Projects '36DD - (My Double Duty 3-window build.)

Thanks Outback!

Once again, not as much progress to report as I would have liked, but I have made the necessary incisions and am on my way to piecing the roof back together.
First off, I cut 2 1/2" out of the most vertical section of the rear window and raised the lower portion up into the roofline.


Then split the roof just in front of the factory 'overlap' seam.


Began cutting thru' the A and B pillars...


Removed the front section of roof...


Then using a small diameter cut off disc, trimmed around the base of the rear pillars, just above the suage line.


And lifted off the rear roof section.


Then I had one of those 'What the hell have I done?" moments


Once I had removed the 'excess' pillar material, I (with the help of my assistant)set the roof portions temporarily back into place...


And checked out the new profile. My 'assistant' (13 yr old daughter Charley) shown here for an idea of scale - she's around 5'7". Yep, I think that should be low enough...!



Bear

 

Damn Damn Damn, that looks great .....

 

Wow, looks great!

 

Nice Work as usual Bear. How's the Re-join coming along mate ?
Shrappy

 

Looks amazing with the c ut.great workmanship,i wonder what the ratio is in NZ between chopped and unchopped 36 3windows is Pete

 

Thanks for the compliments! I'm thinking that there's probably more chopped than unchopped going by the ones I am aware of out here. So cutting mine has just made yours even rarer!

Bear

 

get your hacksaw out pete ....

 

Ok done some homework and ive come up with 8 chopped and 7 unchopped so think you are right bear and im not quite there yet prez

 

TTT!

 

Thanks for the bump, Lon! I needed a bit of a push...
I've been meaning to update things for a few weeks now.
As much as I enjoyed coming over to the States for LARS and 'Woodies on the Wharf' at Santa Cruz, it really messed with my momentum on the coupe.

The big problem with working for myself is that when I have a 2-3 week vacation, I come back to a huge backlog of work and nothing else gets to happen for a month or so. Was just getting on top of things and about to get back out into the shop at night, and my Dad fell ill and sadly passed away a couple of weeks ago. So with all of that, and keeping an eye on my Mom, there hasn't been a whole lotta' hotroddin' going on!

However, I do have a little bit of progress to show.

I removed a couple of tapered sections from the B pillar body line to narrow up the lower suage and get a nice transition from the top to the bottom.




Once this piece was cut, it allowed me to 'rotate' the suage forward to meet the thinner top section.





I decided, rather than adding a small section to fill the gap, I would trim the pillar down the additional 3/16 inch, which gave me the opportunity to sand all of the joins up nice and square.

I got started re-attaching the roof by splicing the A pillars top and bottom to even up the profiles.



Started by tacking the pillar at the windshield opening, then working my way around the pillar lining each 'edge' up as I went. It's amazing how much the profile changes over that short of a distance.



Then I did the same thing with the B pillar at the rear of the door opening.



This required a bunch of pie cutting and 'manipulation' on both the inner structure and outer skin to get all points to match up, and also take a slight 'peak' out of the outer skin at the join.

Once the pillars were tacked back together I cut the ugly lapped section out of the roofline above the door, which got rid of some dodgy factory lead, and also gave me a bit more space to work for fabricating the filler pieces required by splitting the roof.



I made up a couple of sections to replace the inner structure of the roof. There are actually 3 layers of sheetmetal through this area, this is the main structural section. There is still a door jamb piece to make, along with the outer skin. This should be enough at this stage to hold everything in alignment.





Then I did this....!



Bear

 

Truly sorry for your loss. Only posted that to show you we are still thinking of you and your '36!
You scare the hell out of me with all the "cut shit up photo's" than miraculously make it all better and make me feel like " I could do that"! Thanks for the updates!

 

How much chop in the end?

Sent from my ZTE R84 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Welcome back, although we certainly are sorry to hear of your dad's passing.
Takes a while to get back into the groove when life throws us a curve ball.

 

Sorry to hear 'bout your dad, good to see you are getting back on track

 

Depends how you measure it. 2 1/2" front and 3 5/8" rear measured vertically which equates to about 3 " from the front pillar and around 4 " from the b pillar at the door edge.

Bear

 

So it looks like I may have just tipped the balance! It's one of those situations where I'm not sure if its better to be in the majority or minority....

Still can't believe there's so many '35-'36 3-windows in New Zealand now. When I was searching for one around 14 years ago they seemed to be as rare as rocking horse shit!

Bear

 

So sorry to hear about your dad! It’s easy to understand how that can slow you down. It is good to see that you’ve been able to resume work on this, one of my favorite builds going.

