Let's see some sheet metal shaping

Sometimes I don't know where/when to quit.. Thanks!


The TIG is used to fully weld the patches in place...

Front side:



Back side, full penetration on the weld..



The weld seams are then planished and dressed. Next, the front of the hood had a stress crack adjacent to one of the rubber bumpers. To stabilize the hood prior to cutting out this area, the brace is clamped back in place..



The damaged area is cut out, a "doubler" had been used toward the front to add strength to the area, so care is used to not cut that off..





A replacement patch is cut out, bends added, and tacked in place. A plug weld ties this in with the doubler..





All trimmed and welds dressed, the hood bumper hole is re-drilled in the new patch. Then we notice a bit of filler closer to the nose of the hood (arrow). Let's remove that while we're here to see what carnage lies in wait.



Gotta love this game of dominos..



The low area needs to be bumped up, and with little room for swinging hammers, a new tool is in order. Using the South Bend "milling machine" a die is made for the outer portion..



Using a pair of C-clamp vise grips (there goes another pair) the die we made will be welded to one side, the opposite is giving a bit of a trim to better fit in the confines of the slight gap available on the inside..





I missed the action shots, but the clamping of the vise grip is used to raise the low areas. Then dressed out for a much better "filler free" lower edge for the hood.



With Mike having completed the dies to duplicate the ribs in the hood brace we did a test run on a piece of 16 Ga cold rolled steel. First upper die addresses middle rib only, way to much drawing going on to expect this out of one set of dies...





Then top die is changed out for the remainder of the ribs...





A bit of fine tuning needed, but looks like this process will work to repair the rot in the bottom of the brace ends..

 

Good stuff Robert.

 

Nice demo, thanks for showing how.

 

Now to fine tune our dies for the hood brace. Looking at our original profile template, the first upsweep (red arrow) and second upsweep (yellow arrow) are both nearly vertical as compared to the opposite side.





Our first test run shows the first upsweep spread too wide, not enough vertical...





Looking at the die that was made, a bit too much material was removed such that this vertical feature was lost...





So a new die was made for the top, this time out of aluminum. The phenolic is somewhat easy to cut out but does have challenges in making crisp bend details, so lets see if the aluminum helps out..

Next run, this time we'll do two panels in case they work... First pass to draw the metal into the center rib...





This is about 8 passes, each progressively deeper. The circle fixture to the right in the picture (white base) is used as a back stop to keep our rib centered.





This is about 9/16 of depth, so quite a bit of draw.. Next, the new top die is added and goes through the same 8 progressive passes.. Note in the next picture the vertical upsweeps are both nearly vertical. Success!











Matching up to the original, this looks like the right replacement.

 

brilliant!

 

Some advise please! I bought these floor pans for my 55 dodge, but they are nothing like what is needed. so I'm making my own. The recess area to bolt body to frame, is what is giving me problems. I have the recess started, but I need to go another 1/2". I'm have the problem of it warping. I'm using a home built press, so I press it and than take it and hammer and dolly it. Is this the way it should be done?

 

The sides of that recess are going to need considerable stretch. By using a small blocking hammer while in the flat, you can add some stretch before putting it in the press. What are you using for dies, pipe?


Here is a sample of some pre-stretching done before we added some bead details to a Model A quarter...

 

I'm using slide off an old dent puller, and a thick piece of wood. bolt them together with the metal between. and tighten. I pre-stretched it with my English wheel, before i started, but I didn't do enough.

 

So I should stretch it with a Hammer and a sand bag, than use my press. I pre-stretched the areas where I put the beads in and that worked, but this recessed area is a lot deeper. Thanks

 

I've used home-made dies, heat, and a BFDBH to do some fairly deep draw:














I think your area in need of stretch is too localized to use the English wheel, and you need to resort to a blocking hammer.. For "pressing", instead of a bolting action, I'd either try using the force of the slide hammer by making it's slide rod an alignment into the wood, or use two pieces of thick wall pipe appropriately sized, and placed in a press, or other implement of brut force. If you choose to use the pipe, don't forget to radius the pressing edges, they will cut...

 

Thanks

 

Sometimes it's OK to cheat.....a piece of tube with a disc welded in the bottom.

 

Its pretty much covered but pre stretch and make a top to your die. Clamp with C-clamps or drill and screw the top to the bottom and weld the holes afterwards. This will concentrate the stretching and give a more defined shape.

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Practicing on some rust. Welds turned out decent but looks like I need to practice my cuts

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Once you get your patches fitting more snug, I'd suggest turning up the heat on the welder. You should have weld proud on both sides of the panel, those weld tacks look just a touch on the cold side.

As a sample, here's the welding of some fender parts that used to bolt together.

First set of tacks...



Close up, front side:



Weld penetration, the back side....



close up of back side:

 

Progress on the hood, the bead details in the brace are offset on the ends to match the hood opening flange. So we use a Vernier protractor to find the angle, and transfer that to our panel. This is where the transition of the taper starts..



Once tapered, the excess is removed from the bottom side and the outer seams TIG welded in place.



A piece of round stock has a radius added to serve as a hammer form for the beads. They are hammered around and excess removed from the back side..



A piece of 16 gauge cold rolled steel is trimmed to fit and TIG welded in place.





Welds dressed and media blasted..



The bend line is transposed from the original. As this bend is slightly convex, it was started using a tipping wheel on the bead roller to a 45* angle, and then finished on the mag brake.







A reminder of the carnage we are repairing:



A profile template is made prior to cutting out the old....

 

Just got my Pullmax up and running. I can’t wait to start building stuff with this. 10 minutes of playing with the shrinking die and my planishing hammer. From flat to shape. It’s is just a piece of scrap that needs a bunch of work to be decent, but had to play like a kid with a new toy for a few minutes.

 

That sure looks like a useful tool. Have fun. If I owned one I'd be tempted to make all my own replacement panels instead of buying them.

 

Cubby and new firewall to house a hydroboost master cylinder attached to a 90° brake pedal assembly.

 

The back half of my 1964 Comet build I got going on. I Just bought the English wheel, powered bead roller and shrinker/stretcher back in January


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You do some real awesome work wish you were closer so I could see up close.
Hope all is well stay busy.

 

LOVE the belly pans!

 

I had the great set to 3 and the feed set to 20

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For using the MIG, I set the heat until I see full weld penetration through the back side with each and every tack. If it tends to blow a hole (with panels tight fitting) then add more wire feed speed. This is a general guideline for setup, then fine tune from there.

 

Time to get the hood brace end welded in place. The overall measurement had been taken prior to cutting off the old one, down to the 14 gauge outer plate as a reference. So the new end is trimmed to match this dimension, then held in place with rare earth magnets. The center (inside) rib is aligned and tacked using the TIG....





Working outward, the panel surfaces are aligned and tacked as we go. Note the "batwings" left on the outside of the new brace end (yellow arrows). This will act as a heat sink when we make the outer tacks. Had these been trimmed to match prior to welding, the edge will have a tendency to burn back from the heat.



The entire seam is TIG welded and then our batwings are trimmed using offset snips, then welds dressed..













One down......