. "This is solid enough at the moment, and I only tack-welded them in so I can easily shuffle them about if needed. Now I'll need to take a look at the trunk floor, because that also connects in a weird way. These cars are like big click-and-connect sets, you know, everything slots and slides into and under and along everything else."
She walked around the dolly to the very back of the car and leaned over into the trunk with a light, running her fingers along the sides of the trunk floor and the insides of the side panels.
"I do love southern cars like this, they stay so dry and well preserved," she commented. "I've seen plenty cars where this whole trunk floor has rotted completely away, but this floor doesn't even have any bubbly spots. But look here, it sections here and here, that's where it bolts to the frame, it butts up against the inner wheel tubs over there, and way back here it connects up to these trunk drops and this rear panel that in turn connects to the rear valance and bumper fill panel." She squatted down and twisted a bit to look under the car's body as well. "That all looks stupidly solid though. Trunk drops are fine, just a bit of flaky surface rust in the corners here, the seam-seal around the wheel tubs is even still fine. Now, speaking of those, that's another thing. Those wheel tubs are two pieces, an inner and an outer part, and here..." She shuffled back along the side of the car body and panned a smaller camera along the underside of the wheel opening. "Here the quarter panel actually folds over and is spot-welded to the underside of that lip on the outer wheel tub. As you can see here, the wheel arch is crunchy and somewhat rotten, and the rot actually creeps further inwards along the outer wheel tub. I have new wheel tubs as well, inners and outers just in case, but I may just need the outers, we'll see how much work it is to separate them. It may be simpler to replace them fully, but if I can, I'd rather leave the inner ones in place because that will keep all the dimensions and fitments of the car intact. Anyway..." She stood back upright again and ran a finger along the upper edge of the quarter panel. "I'll cut along here and leave that whole part of the trunk channel alone, that will make sure the trunk still closes good and the body gaps stay correct. Up here... now this is tricky." She tapped her finger on a crusty spot with a small hole in the middle right below the rounded corner where the rear window went. "This needs patched, and that replacement quarter actually has this whole section of the rear window channel too. I'd rather not use that if I can help it, because it means I'll have two weld lines right in the window channel that I'll have to bodywork. I might cut right along the window channel down here, and then jog over and cut right along the back edge here and up to that factory seam up there. However, here by the side window..." She rubbed her fingertip against the drip rail that ran all the way down along the top of the side window and down to the rear corner. "That replacement quarter goes right up into that drip rail and you'd have to weld it there, that's a huge mess. What I think I'll do is cut along here, just shy of the drip rail, and down to this corner. I can let the new panel sit over this part by the bottom of the window here, but what I may do is cut along this edge here and butt-weld it. It's no big deal, because you can see all these holes here; that's where the trim goes, so I can cover a lot of that weld seam up with the trim and you'll never see it. Yes, yes, I think that's what I'm gonna do, it'll be the easiest, the best reachable, and the least amount of bodywork." She put the smaller camera back and turned to the main camera again. "So we have a plan here, folks. Now we can tear into that quarter panel, and I'm gonna cut it out in small sections so I can see what's behind it. With this big dent here, I have a feeling we may see some damage to the inner structure. However, this is the worst side of the car, so once we get past this, it'll only look up. Let's get to it, shall we?"
Once again Missy put on the pair of large ear protectors and the safety glasses, put a new cut-off wheel on the angle grinder and leaned over a bit by the rear wheel opening. Throwing sparks and dust, she cut a sizeable rectangle around the wheel arch, pulling on it, making some more small cuts in a few spots again and eventually peeling away the part of the quarter panel over the wheel arch and folding it down. It remained attached in two spots where it was also spot-welded to the front lip of the wheel tub behind it, and after a bit of pushing and wiggling, the light yellow mousette decided to just leave it and took one of the smaller cameras again to pan along the crusty outer wheel tub and the creases and folds in it.
