So, my winter car (1991 Acura Integra sedan) is a piece of rusty junk. I need to take my project DA off of the road in about a month and I need a car to replace it. Rather then spend a few thousand on a winter beater, I decided to rebuild my 4 door teg.

So, I bought a welder, taught myself to weld (enough to get me by), bought tons of body supplies and jumped in WAY over my head. I took the last week of work to get a head start on my project. I have over 120 pictures just from last week. I'll seperate them into a bunch of posts and get them up as quick as I can. This whole project is far from done, but I need to have it complete by the end of October. So you can expect frequent updates once I get this post up to date. Here's what I have managed to accomplish so far...

It started with the trunk lid. It was in bad shape and needed lots of work. I know I could probably buy a new lid for cheap, but I'm trying to learn and this was a good place to start. A few years ago, I shaved all of the emblems and the key lock with fiberglass... so I cut out all of the glass and did it the right way with new metal. 8 patches later and I lot of time I have a nice looking lid...


This trunk lid was BAD shape. This picture is about 20 hours in, I just forgot to bring my camera.


Here is a picture I made to show where I had to weld in patches. There is also 3 patches welded underneath... but there is no more rust.


These 2 spots were huge rust holes. I cut them out, cleaned everything up underneath and welded in new pieces. The one on the left has a final coat of filler on it where the one on the right has long strand filler on it and still needs a lot of work.


Long strand filler sanded down and roughly shaped.


Evercoat lightweight filler added, it's much easier to sand down.


Final sanded, primed and ready to roll.


The underside of the trunk lid is now done. No more rust and lots of new metal. Big improvement.

 

Day 2... it was time to work on my sagging rear bumper. It was VERY bad. In fact, instead of removing ANY bolts, I just pulled the bumper off by hand. It came off in a shower of rust....

Normally, this would be a big problem, but I have a few spare supports laying around. Here's how I fixed the problem...


Here is the old bumper support.. this is where it mounted to the car. I don't think this would have done much in an accident LOL


This is a spare 4 door rear bumper I had lying around. Lots of surface rust, but nothing structural. I hit it with a wire wheel and then some rust converters. Only problem is, there's no upper support...


Here I have a spare 2 door bumper. The have a different main support, but the same upper support. So I have to make one bumper out of two...


Here is the upper support cut off of the two door bumper...


Two door upper support welded onto the four door main support... after this picture I painted the whole thing, inside and out with rust converters and then with a thick cost of rubberized undercoating. It's not perfect but it will last a nice long time and actually serve it's purpose :bigup:


Rear bumper cover and valence both primed and ready for installation.


Here is the rear of the car put back together (still lots of work to be done under the bumper, so it's just hanging for now).


Shaved trunk and no more bumper sag. Looking better already!

 

Day 3 was all about fixing up the hood. There were two bad rust spots and lots of dents and knicks. It turned out quite well...


Washed the hood with degreasers and took all of the trim off.


Here is what I had to work with...


Big rust hole where the emblem used to be.


These were covered with duct tape for the last 3 years... I am not sad to see these taken care of finally LOL


Here is am cutting out the rotton metal.


Rust is all cut out and the insides were treated with rust converters.


Painted everything inside with weld-through primer...




Cut out and prepared patches for all of the holes.... cleaned up the edges and primed the back of the patches.




Tacked the patches into place...


Then I welded everthing up. Big improvement but still a lot of work to do...

 

Welds all ground down.


Added some filler and got everything back to razor straight...


Ready for the first coat of primer.


Primed and blocked. Spot putty in the small defects... almost done.


Final coat of primer.


What an improvement!


Looks a lot better without the duct tape...


Top of the hood is now done...

 

nice, looks good so far

 

Day 4 was the underside of the hood, the front bumper and a few other small things.


Nothing but surface rust under here and it doesn't need to look "perfect"...


So I just ground down all of the rust and sprayed it with rust converters.




Got everything cleaned up and sanded down. Gave a few good thick coats of high build primer.






Next up was the hood hinges... ground them down and cleaned them up.


Hood hinges primed up and ready to go.

 

Front bumper scuffed and prepped. Ready for a coat of primer.


Front bumper, lip and hinges all primed up and ready to install.


Mirrors scuffed and prepped.


Everything mocked into place...

 

Day 5 was for fixing up the fenders and finishing up the front end.


Fenders removed and getting prepped. They weren't too bad... just some surface rust inside and small dents.


All of the rust inside was ground down and sprayed with rust inhibitors.




Next was a good thick coat of undercoating.


There was some surface rust on the front frame pieces, so I ground them down, doused them with rust killers and then gave it a good coat of undercoating.





Both sides fixed up and ready to reinstall the fenders.


The second fender was prepped in the same way as the first...


Then both were undercoated and set out to dry for a bit.