 

Thanks for the condolences guys. My Dad would have been 96 in a couple of days, so I guess he had a pretty good run!
He started his apprenticeship at the local GM dealer back in '37 and worked there initially as a mechanic, then as an auto electrician and foreman for a total of 43 years. He was kinda' an 'anti hot rod guy', brought about by seeing lots of dubious engineering by some of the young mechanics over the years. Consequently I didn't get a lot of encouragement when I started 'messin' with cars, but I will say he always stepped up and gave me a hand or words of advice when I needed them.

That's my Dad third from the right, aged 15, back in early 1938.



I guess over the years I had subconciously been trying to prove him wrong by going the extra mile with everything I have built.
Talking to some of the old critters at his funeral, it seems he was actually quite proud of my creations!

Bear

 

Good on you doing him proud. Hey, only in NZ could we turn Garage into Carace. All the best.

 

Well spotted! Funny thing is I've been a sign writer for 35 years, and normally that kind of thing would bug the hell outta' me, but, maybe 'cos its such a cool picture, I hadn't really even noticed how much they look like 'C's.

And they still look like 'C's. Took this picture of the old boy a couple of years back with him standing in the same spot.



Unfortunately we didn't have a new Chevy at the time, so had to use my wife's new Dodge for the re-enactment. Sadly, he was the only one from the original pic still alive at the time.

Got this one of my Nova in the same spot, a couple of years earlier.



I would buy and restore that building in a heart beat, if it wasn't in Ruatoria!

Bear

 

Thanks Lon.

When I cut those rear pillars out, it wasn't done without a whole bunch of careful measuring and many sleepless nights!
I had been reluctant to do the usual vertical split in the rear pillar (adding in a pie shaped section to correct the misalignment between the upper and lower portions) as this would have involved forming a compound curve section, and welding it in out in the middle of 'no mans land', and concentrating a lot of heat in one area. (Way beyond my skill level!). By cutting out the whole rear pillar area, I wasn't really going to create much more welding, and most of it would be contained within the high crown area across the roof, and close in to the body bead around the base of the pillar.

When I first contemplated the chop, I considered removing a 'crescent' shaped piece right across the roof above the back window, and rolling the rear section forward to fill the gap, but I didn't want to raise the rear window proportionately higher into the roof, and frankly, cutting things up that drastically scared the shit outta' me.
Then I saw a chop done by 'Halfdozen' in another thread, and realized I had all of the material I needed still hanging down inside the belt line!

First thing I did was slide a profile/contour gauge around over the rear pillar area to get an idea where the curves were most consistent. There was a section at the upper portion of the b-pillar where the curve remained fairly constant for around 5 or so inches, so I plotted my cut across at the higher end of that area. Same deal with the large radius from the horizontal to the vertical cut line.
Once I had it carefully marked out, I cut it with a thin 1/32" cut off disc. I had some worn down ones (smaller diameter) which allowed me to cut around the radius without removing too much material.



Once the pieces were removed, I lifted them up and roughly marked how much needed to be removed from the top of each piece to allow them to sit nicely over the hole. Trimmed off the excess, leaving around 3/4" spare material, then sat them on the outside to check that the profiles made a nice transition.





Everything fit real nice, so then I blued up the edges of the panel and tightly clamped it to the inside of the body and scribed a cut line.







I actually cut these to size in my bandsaw, supporting the centre of the panel on a block of wood (because of the curvature).
Then I clamped them back in to place, starting in one corner and working my way across the top and bottom, ending up with a near perfect even 1/32" gap around the whole patch.




This method also gives a lot more lean in the rear roofline/window angle - the lip just above the beltline needed some coaxing forward with a rawhide mallet and dolly to match up with the new angle. At this point there is absolutely no noticeable change in curvature across the joins, and everything looks to flow real nice! (Tho' that could all change once I start welding it up......)



Hard to get the full picture without the doors on, but it appears at this stage that the side profile is dead on where I wanted it to be... no bulge in the rear like you tend to get with the traditional style '36 chop, but not so laid over that it begins to take on a "wanna' be Zephyr" persona.



Bear

 

Wow, you have a lot talent and new follower.

 

By the looks of things, I think your skill level is quite capable!

 

Amazing work!

 

I can spend quite a lot of time looking at your pics of your car. You did a great job getting the profile right.

 

My condolences on your loss.
Outstanding chop on a classic coupe.


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

That's a neat approach.

 

MORE!!!! LOL!

 

Awesome work as always Bear! I can't wait for some more room in my shop to get back onto the coupe!

 

Thanks! Sorry I haven't given you anything to follow lately. I'll post some more progress real soon.
Bear