"Right! As I suspected because of that large dent, this outer wheel tub got a great big whammy in it, and as you can see here, it's rotted along the edge as well, up here at the top of the arch and down there in both corners. It's... ehhh... it could be worse, it's repairable, but I'm not gonna bother. I have replacement parts, so again, why make things harder on myself?" She leaned up close to the side of the car's body and brought the camera closer while running her fingers along the upright lip at the top of the wheel tub. "It's spot-welded here to the inner tub, that's easy enough to drill out. Down there at the back... looks like it's spot-welded to the trunk drop, I can drill that out as well, and we already saw it's spot-welded at the front corner there to a lip on the rocker when I replaced those, so that's already loose." She ran her fingers along the surface of the inner wheel tub as well and tapped at several small spots. "Thank goodness this inner wheel tub is undamaged and silly solid, I can leave that in place. Because look here, these spots in a triangle shape here, that's where it's welded to the trunk brace, up here the package tray brace is welded to it, here a floor brace is welded to it, and here as well. That would have been a pain to separate and re-weld, and these factory spot welds are much stronger than the plug-welds I would have to use to weld it all back together. So we have a plan again; I'm gonna drill out the spot welds and just replace the outer wheel tub. Good! Let's see what other structural damage we may have, because I did notice some discrepancies when I took out the inner rear panel and the regulator for the side window on this side."
First, Missy cut through the two spots where the folded-down section of the quarter panel was still attached to the outer wheel tub, so she could take it off and it was no longer in the way. Then she slowly and carefully cut upwards right along the edge where the quarter panel folded over to the door aperture, right along the edge where it folded over towards the side window, and then in a random line down towards the section she had already cut out. With some pulling here and there and another light pass of the grinder over a spot or two, the front section of the quarter panel came off. Missy tossed it aside and took the smaller camera again to get up close to the side of the car's body.
"O-o-o-kie-dokie! Here we are looking at the inside panel of the car. The regulator for the side window goes in this pocket, and it's a weird long sort of hockey stick shape because the side window has to dip down like that first and then sink into this pocket when you roll it down. We can see here there's a slight crease in this inner panel, which I noticed when I stripped the interior, but it's not bad at all. I can easily hammer that back straight... in fact, I think I can just..." She reached around the door aperture with her left arm and pounded the inner metal panel with the palm of her left paw a few times. "Yeah, there we go, that'll do. Nice and straight again. I wanna bet, judging by the damage we found so far, that this car was not T-boned, but the fellow mister Stewardson bought this car from went fishtailing quite spectacularly one time and fishtailed this side of the car right into something big, wide and solid. A just hard enough knock to cave in the quarter, crinkle the outer wheel tub and lightly crease some of this inner panel, but not hard enough to push in the whole inner structure or dislodge any of the bracing. That's good news, folks! The damage looked quite spectacular when I hacked off all that filler, but it's not as bad as it looked, not by a long shot! Whooo! Win! Let's see what we'll find under here behind the wheel well. I'm thinking we won't find much, because the trunk floor looked fine, I didn't see any weird waves or creases or crinkles in there, so it seems like this wheel tub took the brunt of the impact."
She started cutting again, from the rear corner of where she had already cut around the wheel opening towards the back, and carefully right along the edge down to the indent where the rear bumper wrapped around the side of the body. It took a few extra swipes with the cut-off wheel at the rounded end of the panel as it was spot-welded to the trunk drops and rear upright and valance, but eventually Missy managed to pull the rear section of the quarter panel off the car's body and toss it aside, once again taking the smaller camera to get up close.
"Yeah, happy days folks, this is what I hoped for and what I kinda thought. All of this looks straight and intact. That really cements my suspicion that the previous owner before mister Stewardson fishtailed this car into, quite likely, a wall or something, and the wheel tub took the brunt of the impact. That's great, that means much less to repair! Now let's look at that spot of rot up there."
Taking the other grinder, the vanilla-colored mousette started grinding away the paint and primer over the crusty spot with the hole in the deck filler panel, just below the curved lower corner of the rear window channel.
"Okay, that's not as bad as I feared," she remarked, running a fingertip over the exposed bare metal. "It doesn't go all the way up to the window channel, so I can cut right up along this edge here and then jog over up there to get to that factory seam, cut along that, and then down about half an inch shy of the drip rail along the back of that side window. Okay, alright, I think we have the shape of our final cut." She took a marker and drew a line along the back edge of the quarter panel, then straight across the back towards the corner of the rear window, and straight up towards the outer edge of that section, plus another line straight across to meet up with the seam over the side where the quarter panel and the roof skin came together. "This is what we'll do, straight lines are easiest to cut and to weld. Let's go!"
