Rusted metal cut out, and new metal formed and welded in. These battery boxes are a bit small for a modern 12V battery. The car was originally fitted with two smaller 6V batteries connected in series to get 12V.
6V batteries are an obsolete technology now, but I repaired the battery box to original dimensions for sake of originality. I'll figure out some way to fit a 12V battery later. Maybe a compact lithium battery will fit.
There are a few damaged areas below that will need fixing. Left-side battery box is rusted out at the bottom. The forward leaf spring mounts have worn egg-shaped. Those will get welded up and resized. And there's a dent in the frame rail that I'll need to massage out.
I had already gotten a lot of the udercoating off while the car was on the body cart. What remained ws just too difficult to get to lying on my back. The remainder of it is easy to get to now. Which is a good thing because this is the greasyest mess of oil soaked tar undercoating.
Original primer was mostly there and the metal was in really good condition. I went ahead and stripped most of the old primer to get a good surface for adhesion when the new finish goes on.
I set up the 10' x 10' Harbor Freight 'portable shed' as my sandblasting and pain booth. All the rotisserie bits got two coats of black epoxy 2K primer.
Painted and fully assembled
It works, yay!
The rotisserie is done. Mostly. I still have a couple details to finish.
Need to add springs to the rotation lock pins, and need to find a few
working heights where I'll drill holes in the vertical risers to add
locking pins. Don't want to just rely on the hydraulic rams to hold the
position.
Yeah, still working on the rotisserie. Took a lot more work than I thought, but just about done.
Had to wait for a bunch of parts to get laser cut, then back to welding. Parts are all sandblasted first to clean the metal for TIG welding.
More parts.
And lots of welding.
Made a few changes to the design, mostly to get a decent size caster under the front. After the first trial fitup it had an off-level tilt. Turns out the height of the casters wasn't exactly as advertised. Fix was to notch the front mounting up by 1/2"
Now all welding is done, and trial assembly.
Disassembled and sand blasted - ready for paint. It'll get a couple coats of black epoxy primer tomorrow. Then maybe I can get back to actually working on the car...
