Projects An Amateur Chops a Brookville Coupe & More

Great work so far. Will be watching this one.

 

Here is the work done to the A pillars to get everything lined up. The outer A pillar and door opening sides didn't need any major work, they lined up at the cut line. I was expecting to have to make cuts here to get all those corners lined up. You have to be sure the edge that meets the door stays straight and inline with the door edge. Here is the drivers side.

And the passenger side.

The front of the pillars needed more work. You can see on the drivers side that the upper piece doesn't match the lower at the cut line. This piece has to be pulled forward. I made relief cuts on the flanges at the top and ground out spot welds to free up the piece and pull it forward to match the lower part.

Here is the passenger side. I used a stud welder and slide hammer to pull the pieces out so the cut lines match.
In these photos at the windshield opening side you can see a vertical seem between the front and rear pieces. There is a second layer of metal inside. On the Ride in Steel website pictorial, they removed more material on the A pillar to gain access to this for welding. I didn't think this was necessary. I cut a groove in the outer layer at the weld seem as was able to get full penetration weld through both layers. The A pillars were not fully welded until the roof stretch, sail panels and door chop were finished. Just in case adjustments were needed.

 

Looking good so far.

 

YEE HAA!

 

Nice job!


Walt
Outsiders CC

 

Nice job!


Walt
Outsiders CC

 

You got skills,,,,and balls.

 

Next step, stretching the roof. The roof needs to be cut and moved back to line up the door opening at the hinge area. I started with the driver side and left the passenger side uncut. This kept the roof section from getting to floppy while I did the driver side. I installed the chopped interior wood to hold the body shape and to add support to the roof line.

Now I needed a filler strip to fill the gap. I've used homemade dies to stamp parts in a shop press for the 55 Chevy that's in my avatar. You can see examples of that at my Picturetrail site through the link below. I decided to try this method to make the filler strips. I found a piece of wood in the shop that is as hard and dense as a rock to use for the die.I traced the roof outline at the cut onto it and cut the profile in my bandsaw.

I used it to make these.

Well it's a start. A trip to the sheet metal break and I wound up with this.

This piece matched the roof cross section perfectly, it only needed to be tacked in place. The passenger side should be easy right, just make the cut and tack a piece like this to fill the gap. Not exactly, I made the roof cut on the passenger side and found that the profile at the drip rail was very different.

Don't know what happened here. Were original 32 coupes made this way and Brookville just copied it, who knows.
I stamped out another strip and made a radius die for the brake to make the rounded nose bend.

This piece was also a very good fit. Here it is tacked in place.

Before any work was done on the car, I made roof profile templates for the driver and passenger sides and also the roof front and back. I used these to make sure the roof contour did not change from the "stock" look.

Tomorrow I'll post pics showing how I reinstalled the sail panel pieces.

 

It's more important to have more patience than both of those combined.

 

Bravo...steady as she went....

 

Very nice. Not surprised that the body is different side to side. I found the same on my Brookville ‘29 roadster body.

—louis

 

Wow very cool. Keep posting the progress.

 

Time for the sail panel piece to go back in. I trimmed the panel down so that it would overlap the surrounding metal by about 3/8". I used lot's of clamps to get a nice tight fit.

I used a scribe to trace the main body sheet metal outline onto the inside of the sail panel pieces. This was the final cut line. I trimmed the pieces close to that line. I trial fit these pieces over and over again, filing and grinding a little at a time until I got a nice tight fit all around. I used 2" long strips of sheet metal with 1/8" holes for the cleco fasteners to grip onto to hold the pieces in place flush with the main body for fitting and tacking.

All tacked up. I was real happy with the nice tight fit. This will make the final welding much easier. I used my mig welder to do the tacking, but I will be tig welding the rest to end up with a small bead that will be easier to metal work any shrinkage out of.

This is the seam where the sail panel meets the rear window center section. This was originally a lap joint with just a few spot welds holding it together. I decided to make this a butt weld instead. While I was trail fitting the sail panels, I marked where the lap joint needed to be cut. This left a little of the lap joint step still on the back window section. I hammer and dollied this edge to be flush with the sail panels. The butt weld joint will be much easier to metal work.

 

Hell of a fit up of a difficult piece!

 

Thanks Gordon, That took a long time to get a fit like that. Less filler metal while welding means less warpage problems to work out later. Worth the effort.

 

Those clamps are bad a** did you make those yourself looks like some of them where custom. Your chop is looking awesome.


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I made those. I just used regular Vise Grip 11R clamps and 1/4" x 1" flat bar to make um bigger.

 

I like those...might have to borrow that idea.

Great job by the way...I'm thinking you can remove your amateur status.

 

Wow great job. Thanks for sharing

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

 

A member here informed me that the picturtrail link in my signature wasn't working. We found the fix to that, and I changed it so people can actually see all the photos of other work that I have done. The correct link is www.picturetrail.com/bcap55.

 

I'll post photos of the finished sail panel area and a couple other things later tonight. Stay tuned.

 

Stopped by to see your progress.
Very nice work. And you're a good teacher. Thanks!
2 interesting things to me. I'd never seen it before, but it's obvious why removing the outer portion of the A-pillar makes a lot of sense. Excellent. Same for the sail panel...remove it and now your dealing with panels (sides and rear) that are contoured in nearly only one plane.
Enjoying your thread. Taking notes.

 

“Amateur” needs to be removed from this threads title

Looks great

 

Compared to pros Like Flop, Bob Walden and others of their caliber I still consider myself an amateur at chopping a top. This was my first attempt at this, the pros would have had it finished in less than the ten months it took me. I would never attempt a difficult chop like on a 49 Merc.

 

Some folks here are interested in the extended vise grips I made, so here are some pics incase anyone would like to copy them.

Geez why is that photo so big

 

Checking the roof contour with the templates before final welding.

All welded up.

That's a lot of weld seem to hammer and dolly to get any warping out of. I bought this planishing hammer at an auction, although it doesn't look big it's to heavy to man handle and use on the car. I welded up a smaller frame out of box tubing and was able to use it as a hand held planishing hammer. This made it way easier to planish the welds and smooth out the seam.

 

Outstanding. Beautiful chop and multiple tool tech pieces and we're only 2 pages in.

 

I have a relative that is an amazing guitarist. He thinks he is average cause Stevie Ray Vaughn is better
Just because you feel someone is better doesn’t mean you are substandard
It does push your skills which is a good thing

 

Nice job and write up

 

I knew something was up with this amateur when I looked in the background of the pictures. Amateurs rarely own APEX grinders. Nice work and a nice shop. Thank you for sharing.