A PILLAR REPAIR

[FATBOY]

Who has done this repair using a nos repair section. im about to start this repair and was wondering if there was any traps along the way i should look out for

cheers fatboy

[mcl1959]

fatboy, never had the luxury of a NOS section, but you will find some surprises under the A pillar.  There is a whole inner section of the A pillar which extends to about 4 inches under the sill panel and is always badly rusted away.  It is also attached to a cage section which acts as a crush tube for the outer subframe bolts.  It too will be pretty badly rusted.
If you are starting with a NOS A pillar you may have this crush tube or may not.  However IMHO you should rebuild this section before you put the pillar on.  Also it will be much easier if you put the sill on after you do the A pillar repair (assuming you are putting a sill on as well.   If you are leaving the sill in place it will be pretty hard to replace the section under the sill.

Regards   Ken

[FATBOY]

ive got new inner sills as well as outer sills nos .Will be doing the outer sill first so that we can get the new a pillar section in i will take some pics of the a pillar repair section so u can see what it has on there

cheers fat

[mcl1959]

I don't think its possible to do the outer sill before doing the inner sill.   The way I see it, you need to brace the door gaps, remove the inner and outer sills, and the bottom of the A pillar.  Then replace the inner sill first, replace the bottom of the A pillar next, followed by the outer sill.

Ken

[FATBOY]

the a pillar repair goes all the way to the dashboard ive got a pick of one in my van build up

[mcl1959]

Yes I saw your pics of the NOS stuff - very good pick up indeed.
However IMHO it would be more trouble than it is worth to replace the whole A pillar.
Problem being that you lose the door gap setting and hinge points.
Also it is quite difficult to unpick the entire panel and then clean it up and reweld when the metal you are replacing is perfectly good (except for the bottom bit)

As bad as it sounds- it may be the best solution to just use the bottom of the pillar and leave the rest of the pillar intact.

Ken