Projects My fleetline re-do

It has been quite some time since I have posted here. I thought that since I had some extra time, I would stop by and show off what has been going on with my fleetline. I have extended the quarters 5 inches in the bottom, and 21/2 on the top to give them a slight slant. When I did that, I had to make a splash pan for it. The first time I made one, it was in a bit of a haste and just cranked something out to fill the hole. I was never happy with it an decided that I should take the time to actually make a proper one.

My first step was to take the old splash pan I had made and trace it onto a piece of plywood from some crating I had.

What I did next was to lay a piece of vapour barrier left over from insulating my garage. I traced the pattern onto the vapour barrier with a sharpie. I poked holes over my traced lines every 1/8th of an inch to serve as transfer marks.

Using magnets to hold it to my 18 gauge sheet I transfered the pattern to the sheet metal and basically played connect the dots.

After I had my layout I installed my step dies into my crappy (but useful) bead roller. I could only do this piece in halves because the throat is not that deep.

I took this opportunity to check my work.

I would have really liked to tig weld this piece, but right now my old mig will have to do.

After some grinding and a quick fit, I watnted to figure out where my body mounting flange would be.

I followed the same process as above, screwed the flange to the body and cut and welded all of pieces to fit.


After tack welding together, then after body work. I used fender welting from the VW shop down the road from me, it added a nice finish. If anyone is interested I can do a thread on my tailights too

 

Great job and thanks for the step by step pictures.

 

Thanks Fat47!
I also want to add a few other things I did. I brought the body back down to bare metal. I didnt complete alot of rust repair my first go round (I was too excited to drive the car!) One of the things that bothers me about the 49-52 chevs are the fender skirts always looks "stuck on" they dont come far enough down about 1.5 inches higher than where the body sits. The original reason for this was the roll in the body, the fender skirt would hit the tire if it followed the body. To me, it doesnt look right, so I decided to do something about it.


In this picture, you can see I added about 1.5 inches to the bottom and added a lip with some 1/4 inch round bar as a moch up of what I wanted to do.before I cut out the inside of the skirt I had taken a piece of vapour barrier and layed it overtop of the skirts and suck a magnet on it. I traced it out with a black marker, then made a grid on the plastic. Over the grid I took a profile gauge and marked what the profile of each intersecting line of my grid was on the X and Y axis. I then transferred my pattern to a piece of 18 gauge sheet metal and cut it out with lots of extra meat. I then ran ith through the planishing hammer with various dies to make the shape and profile I wanted.

I completely cut out the rest of the bottom of the skirt leaving the frame inside to weld to. The very edge of the skirt along the lip was rolled over using the edge of a spoon and my favorite hammer. Then it was cut to match the inside cuts of the skirt and tacked in place. I fit it to the car many times to check the fitment of it. When I was satisfied I skip welded and ground it down.

In this shot, you can see the fitment I acheived with these skirts. You can also see the bottom of the quarter front I had replaced and the spot welds on my rocker I replaced as well.

 

I get asked alot about my lake pipes. I also wanted to add where I got them from. Well, I didnt get them from anywhere except the parts store, a mail order company, and the chromers! SO! Here is the adventure in making my lake Pipes!!

I looked for a length of ripple pipe forever, I came accross it in the moon catalogue on day. I decided to order it and I admit, I paid way too much money for it. But, hey, pay for play. I see other places making it as well, for cheaper now. When I got the ripple pipe in my hands, I went on the hunt for bends that hade the same ripple appearance to them. I came accross this one day at the discount automotive parts store in the exhaust tubing section. The crappy bends they offer have a consistant ripple on the insides of the bends, PERFECT!!!!!!

I layed my 90 degree bend, the ripple pipe and the 45 degree bend on the floor to see where they would look good. I cut 2 pieces of exhaust tubing at equal lengths as a test for the drivers side. I layed it out on the floor.

A pice of 1/2 inch plate was tacl welded to my old motrcycle lift/welding bench. 2 inch angle was then tack welded to the bench to hold the ends of the ripple pipe flush and some c-channel was welded to the bench at each end to hold the bends so they were paralel on the ends. When everything was lined up, 4 tack welds were done on 4 sides of each and then checked for squareness.

once I was satisfied, all of the galvanizing was ground off and the pipes were placed between some jack stands, finish welded and ground down. They were then fit to the car and some brackets added to mount to the car.

 

Nice work... my only complaint is bigger pics!!

 

Thanks Chadillac! I would love to Post bigger pictures, but I am pretty techno illiterate, wierd considering I'm 33.....

 

Very Kool, love your attention to detail.

 

Like the pipes....how much to chrome them? Also where ya finding rippled pipe?

 

Thank you straykatkustoms.
Loveoftiki, where I am caroming is expensive, it cost around $700.00. Plus about $150.00 in material to make them. The ripple pipe came from Moon.

 

Love it. Great work on the skirts, you are very right about the OE skirts being too short.


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Your car is sexy, but you are sexier!

I can say that hotflint's car rules! Cant wait to cruise with him this spring.

 

Thanks canada Jeff!

Dee_soto <3 <3! Come check it out any time! I'm going to try and debut at the Calgary world of wheels