The Canuck Restoration Thread

OK - so I thought I should finally admit that the car is off the road and I'm starting on the body work. Despite being in the occasional bit of promotion for IPD and almost winning the vintage photo contest a couple of years ago, the body on the car is not great and I've been going to do this for a long time. I usually arrive at car shows, pop the hood and then no one notices the three colours of white or the panel fit .

Last year one of my neighbours decided to put a crease in the nose of the car and not tell anyone



I noticed something amiss when I parked...that crease wasn't there before.

Ouch.


Did I mention that my nose piece was perfect before? Note the back side of the grill - this is going to be a bitch to pull.




The chrome on my grills started to peel (hard to find a good chrome person) and the front bumper needs attention.

I'm just planning how I'm going to spend the cold winter months this year. I started collecting parts a few months ago as this car has a number of issues that may not be worth my time to fix. The Canuck suffers from gaps that are very 1960's and the car was not finished very well from the factory. There are major variations in panel fit, but from all the cars I've inspected, mine is pretty typical of how they should look.

I can't stand gaps that are big enough to toss a small animal through :lol . So here's the start. The hood fit is terrible. It doesn't fit front to back or side to side very well, let alone up and down. I've got to pull the fenders as I didn't use the correct seal material (which is butyl tape) when I sprayed the under hood area, so I can adjust them a little.

Have a look. Here's the side view...fender needs to come up, hood needs to come down??



The fender can't really come up as it then wouldn't line up with the door as can be seen here.



So the hood has to come down - there are adjustments on the hood, but I'm pretty much maxed out. My idea is to slot the hinges a little more and fiddle with them. My only concern is that the hood fits the cowl just fine (check out that gap )

On to the drivers door - passenger is fine, isn't that always the case! I've tried everything and this damn door won't fit the hole :wak
Here's a side view (fine at the top, bad at the base).



From the top - the top of the door does sit out a bit (shim top hinge).



From the side - the top back side of the door frame almost hits the drip rail, while the front has space. I picked up two undented and unrusted doors - we'll try to fit them up when the fenders come off and see what happens.



Here's the hinges.

Top hinge.



Bottom hing - fender has to be removed to adjust/shim.



Door latch - fully in as far as it will go.



The trunk has been driving me nuts for years...



The front of the trunk lid doesn't fit very well and if I try to adjust it down further then it bottom of the lid hits the body work...more cutting and welding?

Here's the side gap - doesn't fit at all (on an old gasket), hinge adjusted full down.


I picked up a new trunk lid - we'll see how it fits then I'll hit is with a new coat of code 79 when it is all perfect - and I like my bodywork straight and perfect.

So that's the body - no big deal, just lots of work.

List of things that I'm also doing to this car includes:
1. Shaved wiring (because my battery exploded and wrecked my underhood )


Using a Ron Francis wiring kit and weatherpack connectors everywhere - all wiring is getting tossed and the new will be hidden. Goofy HID headlights are going and good old halogens are returning to the headlights.

2. Replace rear window as my whiteblock oil pan sort of took care of the old one (get stuff secured in the rafters).


3. Fit new fuel tank as the old one is leaking and pretty much done (sender crapped out finally) - working on that right now. Will have the filler in the passenger tail light.

4. Make the rest as pretty on the outside as it was/is underhood and underneath. Smooth seams and make all the panels fit. Get some more chrome work done/redone, new dash layout just some mild customizing.

5. New leather interior - (summer if I'm lucky). Sticking with a rusty red colour. Debating if I should change out my tan carpet set and mats for black. The more I say it, the more I like it, but that's a detail and I've got some bigger fish to fry before this has to be decided upon.

Stay tuned for updates.

Tuned.

Have that same dent. People!

nice car!

I'll update the thread with some more details in a bit...I've fitted the new trunk lid and beat the heck out of it to make it fit. And I just ordered my gauges for the custom dash.

Subscribed. I just picked up a 122 and she has a broken nose as well.

