Technical Rust on a hood seam

I am needing advise from the more experienced members here that have dealt with restoring body parts with Rust.
I have a 1950 ford hood that has a crack and what appears to be "crumbly rust" on the outer seam. Pics attached showing area on hood highlighted. How would you address this? I have limited tools and experience with this but am open to any suggestions.

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback

 

You could have it blasted by someone that knows what they are doing and see what is left or save the $100 bucks it would cast and put it toward a better hood. There was one for sale a year ago on our classifieds for $100 but it is sold now.

 

Best bet is to find another hood,that area is hard to fix,not impossible but a PITA.By the time that is cleaned up it will be a lot bigger,and more work,maybe show it to a body man and see what he says.Harvey

 

Since you have limited tools and experience, best bet is another hood. It can be salvaged by cutting out the rust and welding in new metal, but as previous- a PITA.

 

It would be a great piece to practice on. The odds are you will end up buying a different hood, so you really don't have anything to loose.
Cut it at the seem and at the curve with a cut off wheel, be sure to wear eye protection, gloves, and hearing protection, and be careful not to bind the cut off wheel as your cutting. Once the piece is removed, look at the back side and be sure you have all the rust removed. Cut off more if you have to. Clean up both the inside and the outside edge to shinny metal on both of the cut off edges. Be careful, the sharp edges will cut through your skin before you know it. Use a piece of cardboard (the material canned beverages comes in works well) and make a pattern of what the new piece will need to be. Transfer that pattern to a piece of metal to form the patch panel. You can probably do pretty good at bending the patch panel by clamping one edge onto a bench with a 2" x 4" and gently bending the overhanging metal. The idea is to get the patch panel as close to the correct form as you can. most of the guys here want the weld seams to be butt welded, I prefer to step flange the edges, its much easier to weld, but you do it the way you want. If you step flange the joint, you will need a step flange tool.

Then clamp the edge away from the seam to the hood about every 3" - 4" along the edge. Put a tack weld on each side of the clamp. You want to do this the entire length on the one edge of your patch panel. Once the whole edge is tack welded, move your clamps to the mid point between the tacks splitting the 3" - 4" in 1/2 and repeat the tack process until the whole edge is tack welded. Then split the large gaps again, clamp, and repeat the process. When you get to the point all your tack welds are about a 1/4" apart the clamps are ineffective. At that point, you change the process a bit.

With the tacks 1/4" apart, wire brush the entire tack welded edge until you get the shiny metal again. Now you put a tack midway between two existing tacks, then move 3 spaces and do another tack until you have cover the entire weld. Wire brush it again, and put a tack between the next set of 3 open spaces until you have the entire length tack welded. Then wire brush and fill in the 3rd set of open spaces.

From this point, you wire brush between each round. Now you should be able to close up the remaining holes, but you need to skip around so you don't built too much heat in any one spot. Your tack welds from here on probably need to be spaced apart at least an inch. Wire brush whenever you can't see if there are holes because you need to fill all the holes.

Once completed, you get to repeat the entire process on the seam edge. When your all done, a flap disc on an air sander should clean up the welds. Do not let the metal change color while your sanding the weld, if it starts to change color, stop until it cools off before starting again.

Remember the hood is junk, so you can't hurt it. Have fun!
Gene

 

Thank you very much Sir; your response was exactly what I was hoping garner from my post. If you take a close look at my original picture; you can see that its leaning against another hood. I have another hood but I was looking to try and salvage this one if possible and the best way to do that. Incidentally; I went ahead and blasted the area. It looks like the outer skins is what is rusted through but the support bracket behind it is still solid. I appreciate you walking me through step by step. I will definitely be giving it a try!


Thanks again!

 

I'm not sure how long that piece is, but I might suggest that instead of trying to do the patch in one piece, it might be easier to do it in 2 or 3 pieces about 10" to 15" long each. The shorter pieces are easier to keep straight. If you do that, install one piece then do the 2nd one. Gene

 

I was actually thinking the same thing..Thanks again for the guidance!

Sent from my SM-G950U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app