While those dried I ground down, sprayed and undercoated the radiator support. Doesn't have to be pretty, this is all covered up and just needs to hold up against our salty winters.

 

Fixed all of the dents and dings on the fender and put it into the first coat of primer. I spot puttied all of the small defects and then blocked it all...


Here is is blocked and ready for it's final coat of primer.


Just got done laying down the last thick coat of primer.


Both fenders all fixed up and ready to install.


Front end basically complete. Starting to look like a car again. :D

 

Looks good mang...Keep us updated!

 

Next up was a really bad area... the trunk floor, inner fender and wheel arch on the rear driver's side. It's ALL rotten. This whole process took a couple of days and still isn't done...


This is probably the worst spot on the whole car...


I cut out all of the rotton metal...


I doused everything that was left inside and out with rust inhibitors.


Then I started welding pieces in. I don't care one bit if this looks good or looks "stock". I just need it to keep moisture out, hold up my bumper and pass inspection... I think this will do just fine.


New pieces inside... welded in and then coated with automotive seam sealer inside and out.


Once it all dried up I sprayed it with undercoat. Not pretty, but functional.


I found a BIG rust hole covered in bondo that I never even knew about. By the time I got done cutting it out, I had quite a hole to fill...


A few hours later, some head sctraching and cursing and I had what almost looks like a wheel well... still a LONG way to go, but a good start none the less.


Not bad for not knowing what i was doing LOL


I coated all of the welds inside with seam sealer and sprayed undercoating up there before I closed up the inner fender.


A patch of all new metal in the inner fender. Welded in, seam sealed and eventually fully undercoated.


This is how it stood on Saturday night.

 

great work so far
really looks like your taking your time doing it right

 

your work is amazing, good luck with the rest of the rebuild

 

I snapped some quick pictures on my lunch break yesterday to show what I got done on Sunday. I got in a ful day of shaping and sanding, but forgot my camera home. It's still far from done, but at least it looks like a fender now. Not bad for having been created out of nothing by someone with no experience at all...


The lines aren't perfect, but it lines up perfect with the bumper and it's getting close around the door frame.


It's getting there, still needs lots of shaping, but it looks better then it did.



I still need to do the dog leg and part of the rocker panel, some parts of the inner fender and a few spots on that quarter panel... but the worst corner of the car is almost done. The other side is bad, but not THIS BAD. Then there are a few spots inside the door frame (can be seen above) and one spot on the roof... another couple weeks and it should be in a paint booth

 

Super job for first time work . It's looking good. Reminds me of my cousins 85 accord back in the day, it was rusted through EVERYWHERE.

 

That gets you all completely up to speed. Not bad for one week of work by someone who has never even welded before. Now that I'm back at work I can only work on it EARLY in the mornings and on weekends. There is still a LOT to do, but I'm optimistic that I can knock it all out by the end of October. Other then the body, I need to throw some fuel lines, rear brakes and probably a few other small things on it to pass inspection and last the winter.

I'll keep you all updated

 

nice work, lookin good so far

 

you're an inspiration to us backyard body men. Keep it up

 

Wow, you got skills!

 

Good work man!!!

 

Well, on my lunch break, I unloaded the doors I picked up yesterday in Moncton, NB. I drove for 15 hours to get these things, but I got a good price. It's all in great shape and I'm very pleased with everything I got. Hopefully I can knock all four of these doors out tomorrow and have them primed and hung without too much trouble. After that, I'll probably do a few small spots on the roof and pillars. It will be nice to do some of this easy work before I dive back into the quarter panels, dog legs and rockers. Wish me luck! I'll post up all of my progress when i get back to work on Monday


Doors unloaded from the vehicle. It was a LOT harder to get them all in there then I thought it would be...


These doors ended up being in great shape. I'm very pleased!


On my doors, this area was rusted to pieces.... a couple of these are mint and the rest need very little work!


Little bit of surface rust on the far corner. Other then that, perfect!


These new doors will save me hundred of hours....


One of the two areas that needs a little attention. Not bad at all...


The second spot that needs work.


New moonroof assembly. Little bit of surface rust on the glass frame... but NOTHING compared to what mine what. This will be a big improvement!


Small rust bubble under the molding. Won't be hard to take care of at all...


This one is fresh... barely any work to do at all. Just a skim coat, block it and prime. I'm very happy!


This door is also very good. The inside corners need a tiny bit of work, but the outside is great!


This door WAS great... but cramming them all in the vehicle managed to dent/scratch this one pretty bad.


Decent dent/scratch... but this won't slow me down much. I'll take small dents over major rust ANY day!


Box of random parts and sensors that I needed.

 

Cool build up. In for more updates.

 

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by EFSedan#6 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Cool build up. In for more updates.</TD></TR></TABLE>
looking good

 

Really incredible work. I love seeing real progression threads like this