With the cold Michigan winter coming soon, (along with the salt), I desperately need to get some things taken care of.

There are five major problems that I need to solve very quickly. Four of them are rust related.

The bottom of the rear quaters are rusty, as well as these spots:





I need some repair panels that I can weld in and primer for the winter.

The fifth thing is the choke thermostat. Does anyone know the OEM part number or NAPA part number for the '71 slant?

Thanks for your help and idea's.

Those rusty areas are not the ones that would scare me.....

The ones that scare me are the ones in frame rails of the unit body.

Im reluctant to tell you this but your car is prolly terminal.

The good news is that you dont actually need to fix them.

In your case I would use the "Duct Tape and Roller "method.

Tape over the rust holes with high quality duct tape......not the cheap Chinese stuff....the professional grade.

There is stuff called fibre glass tape that can be used to reinforce if you want to get fancy.

Just tape it up and paint a nice matching cover coat.....

Somatimes I use spray undercoat if things look a little rough,,,,then painter up!

This car was a classic case of 2000lbs of duct tape and paint ....and about 700 lbs of metal and glass:

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

Wow. I'm not really sure how to respond to that...

I don't think repairing a rusted panel using duct tape would be considered, for lack of a better term, smart. Or safe for that matter.

For others who are serious in their replies:

I would like to find repair panels to weld in. If I have to make my own, I will. I would hate to piece in sections, rather than weld in a complete repair panel. But again, I will if I have too.

There are only a total of five bad spots like that one that are rusted completely through. I had the car on the hoist at work and the underbody is almost mint. By "almost," I mean there is a small hole in the frame (size of a nickel) that I welded shut, grinded flat and repainted using primer and underbody coating. Otherwise, the rest of the car has an 1/8th inch of undercoating and is rock solid.

I do things the right way so that I don't have to fix the wrong ways in the future. I plan on keeping this 56,000 mile car for many years to come.

To my knowledge there are no "off-the-shelf" repair panels for those areas, so you're probably looking for someone to cut those areas out of a parts car. Good luck in your search.

as said before you will have to make the metal needed to repair or find a decent donor car -- for the parts--- as for the rust in the trunk area -- you could use a product called por -15-- that would fix that area for some time --
those inner doors/upper frame area-- that is a major repair that will require some serious skill--
good luck--

I agree with Sandy in the respect that those are serious cancer spots and I'm pretty sure you won't find any patch panels readily available to buy over the counter. These type of repairs are very difficult due to the complex curves and tight corners. On the other hand, repairs with duct tape and glass are just silly. C'mon Sandy, we're all grown ups here. Lets repair our steel like real men. I say if you feel competent with a welder, some tin snips and a grinder you should just tackle it one repair at a time. Get it as smooth as you can then seam seal the crap out of it. Finishing is up to you but you have to cut all the rust out. Good luck.

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The fender patches you can make yourself from sheet metal. Those are all flat shapes that can pretty easily be bent from sheet stock. It is kind of like building a cardboard box, except you use metal instead of cardboard.

I have done this many times. Start out by cutting the rust away, and make patterns from card stock like that in cereal boxes. Then transfer this to metal and cut it out with a cut off disk in an air tool. Try to figure out what kind of single piece can be bent to the shape needed. It takes some doing, but it can be done with mostly hand tools.

But I do agree with Sandy. The rust in the door jambs is really serious. It would take a professional to cut out all the rust, and build repair channels of some kind to weld back in. That is a major support area for the entire car. You can cut out the rocker panels yourself, and see how serious the damage is to the underneath structure, but that looks really bad to me.

As far as the fenders are concerned, I am a real advocate of cold repairs. I don;t like to weld if I can avoid it, because welding distorts your nice panels with the heat, and starts rust again because of the flux in the joint. What I prefer there is to use flush pop rivets from Eastwood, and panel adhesive from a body shop supply shop.Drill it for the pop rivets then apply the adhesive and rivet it into place.

Let this set up, and then make your first coats of filler fiberglass based since this is water proof, and will not wick water from the inside through the pop rivets. After this is all sealed up, you can then use standard bondo to do body work on top of the fiber glass. This car shown in the signature down below has body work on it such as I described, and it looks good, and has held up well.

Sam

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One thing to keep in mind is that primer is water-permeable, so you don't really want to shoot metal in primer "for the winter"; you'll just make more work for yourself. Prime them, sure, but then hit them with any decent actual paint for the winter. I like Krylon semi-flat/semi-gloss/satin (can't recall which term is used) black spray paint for general purpose protective painting like this.

Original style chokes are getting tough to find for the '70-'72 cars. And the choke cup gaskets are NLA--common leak point! I keep meaning to do something about the gasket via the Australians who make the good manifold gasket. As for the choke itself, you can try a search on www.rockauto.com to see if anything still comes up (search for a 1971 Valiant first with 225 then with 198 engine; the choke thermostat for these two are 'different' but completely interchangeable. I prefer to install one of the Electric choke kits.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I didn t mean to diss your car. I was trying to be honest and helpful.

Yes you can make metal patches for that area. .....but it wont be easy.

My experience is that cars with the kind of rust your car has are 'on the clock". My suggestions were based on the idea of getting the most out of your wheels before they expire.

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

Install a block heater to keep yer coolant at temp during the winter. I used to run the heater over night to keep the warm are circulating.

Now for your rust holes. Look up POR-15. They have kits that you can use wire mesh to put in the holes and seal the lot with POR-15.

It will hold thru the winter and you can patch panel it in warmer weather.

Making you own panels is the only way to go. You need to give lots of beer to a bodyman to help you out.

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Thanks for the good advice guys. I'm an experienced metalworker dealing with motorcycle restoration for the past 7 years. As a matter of fact, here are pictures of my latest personal bike, my Harley VROD:





This is a bike that I did all the metalwork on. If you're a motorcycle guy, you'll notice that the rear fender actually used to be the front fender.



So anyway, I'm not afraid of metal work in anyway and would prefer to reconstruct the panels my self if needed. I was just looking for an easy option to a tedious job.

Getting ready to do some cutting, welding and leading this weekend. I'm uber excited since I haven't been under my welding helmet in a long time. I can't wait to fire up the ole TIG welder for a little fun. Time to crank the Alice in Chains in the shop and dig in!