Finishing up the scooter fender.., Marked for trimming... Tipping wheel to set the side flange.... Profile comparison, front to rear... .....and side to side... about ready for shipping to AZ..... .... and Kyle is dressing some welds and weld touch up to get the body ready for media blasting... Hey. you can still walk in this place...
Not much to show, still working on grinding welds and filling pin holes... A good testament to using Tig or O/A welding Also welded up/shaved the upper firewall seam.... Lesson for this evening is to watch welding around stuff mounted JUST BEHIND the firewall!
Well, more welding, grinding, and then we decided to give the roof insulation removal a try. Picked a spot and dumped on some lacquer thinner, which softened it up nicely and then made a sticky mess. So we put the putty knives aside and tried the paint scrapers..... without solvents. Dry removal was definitely better... Also got another shipment of shirts in from Bonehead Graphics... and promised the owner a modified set of spot welder tips to tackle his own wagon roof repairs...
Well time to finish up Randy's scooter fender(s). The original (rear) had been loose at some point as the fender mounting holes were nice and elongated from flopping around. So I'll get them filled in and Randy will need to match drill them to the frame.. Use the right tools for the job :headscrat After marking, when cutting out such a small piece I like to leave a "handle" until the very end.. ....gives you something to hold onto while fine tuning the fit Nice and snug.... Tacking in the filler piece... Next was to trim a nice radius on the front and back ends of the new front fender.... Last on the list, the forming process with the old fender left some "pie crust" edging, as seen here and in an original photo... So we needed a special tool in order to duplicate this feature... Spacing all marked out.... Finished edge... All ready for delivery!
WOW! Even adding the factory errors! That's some dedication to fabrication. I really appreciate all the effort and explanation on the steps of your processes. Thanks.
Thanks! Kyle was off tonight so I missed getting some in-process pictures.. Still cleaning up welds to get the body ready for media blasting. The rear brackets for the gas tank straps were welded in... I also worked on the passenger quarter this evening. One of the biggest problems with welding a horizontal seam down through the middle of the quarter on a car is the tendency for the seam to cave inwards.. I had some help this evening using the Watervliet hammer and a 24" radius die.. Still have some highs and lows to address, but the weld seam is back out close to where it should be, and the Atlantic Ocean has calmed quite a bit.. Next was to remove some creases in the cowl vent, seen here... Looks like someone may have kneeled on it at some point in the last 60 years. I've found the easy way to "highlight" the area in need of repair is to use a piece of 80 grit on the back side: Got the creases out using the body hammer with the chisel tip, and forgot to get the finished pictures. Next time...
Here's the top side of the cowl vent..... ....using this hammer.... the marks on the back side show where the strikes were placed to remove the creases... Kyle has the inner roof insulation about gone...
Our enclosed trailer has the white wagon wheels that always seem to turn rusty in a few years, so I have been trying different wheels to see what might work.... These are some late model Mustang wheels, the hub hole would need to be opened slightly, but the offset was, well off. Perhaps on a fancy trailer with more stainless trim, but these just looked too much. Next, some plain Jane Ford Ranger wheels.... Much better, correct offset, and no wheel modification needed. Just need to change up the color and add some stainless trim rings. I do have some bright orange, some bright red, and a few other colors in the paint locker.. Some before and after media blasting.. Two down, two to go, and then we'll get some SPI epoxy on there for some rust preventative measure. Can't get it all done in one night. And more weld grinding and other prep work on the wagon continues. Since the big cleanup in preparation for the class in the shop earlier this month, we haven't been able to find our quarter panel profile template, so Kyle made a couple of them, one for in front of the rear wheel, one behind, and we've been working on the weld seams and doing some metal bumping to minimize our stock in filler products. Drivers side is looking much better than it did last week, still about another day to go and the quarters should be good for epoxy primer..
Stopped by my brother in law's and took delivery of the rotisserie for the frame, he had been using it for his ElCamino... And Kyle cut some adapter angles out of a piece of 4 x 6 tubing... Well, we didn't get pictures of the funny part. Kyle and I loaded the frame in the trailer and headed off to the local car wash to remove the grease from the front cross member. We had quite a few stares and a couple horns honking as he pushed the frame around the car wash parking lot and I was sitting on the frame rail, maneuvering with the Jr. steering wheel. We found the tire presoak and a wire brush does wonders for the engine grease. The car wash attendant did not look too pleased, but never said a word. Back at the shop, bolting the adapter plates onto the frame... You can see in the above picture we used 1-1/2" long spacers to get a better access for media blasting the frame.. Disassembly starts.... After a few revolutions and a bit of air pressure, we had quite a pile of 60 year old dirt.. Override springs from the era. The handyman wagons were often used as work vehicles, and this option helped with the heavy loads... All stripped....
