Again,the attention to detail is what keeps me coming back,,by the way,are there any tools left in the tool box? HRP
It's truly nice to watch someone that knows how to do metal work and take the time to record it for us novices want too Be's like myself, for that i thank you and say keep up the nice work....jack
Wow your talented !!! I'll be following this... Very inspiring....but I'm miles away from your level of skills. / primerkid
Thanks for the comments. Thought I'd spend some time this evening to see how I could clean up these corners.... Trimming out some of the excess... Used the roll former die to make the radius.... Fitted, welded, and looking much better!
Very nice, You make that look so easy! Does that match the corners better now on the gate you already fixed? Folks will have to be pretty sharp to realize all the fine details you have done on this wagon! You are a inspiration to all of us wanabees. Thanks for sharing.
Great skills, thread and a great car! I miss my 55, but don't miss the 100 hours, 3 gates to make one and trying to get it not to leak when parked outside or washed. Just remeber water is designed to run through them and GM refered to the lower gate as a water management panel lol
Moving on to the right side..... Trimming the excess for the radius piece to fit in.... Trimmed to fit.... Welded in place... Welds dressed Yeah, I like this look much better!
Not too much shop time this weekend, but I did manage to test fit the tailgate to see how well it matched the new radiuses added to the opening. There are a couple areas the gaps will need tweaking, but the "new" corners should help add to the other subtle changes.
Been a busy couple weeks working on honey do's, painted the inside of the garage so I could hang a canoe for storage, so I could paint the inside of the car trailer that it used to be stored in, so we could sell the car trailer. Late today, found a bit of time for the wagon, working on some of the plug welds for the rear valance.... The ones at the bottom attach to two braces underneath, and fitted the tailgate to pull in the valance to match the bottom of the tailgate...
Your welding is spot on> I have a problem with burning through. I was wondering what setting, wire size and welder you use? I appreciate your work, keep the updates coming. Thanks
My machine is likely different than yours, so I'll leave that out of the picture. The manufacturer's recommended settings for your machine are based on a welded pass, which if we did that you would normally see an initial cold joint with lack of weld penetration at the very beginning. To fix this issue, for a starting point when setting up a welder, (for our example here, let's say using 18 or 19 ga cold rolled steel), I recommend to set the welder heat up for the next higher thickness of metal, (16 ga per our example). By setting it a bit hot, you get full weld penetration from the start. Next, after your heat is set, the wire feed is adjusted to be just a bit faster from where it tries to blow holes. Look at it this way, if your welder is burning away metal, you have plenty of heat but a lack of sufficient filler metal will cause the surrounding metal to burn through. Speed up the wire feed just enough to fix the burn through issue. This should give you a close starting point, and adjust the settings from there based on what is occurring. Most of what we weld on sheet metal is either tacks, or short bursts, so it should be set hot enough so that one tack is a good one. IMO insuring you have a full weld penetration is the starting point... period. A weld so cold it just sits on top of the panel is a recipe for weld failure. Regarding wire size, typically .023 or .030 are good for sheet metal. I have found that ER70S-7 lays a bit flatter (better wetting to the base metal), planishes easier, and grinds easier. (Most machines come with ER70S-6)
thanks for the welding tips. I believe I had the wire going too slow. I am using a miller 172 challenger with .23 wire. Thanks again.
Worked today to finish up the weld seam on the passenger quarter panel. First, I wanted a profile template to check the crown of the panel. As the rear half of the driver's quarter was NOS, this would make a good template.... Adding an alignment mark to the quarter.... Using the profile template against the welded seam of the passenger side, we can see the low area along the center. This is a typical problem with using "half quarters", welding through the center of panel tends to flatten out this low crown area. A full quarter with the welded seam up top where there is a bit more crown tends to not have as much of a "flattening" effect. Finishing the welds and checking with the profile template..... Still shows some more crown needed through the middle of the panel, will do some more planishing tomorrow...
Next on the list for the wagon, the upper gate. It has a similar stance as the lower gate when closed, and as such, water lays along the inner window frame at the bottom. Ice pick test.... The lower bend is fairly flat, going to a tipped flange in the form of an arc, the inside has some compound curves going to the window opening flange... I'll get this bottom cut out next week and attempt to form it in one piece, flange to flange, for a easier job of replacing..
The small anvil you made really got the job done ! excellent craftsman ship . thanks for the great pictures .
Thanks guys! Took the upper gate off tonight... My tool of choice for removing spot welds is a 3" x 1/16 cutoff wheel. I also use the premium wheels made for stainless steel. It's worth the extra money when you don't have a brown cloud in the shop, like the el cheapo wheels leave, nothing but resin wearing away. The upper layer of metal will start to turn blue when it gets thin and hot, letting you know you're getting close to the next layer. When you have a blue circle with shiny metal in the center, you are now in the second layer, grind around the blue a bit more and pry the layers apart.. With all the spot welds removed, here's what we find inside... Note the deep pits. The big problem with just welding a hole closed is you don't know where the next pit is lurking, ready to break through your new paint. Funny, with all the rust and scale inside, then you find this area of bare steel nice and shiney.. The inside will get media blasted to insure there is no more lurking issues and then epoxy primered before re-assembly. Here's a better look at the shape we'll need...
Thanks Mike! To start the layout on the new metal, I wanted to find the center of the radius along the window opening. By holding a sanding disc on the flats and scuffing, it showed the edges of the radius... Then laid out a pattern to be able to measure from the bottom crease... ....and transposed it to the new sheet... The top edge was trimmed to size and the tipping wheel used to fold over the welding flange... Comparison.... The bottom was marked with the tipping wheel and folded in the apron brake. Then trimmed to size, again using the tipping wheel to fold over the welding flange... It's real close right now, just needs a bit of tweaking. This was made using 18 ga, I think if I had the factory 19 ga metal it would have formed much easier..
Media blasted the inside of the upper gate to clean it up before welding the new part on. Unfortunately this revealed more in the way of pits, through holes, etc., so it now looks like more fabrication.... Time to attempt some dies for the Lennox. Tonight's choice is some 1" thick phenolic sheet... Here's the profile we're looking for... The dies installed in the holders.... An offset bend was added to the sample 19ga in the brake, then the first of three passes..... Final pass..... Dies held up well.... Safety tip of the day, 3" roloc discs do a good job of shaping phenolic, so skin is no match.... (note thumb in above pic) Where my "test sample" was made initially with straight bends in the brake, the actual piece on the lift gate is not straight, so the bends on the "good" piece will need to be bent using the tipping wheel. The profile needs just a bit of tweaking, and I may try using a piece of metal inserted in a band saw blade cut to sharpen up some of the details.
Checked the lower profile of the upper gate with radius sweeps to lay out the new piece... Laying out the pattern on 19ga steel.... Tipping wheel in the bead roller... ......and a newly modified back stop, much better than the flat one..... Offset added with the tipping wheel...... Then run through the Lennox..... More tipping, then the step die used in place of skateboard wheel with the tipping wheel for the lower 1/4" fold... Still need to fold the top in the window opening, until next time...
The Jalopy Journal