Standing up straight and leaning over a bit, Missy started on the next cut, following the curved back edge of the quarter panel up to where she had marked the line, cutting straight across the deck filler panel towards the rear window opening, and then straight upwards and along the edge of the window channel. She cut straight across to the side of the car's body again when she reached the second line she had marked, put another new cut-off wheel on the grinder and cut along the seam in the sail panel towards the rear side window. When she got there, she held the grinder upside down so the body of the machine faced the opening of the side window, allowing her to keep one finger against the drip rail and cut downwards along the rear edge of the side window at a consistent width away from the drip rail until she reached the cut she had already made over the side of the car.
With a bit of tugging and pulling and a small swipe with the cut-off wheel here and there, the panel came loose and Missy tossed it behind her, setting the angle grinder on the roof of the car. Leaning in, she ran her fingers over the inside panel, reached through the side window opening with her left arm to tap against the inside of the inner panel here and there, jerked her right paw back when she cut her finger on the sharp edge of the cut she had made in the quarter panel and stuck her finger in her mouth.
"Ow, dammit! Well, that's great, the car drew its first blood. Now I'll only have to cry during some point of the project and it will have literally cost me blood, sweat and tears. Anyway! This is all looking good under here, nice and straight and solid, just the regular surface rust, so I'll clean this up a bit and spray it with rust reformer, and a weld-through primer when that's dry. The weld-through primer's not really necessary, but I like to take that extra little step to give a bit of extra protection to the part of the car that you'll never ever get to normally. I'll drill out those spot-welds on the outer wheel tub as well so I can pull that off, but first, it's way past lunchtime and my tummy is almost making more noise than that grinder, so I'm gonna have something to eat, and I'll see all you folks back here at the car in a bit!"
Counting to three in herself, Missy shut off the cameras and the lights, patted most of the dust and rust and grime off herself, stopped by the first aid kit to put a band-aid over the cut in her finger and a strip of painter's tape over that, and walked out of the large building and into the main garage building while unzipping her light yellow coveralls. Up on the mezzanine over the toilet and office, she stripped off her coveralls and hung them over the railing, shook her naked self shortly, took some time by the small sink to wash most of the grime off her paws and fix herself a simple lunch of some sandwiches and a cup of instant soup. Calmly munching on the sandwiches and alternating bites with a sip of soup or a sip of fruit juice from the bottle she had taken from the display refrigerator, the vanilla-colored mousette leaned back on the old fake leather sofa, lightly petting the fluffy Maine Coon cat Salmon who cuddled up in her lap. The food eventually gone, Missy crossed her arms behind her head and propped her feet up on the low table between the sofa and the two old arm chairs, dipping back her head and closing her eyes.
Being self-employed was quite a luxury. Especially in a country like Minnaluna, where the weather, the climate, dictated that many breaks should be taken to not overheat and over-exert oneself. And not having a nine-to-five schedule set by a boss meant Missy could take as long breaks as she wanted and work as long into the evening or even night as she wanted. Still, she was diligent about it; it was all too easy to loaf about and waste time being lazy, and being as active a mouse as Missy was, she didn't enjoy sitting still and doing nothing for too long a time anyway. But a bit of loafing was alright, and it was good to relax and recharge one's batteries before getting back to some hard work; it let one look at problems with a fresh view and tackle work with a fresh vigor.
Plus, Missy had her own personal alarm clock. Just before she dozed off into a nap, Salmon put her forepaws on Missy's chest, reared up and lay a soft raspy lick over the mousette's petite nose pad while tickling Missy's face with her whiskers. Blinking open her eyes, Missy let go a light giggle and softly stroked the fluffy cat over the head while pressing a little smooch on the top of Salmon's muzzle. After a good stretch and running her paws down over her fine, sleek pastel yellow fur, Missy got back into her light yellow coveralls and went down off the mezzanine to walk back to the frontmost large building on the right side of the garage.
She did turn the lights and the cameras back on, but didn't speak to the cameras this time but just got on with the work she had to do. With a wire wheel in a cordless drill, she cleaned the surface rust off the inside panel that had been exposed after she had cut off the entire left quarter panel, she blew out all the dust with an air hose and sprayed the inside panels with a spraycan of rust reformer. Within a minute or two, all the rust had turned a deep purplish black in color, and Missy took another spraycan to spray a thin layer of a greenish beige primer all over the inner panels.
