Latch Tray Support

[pettybird]

... but they did do the blackout on Daytonas...

How did CE handle the latch tray support?  did they selectively grind into the paint on the core support to attach the strip, or did they weld through it with the welder turned up?  I know it wasn't done well but I don't think I have a pic of that.

[hemigeno]

... but they did do the blackout on Daytonas...

How did CE handle the latch tray support?  did they selectively grind into the paint on the core support to attach the strip, or did they weld through it with the welder turned up?  I know it wasn't done well but I don't think I have a pic of that.

Good question, and I can't actually say for sure.  I know in other areas where they had to weld (e.g. window plug), they did use a grinder to get down to bare metal before welding.  It's a little hard to tell how they handled a particular car without removing the spotwelds and looking at the top of the core support for grinding marks.  As with a lot of things with Creative Industries, it may vary from car to car - depending on the mood of the worker assigned to that task.

On my car, Vance chose not to remove the latch tray support - it's the original one.  Once you remove the spot welds, the piece is pretty well junk.  So, it's a tradeoff in that if you remove the tray support and refinish the area underneath it, you end up ruining the original piece and are forced to fab/install a reproduction.  We decided to leave mine alone, so I don't have a picture of what lies beneath my latch tray support.

Rather than clutter up the Joe Ward thread, I'll split this topic off on its own so we can kick it around a little further.

[pettybird]

that's cool.  I thought you might know as you're taking your car down to its elemental level!

[BigBlockSam]

weld through it with the welder turned up?

on some restored orig cars i've seen . it looks like they just welded it on , hot , and  then sprayed it with black spray paint.

[hemigeno]

Rene, you're 100% correct about the black spray paint - it was applied after the piece was spot-welded into place.  Weirdly enough, there are a small number of cars whose Latch Tray Support was left unpainted.  David Patik at one time was guessing that 1 in ten cars' support was left in bare metal.  Mine was one of those cars, so that's the way we're leaving the support bracket (bare metal finish/look).

[FJMG]

Someone already removed the support before I purchased the car and evidence of the welds are still there. As for grinding marks, I used paint remover to remove the layers of paint through the years (since the 70's) and it would be pretty impossible to prove if any the grinding/sanding marks (that were not obsured by corrsion) are from creative or from previous owners who painted over everything. One thing that is obvious is that the weldor at creative started on the pass. side and proceeded to the dr. side but stopped for coffee just past the center. The last 45% of the rad yoke still had the original paint on it and no evidence of welds of any sort! I'll try to post a pic later.