I have two Amazon's, and both have the same bump too.. It seems that it happens all the time. But I wonder if anyone has witness it happening, or is it always a matter for surprise.. LOL This one is just a bit lower, but dead center, and tweeked the grill area.

Canucks FTW.

Subscribed!

I want an amazon now

what kind of air filters are on your SU's?

The air filters are Billet Specialities Ball Milled units with K&N filters.

Ok, so I've had some progress. I'm busy working on fabricating new bits and parts but haven't had a lot of time as I'm parting out an old Jag that I had hanging around (bad kitty_bad kitty). So on with the show. I'm not going to show all of the surprises because that would spoil the fun, but here are some teasers.

I finally finished the fuel tank ends and other parts done last week.

Here's the fuel pickup/return (return will be capped for the time being).


Fuel sender mount.


Tank end hammer form and 10 gauge blank. You can see the sharpie marks in the background where I annealed the metal before whacking it.


Had to cut the ends as there was no way to get the metal to shrink that much! (but I did try)



Finished end caps. I still have to weld in the baffles and put it all together - but have to finish working out the filler first.







Then the new custom gauges came in this week. Not going to touch them for a while, but I'm stoked with how they turned out. The tach has shift lights and red line LED's that are custom set.



The gauges are from Speedhut and come with all the wiring and senders!



Price was pretty reasonable. You select all the aspects of the gauge (text font, extra text, custom backgrounds, needle colours, bezel shape and colour), all work with stepper motor controls and should be a really nice addition.



Check out the mount depth! - so slim.

You're crazy! Love it. Do you fab for work?

Pictures of how much you had to cut? Looks really good so far. Going to coat the inside of the tank?

klr142 said:

You're crazy! Love it. Do you fab for work?

Click to expand...

Yup - aside from the whole professor gig, my research often involves building crazy robots and crap like that (usually for your military).

NONHOG said:

Pictures of how much you had to cut? Looks really good so far. Going to coat the inside of the tank?

Click to expand...

It was an odd shape given the curves. cut one to fit then made a template and did the other 7 corners. I didn't take pictures of it - when I get rolling, I usually forget to snap a few shots.

I'm unsure about the inside of the tank. It is 5000 series aluminium, so is corrosion resistant by design. I'm going to powder coat the outside and will probably slosh some epoxy tank sealant around inside as I hear that blended fuels can eat tanks pretty quickly. I've also got a shield for the leading edge of the tank - before someone tells me that aluminium tanks are dangerous - I'd bet that I could put a stone through the stock tank before harming this one.

Are those formed caps the top and the bottom, or the sides. If they are the bottom, could you form some ridges in it with a bead roller or something, or do you think it will be rigid enough? There is a giant dent directly in the center of my tank.

F13ND said:

Are those formed caps the top and the bottom, or the sides. If they are the bottom, could you form some ridges in it with a bead roller or something, or do you think it will be rigid enough? There is a giant dent directly in the center of my tank.

Click to expand...

They are the ends of the tank. It's 10 ga (so 1/8" thick) - kind of hard to roll a bead in these things! There will be a scatter shield on the leading edge of the tank - the tank also has end to end baffles out of 10 ga inside welded in. I would say that it is many, many times tougher than the stock tank. With the baffles, there will be no flat surface with more than 10 inches without support. It's very rigid - have you ever played with a stock tank? They are tin foil thin and very flexible.

I'm aware by the dents both in the bottom of mine, and in the top from things in the trunk. Can't wait to see the finished product!

OK - so the GPS Speedo is going to be ordered soon and I needed to figure out the dash warning lights. I almost jumped too soon at the warning strip offered by New Vintage Gauges, but they were not exactly what I wanted and the price was a little much to have them custom done (about $200).



So I toyed with the idea of hacking up a 240 gauge cluster, then decided to go with simple black bezel warning lights from the UK. Seems this is the only country that offers proper lights (no cheezy made in China LED's for this build). Bought individual turns, oil, battery, high beam, and a blank green for my OD light.





I'll take some pictures of the other work that I'm doing this weekend.