How to remove a trunk lid skin?

[3 Chiefs]

Hi folks. I was wondering what you guys who restore old cars would do with this trunk lid. It's a 1970 GTO I am rebuilding. It's not a restoration as nothing is original. Its my car. I have owned it since 1987. My goal here is to eliminate every piece of rust and use little to no plastic filler.
What I would like to do with this trunk lid is separate the skin from the inner structure and replace the rust with new metal, sand blast it and paint both inner pieces with epoxy primer and then fold the flange back down and place small tack welds where the original tacks are.


Here is the back of the lid.




The flange with a few of the tack welds visible.




This is the extent of the rust. The keyhole area is undamaged even though it looks bad in this picture. This lid is not too bad. I have four of these lids and this one is the best.

Has anyone removed a skin and reinstalled the same one back on?

Anyway that is what I would like to do. I don't care about how long it will take or how much work it will be. I just want to do it the best way possible. If it is something I should try, your tips and hints would be appreciated.
If you think its a bad idea, please tell me.

[Kerry Pinkerton]

Paul, funny you should ask that question. Today, I happened to be near the Horror Fright store with some time to kill and browsed around. Got some little stuff like a 5 LED light that clips on a cap bill.

Found a door skin plier that looks like it would work fine. It's in the shop. I'll try and get the part number tomorrow. It was only 6-8 bucks.

Keep in mind I've never removed a door skin...

[3 Chiefs]

Kerry I have that exact tool. It looks like it will work fine. I just don't want to mess up the skin opposite where I bend the flange back. I know that if I do this I will slowly open the flange in small increments back and forth. Easy does it and don't kill the metal, right?
Thanks

[Michael]

The first thing you need is a spot bit to drill out the old spot welds. Second make friends witha body man. I always start with old damaged hood and deck lids for donor material. Most of the time I can find one with the crown i need . That will give you a really good start on your project. I think I would hammer form a new flange and only have three welds instead of four. Hope this helps.

[lone*star]

Paul,

There is a fair chance the fold will crack when you re-fold it back over, maybe not all of it, but you will likely get some areas let go.
Heating the edge with a torch and cooling it will minimise the cracking, at the expense of panel distortion.
I made an edge lifter tool to open up the edge, I will post a photo later.

[CARS]

Last week a new customer dropped off his '65 GTO. A great long story of why it ended up at my shop, but lets talk shaping.

A previous shop split the hood skin from the shell and blasted both pieces. Could I fix the warping that occured? Sure, but time is money and different panels aren't that hard to come by.

I would find a 5th trunk lid (rust free from AZ) if I was you. Save the challenges for something made of unavailiuman

[Marty Comstock]

I concurr with Chris, however, if you are dertermined to do this, locate all spotwelds and centerpunch them nicely. Then procure a rotabroach and drill your spotwelds being careful not to go through.

I use a number of different picking spoons, usually made from old brake spoons, screwdrivers, whathave you to get thet lip to pop up. I reccomend the use of a torch to soften the areas by the spot weld hole because it is now weaker and wont want to unfold nicely.



This is the tool you I reccomend, more durable than other less inexpensive ones I have used.

I have used these at Gators meet and was impressed, they are good for certian applications.



Let us know what you do, and good luck.

Marty

[3 Chiefs]

Well I pulled out one of my bad trunk lids for practice. This goldish one is not going to be fixed so I experimented with it.

First I cut loose the small tack welds. Then using the door skin tool, I opened up the flange.


This was my first time removing any type of skin and I did some damage to the outer edge. Maybe this could be flattened out when the skin would be reinstalled. I don't know.


Here are the two separated.


Here is the inside. I find it sad that the General never put any type of coating on the inside of this structure. Today GM does much better with coating unseen areas but back when this car was built they did nothing.
Also I was not expecting the gummy adhesive product that also kept these two halves bonded together. It did hold up all these years and I had to stick a long pry bar in there to break it loose.


What I learned?
It wasn't very hard to get apart and only took about an hour.
I didn't like the damage to the outside skin edge.
There was even more rust in there than I thought there would be.
I think I will leave my good trunk lid together and just cut the rust out and make a patch.

They do reproduce this trunk lid but if I buy new parts I don't learn much.

[CARS]

You'll still learn something from making the patch, so don't feel like your taking the easy way out!

Last winter I had a '67 Impala with the back of the trunk lid rusted out. Much worse than your goat lid. There is alot more shape in these trunk lids than it looks like. And trying to metal finish a weld with no inside access.... fun fun fun.

edit Oh ya. Be greatful that they have all that "goop" inside between the skin and shell. Mopars don't and they are the floppiest p.o.s. Block sanding a sheet of steel that just oil cans naturally (not the right word but you get the idea)sucks. I have actually drilled holes in the shell and filled with panel foam to stiffen it up. Not the spray foam insulation you get from the hardware store. That stuff eats steel.

[Kerry Pinkerton]

Paul, have you thought about just making a new skin from scratch? Clean up the inner panel, paint with POR15, install new skin....