While that dried, the vanilla-hued mousette changed the wire wheel in the cordless drill for a spot weld drill bit and drilled out all the spot welds holding the outer wheel tub to the inner wheel tub. It took some forceful persuasion of a hammer and a large chisel to separate the two halves, but eventually Missy could pull the outer wheel tub off and set it aside. The semi-gloss replacement outer wheel tub was fitted, aligned and clamped into place after the mating surface of the inner wheel tub had also been wire-wheeled clean and sprayed with rust reformer and the greenish beige weld-through primer, and a few quick zaps of the welder filled the holes with solid plug welds to secure the two halves of the wheel tub together. Missy didn't even bother grinding down the plug welds, as they would never be seen anyway and there was no sense in running the risk of weakening them.
A bit of trimming removed the excess metal from the replacement quarter panel, and Missy fiddled about for over two hours putting the panel on, pressing on it here and there, taking it off again, grinding along the cut edges, putting it on to fit it again, pushing it this way or that, taking it off once more for some more grinding, putting it back on, over and over and over again until she finally had the fit as perfect as she could get it.
"Whoo!" she puffed at the main camera, holding the replacement quarter panel upright on the floor. "That is always such a time-wasting dance! But be patient, folks, take your time, because this is where you can screw yourself over for the whole rest of the build. As tedious as it is, take your time, step away and do something else for a while if you have to, then come back and take your time again until you have the best fit you can possibly get, with all the body lines and panel gaps lining up right. If you take your time to do this part right, it will make the further bodywork so very much easier. Now..." She ran her finger along a stamped step in the top of the sail panel part of the replacement panel. "As you can see, there's this step here. You slide this up under the part of the sail panel that comes down from the roof, it's to give you a nicer and easier fit and something decent to weld to when you put this panel in place. And..." She turned to the car and maneuvered the replacement panel in place again, shuffling it about and smacking it with the palm of her paw and pointing out several sections. "As I said, you slip that step under that upper part of the sail panel, and as you can see, I drilled some holes in that upper part so I can plug weld through those as well as do a stitch weld all along the seam. Back here, it folds over these parts of the rear valance, the bumper filler panel and the trunk drop, down here it folds over and kind of clips over the underside of the outer wheel tub, and I've drilled holes in all those lips to do plug welds, because of course I don't have a huge car factory robotic spot welder. If you get all of this correct, like this, you'll see that it lines up here, it butts up nice and proper to the rocker here, it fits tight all along the wheel tub here in the trunk, this rear window channel lines up, up here it butts up nice and tight to that seam, and it's nice and close all along these edges where I cut it, without too much of a gap. All the coating is taken off the edges and those lips and that step so I have nice clean metal to weld to, so let's clamp this in place, give it a few tack welds, do a last fitment check and then let's buzz this whole side of the car in place!"
Pushing and sliding the replacement quarter panel millimeters this way or that until it all fit perfectly, Missy used several clamps and vice grips to secure the panel in place, zapped a tack weld in some key spots and ran her fingers over the panel again, pressing and pushing lightly while she checked the fitment. Finally satisfied with the fitment, the light yellow mousette put her welding helmet and gloves back on, sat on a small rolling stool and leaned over to first weld the rocker panels solidly in place, then stood up and made her way all around the edges of the quarter panel, first doing plug welds in the holes she had drilled, then welding all along the edges in inch-long sections to spread the heat as much as possible to prevent the panel from warping; an inch on the edge right behind the door opening, an inch on the edge alongside the trunk, an inch along the seam running across the sail panel, an inch alongside the drip rail over the side window, over and over and back and forth constantly.
Almost another hour later, the whole replacement left quarter panel was solidly in place and all the welds were ground down flat and smooth. Missy took off her welding helmet and gloves and wiped her grimy forehead.
"Phewww! Boy that gets warm! But there we go, folks, that's this side of the car done! Well, mostly, I still have to measure and drill the holes for the trim pieces, but heckity, that's tomorrow Missy's problem. Right now it's dinnertime, so I'm gonna get me something nice to eat, and when I'm back I'll do the other side and those bits of the rear valance and the filler neck opening, but that will be a timelapse because I'm not gonna talk but I'm just gonna get it done. So see you back in fast-forward after dinner, folks!"
