<VV> A reason to worry?

[Mark Durham]

Mike, is right. If you get movement with his test, and I'm thinking you
will, then you need to find the weak areas in the body and strenghten them.
A good start would be to get real repro floor panels and WELD them in. Make
sure the car is on a flat surface when you weld them in place, or your
doors may never fit right again. Those panels may lay flat but still
provide rigidity to the actual frame by preventing it from flexing.
Remember this is a unibody car, so the unit as a whole provides the
rigidity, not just the frame portions along the lower outside rails.
Unibody cars rely on the whole package to do the safety job, you cannot
rely on the rail box (frame) alone.

If your search finds lots of rust in the frame of the car, (look everywhere
you can) its time to look for another rust free body (from the west) and
build it up. Because when frames begin to flex like this, they become
suseptable to damage from road conditions that they normally handle OK, and
become dangerous to drive. The car could become uncontrollable, over time.
I saw a older little Toyota pickup driving down the road that the frame was
so rusty it flexed or bounced up and down. I knew the owner and asked him
about it. He said he knew it was that way and had just felt the pickup do
something odd while carrying a small load, and figured out it wasn't safe
and took it off the road.

Mark Durham

On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 8:36 AM, Michael Kovacs <kovacsmj at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

> Worry, maybe. I'd jack up one corner of the car and see if the gaps on the
> dpprs
> have a significant movement. How are the rockers?.
>  MIKE KOVACS
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Chuck McKinley <cmckinley313 at verizon.net>
> To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Sent: Thu, January 3, 2013 11:19:16 AM
> Subject: <VV> A reason to worry?
>
> Every so often while I'm driving my '63 Monza 900 coupe, I find that one
> of the
> doors has popped slightly open (~1/2 inch). It can occur to either door
> about
> equally. When I slam them shut, it seems to be OK for the moment. This just
> happened to my driver-side door when I made a sharp right turn at walking
> speed
> in a parking lot. I'm wondering if that's symptomatic of a dangerous level
> of
> frame flex. Is there a simple test I can make to decide whether this is a
> terminal condition such that I should finally retire at least the body of
> the
> car?
> I can add that the floor pan is full of holes of various sizes and is
> patched
> several places with sheet metal pop-riveted through the original floor
> metal -
> not welded anywhere.
> I just did a simple-minded trick of opening the door, standing on the
> rocker
> panel and basically jumping up and down several times. I did this on both
> sides
> of the car and nothing broke, for whatever that's worth. I weigh about 180
> so
> it's probably not a very good stress test.
> Advice is welcome, as always.
>
> Chuck McKinley
> '63 Monza 900 80 hp  3-speed
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