Salvage Yard Tech - Possible patch panels for early car bodies and other donor parts

I'm scrapping out my last beater van and saved the roof skin to go with the '32 Rockne shell I also have tucked away.

It occurs to me, the rear corners on a van from the taillight area up to the roof, turned upside down, will mimic the shape of some early car lower rear body panels. For that matter, so do the tops of the front fenders.

So it might save some work, say filling in a wheel opening on the bottom of a sedan body, or if you had just a cowl and doors and needed to make the rear body section from scratch, this would get a start on it. Just a matter of matching up the curvature.

My van is a Chevy, the 71-96 style, I think Dodges also have a similar shape to them.

I circled the section in green on a photo as an example.


Vans are pretty good parts donors for an early rod, actually. The door hinges on these may work as a substitute for early hinges, if you don't want to spend big bucks for reproductions. The front door upper hinge is a little less obtrusive than the side door and rear doors. The middle side doors on these vans have a relatively skinny bear claw latch mechanism that is fairly easy to remove. The steering columns in the Chevy/GMC vans have two U-joints from the factory plus a collapsible section that gives you some fudge room on length. And they have a nice, compact pedal assembly and bracket that would fit well on tons of other older vehicles.

Another thing you can rob from a van like this is if you want to add power windows to a car and not hack up the existing wiring in it, use the wiring from one of these. The whole harness is self-contained and you just need to power it and ground it. I added power windows to the van in the picture when I changed the front doors out on it that way; all I had to do was plug it into a ground and into a hot place on the fuse block. (the wiring in a lot of 95-back Chevy trucks is like this).

Seat belts on a lot of these are a self-contained unit bolted into the seat substructure that will allow for easy adaptation to other vehicles. Sliding door vans have a fairly ugly top piece to the right side belt.


Last but not least, the front suspension in Chevy/GMC vans will unbolt from the frames. A G30 like this is probably too HD for most folks, but the G10/G20 have 5-lug 5x5 pattern rotor disc brakes, the parts are common and cheap. The front crossmember is straight and flat, as is the tie rod - narrowing it up would be a fairly simple job. Would probably need to have a dip put in it to clear the oil pan in some applications though. They could be another option for a suspension upgrade.

 

Very infromative, thanks!

 

I save all sortys of trashed fenders and hoods of 40-50's cars and trucks ... You can make all sorts of patch panels out of em!

 

Rusty, you're stealin my idea for the inverted top of the van panel. but, i guess it's ok to share. also you can use the tops of 73-85 chevy truck fenders to patch the bottoms of 37-39 Chevy doors, maybe other GMs too.

 

I've got a few 73-87 truck fenders with rusted bottoms. But no 37-39 chevies to patch.

Those trucks are getting hard to find in boneyards.

Infinity quarters are great for round spherical patches, Lincoln mark 8 fenders tops are really close to model A roof over door sections and so are some van hoods.

 

The gas filler neck in these is a seperate piece, about a foot or so tall, a bend at the top and curves 90' at the bottom. I actually had an extra in my swap meet junk and sold it a couple weeks ago to a guy. It would adapt to something like a '49-'52 Chevy where the fuel door is in the fender, pretty easy, if you couldn't scare up a stock one. The vent tube is part of the assembly.

The Suburban neck is a similar shape as well. Both of them, factory, use about 4" of fuel hose to connect to the tank neck.

You could almost use the fuel tank, too, but they're pretty deep because they're 30-odd gallon on most of them. Otherwise it's a big rectangle with the filler at the rear of the left side.


And, if you just want a plain old radio antenna, the base on these mounts on an angle where a lot of others are pretty flat, so it may fit up easier to older fenders.


The roof panel I saved I actually cut about 2 feet too long for the Stude body, I'll probably end up using some of it for something else because if I build that it's going to get shortened up into a pickup cab, probably with the doors lengthened a bit. But once free it flexes easy enough, any roof with no crown to it it should be fine in as an insert.

 

"It occurs to me, the rear corners on a van from the taillight area up to the roof, turned upside down, will mimic the shape of some early car lower rear body panels."

There's a past HAMB build thread of someone doing this on a home built/hand made body. Maybe someone saved it and will post the link.

 

I used the inner fender panel from 74 Dodge pu to patch my 31 model a front fenders, The bed sides to patch the bottom of the body, and a 94 Jeep roof for the roof panel. I keep large body panels just for repair panels.

Lee

 

i use lots of 40s-50s body panels for shapes i need, as i dont have an english wheel or planishing hammer,,,there is usually a body panel that will have just the right compound curve if you look hard enough..and if not, you can usually tweak it into the shape you need. bob metz was a master at this.

 

save it ........put to good use