Had an early Chevy hood side show up at the shop tonight, the owner wanted a couple different versions of louver samples made up that he could hold against the hood on the car to better visualize. One style he was looking at lends from an early Alfa Romeo that extends the louvers onto the cowl, as shown in the green tape.. We took a paper pattern of the details so the hood side could go back with him to use as a pattern for the opposite side that still needs to be made. Spot welded on some "end stops" for the louver die..... .....and a squared plate for the back gauge. Louvers in the Lennox..... One sample down, one to go..
Hell and Snakes! Those louvers look fantastic! You make it look easy, I guess it helps with the right tooling.
Hot damn Robert, that looks great! Did Cody come down too? Are you going to make flat louvered panels and let Cody weld them into the sides, or are you going to punch the actual sides he made?
David said Cody is working on something else right now, at least until he gets the car back to him later this week. He wanted two styles made up as samples so they could hang them on the hood sides and see what flows better. He said Cody didn't seem too keen on louvers on the cowl, so this will give him a better visual of the two options before actually punching the hood sides. Unfortunately in keeping louver spacing, louvers on the cowl also mean that you'll have louvers awful close to edges of panels (as simulated with the green tape louvers above). Even though the back edge of the hood side is a hemmed edge, I would worry about cracking with not that much meat around the last louver. But hey, you have to admire the dare to be different attitude! For the cowl panel we'll do a small panel separate from the hood side. If he does end up with that version, that part would get cut out and welded in, the hood sides that Cody did will be punched regardless of version. I imagine he would come down to the shop for that part of the evolution...
Shortening the height of the louvers in the cowl area so dramatically doesn't flow very well. Maybe keep their height consistent with the arc the rest of the louvers follow? Or start the height change further forward.
Thanks for the feedback. That was some of the styling cues he was taking from the Alfa Romeo. Ultimately the final call will be between Cody and the owner, but I will pass that on. And for you guys who missed this car at Jalopyrama (myself included), I can say in looking at the hood side (that had two welds going the length of the panel) that Cody does absolutely gorgeous work. All gas welded with nothing visible on the outside and barely noticeable on the inside, as one would expect with gas welding. I see him very busy in the future...
Is this the same Cody that did the 59 wagon ? If so I saw it at LSR this past April . Spoke with him for a while and is a nice young gentleman and great craftsman .
Yes, same guy. I met him last year at Jalopyrama, one of the nicest guys you'll meet, down to earth..
Well FedEx showed up today with a CL delivery, got a matched pair of 48" linear rails. The two bearing blocks will have a material clamp bolted to each block, and used on one rail. We'll get a chance to try it out on the second louver sample. Where we had been manually holding the workpiece against the back stop, this should work better with a simple glide back and forth once clamped in place.. While I was getting that squared away, Kyle was removing some scraps that were left on the frame from the original trans crossmember. He also removed the spot welded guides from the louver panel. The good part about samples is we can see what works well and what doesn't. Here we can see that we won't use spot welds next time as it's too much clean up. I think we'll give some stainless rivets a shot on version 2...
The more I looked at our panel with the spot weld carnage, the more I disliked the result, so with new linear guides installed, we made all new today using stainless pop rivets to hold the guides in place. This will leave a few 1/8" holes to fill, but should be much less issue than cleaning up after the spot welds... We needed just a bit more throat for this set of "lengthened" hood sides, so one bolt was removed from the material clamp and then rotated the clamp inward 90". This lets the panel pass through rather than bottom out in the clamp. Guides riveted in place.... Here's the new version 1, much cleaner, less distortion, and we can re-use the guides... The cowl piece was done without guides.... And version 2 with the cowl piece..... Dave (the car owner) stopped by this afternoon and picked up the samples, and indicated he was being over-ruled by most parties on louvers in the cowl, so likely that version won't be used...
Now, in the interest of showing the good with the bad, the lessons learned if you will, Safety tip of the day is to deburr your sheet metal even if it's only for practice pieces....
Tonight we worked on the frame, used some poster board to make a pattern for a strengthening plate to span the pocket kit on each frame rail.. While Kyle filled in some frame holes by plug welding to the pocket kit, I cut out the frame plates... And the shop vacuum is about on it's last leg, it leaves behind about as much as it picks up. For anyone at DYSON or SHARK vacuum that would like to send a test sample, we can sure do a stress analysis on your product..
You vacuum your shop floor? Now I know where I went wrong as a child. My shirts still get dirty rolling around on the floor after I sweep. Thanks again for sharing in such great detail!
The Jalopy Journal