One, two, three, and she shut off the cameras and the lights. A little time was taken to collect the cameras and bring them to the office in the main garage building so she could set all the SD cards to transfer their files to the external hard drives of the editing laptop, to splash some water into her face and wash her paws and to change her coveralls for the shirt and pair of shorts she had put on that morning. About half an hour was also taken to drive her yellow 1975 Mini with the black and white checkered roof into town and park it on the small parking lot next to the cozy little diner run by her good friends Patty and Harvey, where Missy enjoyed some cheerful smalltalk and a delicious dinner of tender and juicy beef salpicao with a ball of garlic-infused rice and an assortment of stir-fried vegetables. The silver and white hamster man Harvey was an amazingly good cook, and he prided himself on his unusual and exotic recipes for such a small diner.
Back at the garage, Missy swapped her shorts and shirt for the light yellow pair of full-body coveralls again, set the cameras and the lights back up and continued her work on the bodyshell of the Chevrolet Chevelle. She cut out the square of metal with the large round hole in it behind the flip-down rear license plate holder, where the fuel filler neck bolted into, and welded the replacement one in place, she ground down and cut out some rot holes around the trunk latch, cut patches and welded them in, she ground down the few small rot holes along both sides of the roof line, cut patches, welded them in and filled a few tiny holes with puddles of weld, she ground down and cut out the rot holes in the front cowl below the windshield pillars, cut some patches and welded them in, and also ground down the pillars and zapped in some spots of weld to fill in a few small pinholes.
The passenger side inner and outer rocker panels were cut out and the new ones tack-welded into place, and Missy worked until close to midnight to cut out sections of the passenger side quarter panel, trim the replacement panel, drill out the spot welds of the outer wheel tub, remove it and weld in the replacement outer wheel tub, and fitting, removing, grinding, fitting, removing, grinding some more, fitting, removing, tweaking, fitting, removing, grinding a bit yet again and fitting the replacement passenger side quarter panel, and eventually welding it and the rocker panels solidly into place.
Dusty, grimy, sweaty, with small scorch marks in her sleek light yellow fur from the welding and tired but still surprisingly upbeat, Missy eventually leaned against the bodyshell and smiled at the main camera after taking off her welding helmet.
"Holy cheesedoodles, it's tomorrow! But check it out, folks!" She gestured at the bodyshell with her paw. "All done! Not bad for a full day's work, huh? Now, I still have to modify the front fenders, front upper valance and the hood, but for that I need..." she pressed the tip of her index finger against her temple, "...a sharp mind and steady eye, and right now it's midnight, I'm tired, I'm seeing spots from all the welding, my shoulders are killing me and Salmon has been complaining at me for the last hour or two over all the activity and the noise, so for now it's beddy-bye time! I'm gonna go home, have a shower, a drink and a snack, and drop into bed like a sack of potatoes. When I'm all fresh and bright-eyed and sharp-minded again tomorrow, I'll tackle those fenders and such, and I may even show you the work I'll be doing to them. And then of course there is all the bodywork I'll have to do to make this car nice and smooth and ready for paint, but that's for the next video! So stay tuned, thank you all for following along, tata for now, and see you all next time, right here at Mousie Motorworks!"
One, two, and three, cameras off, lights off. Missy puffed out a deep breath again, ran a paw over her face, collected the cameras and brought them to the office to empty out their SD cards onto the editing laptop's external hard drives. Still, the vanilla-hued mousette made a calm round through the disassembly and metalwork hall to do some cleaning up, put the tools away, load all the pieces of metal she had cut off of and out of the car's bodyshell onto a small pull wagon and bring them over to the back of the premises to toss them into the dump bed of Greta Green, the green 1964 Dodge D500 dump truck that served as the dumpster for scrap metal. With all the tools put away, the floor swept, all the lights switched off and all the doors locked, Missy could finally undertake the more than twenty-minute drive back to her house a bit past one o'clock in the morning.
A quick drink and a snack in the form of some cheese - she loved being stereotypical as a mouse in some regards - and a shower later, Missy flopped down onto her bed naked, stretched out with a content groan, rolled over onto her side and was asleep in minutes. It most certainly had been a very long but very productive day!
