I had this little T body brought to me to repair a while ago. It was in lots of pieces. From the photos you can probably tell it was not a prime example. There was a lot of rot and damage. The panel above does not look too bad but a lot of the rot was on the inside. Unless I replaced the whole thing I was never going to end up with a perfect blemish free body. Obviously the customer (who is also a friend) wanted to keep what he had as much as possible. Some parts were beyond repair like the rear panel above. David
Cheers Paul, I can't get any work done on my '27 roadster at the moment because I have too much customer work to do. (can't turn it away can you) So I thought I would post the photos of the work I did on this little body. It actually does not look as bad in the photos as it was. I managed to save it though. I also took patterns and bucks so I can now make one if I want to. David
Here is the other side, the sill area was pretty shot in fact the entire body around the bottom was holes held together with rust so I had no choice but to make and weld in replacement sections. David
I've just subscribed to this thread. i'm enjoying the clear close-up pics of each panel before you start , , , picture tell's a thousand stories , especially as I'm hoping to scratch-build a 23 T body one day , , soon . Shrapnel
Watching... I have a stack of '24T panels that are waiting for me to gain some sort of ability to fix them. Hope they're patient.
That does it, David. I need to hunt for your posts each day so I don't miss anything! I can't wait to see where this goes. By the way.. that would be a GREAT panel to find here. "holes held together with rust" Yup. That's what we have here. Subscribed.
Hey Dave, a while ago! that was about six years ago - hope you've got many more 'in progress' pictures of my 'lil roadster. I'll have to sort out a finished and painted photo for you to post at the end of the story, cheers Al
Time flies when you're having fun Al, just another day bashing metal, they all blurr into each other, actually I knew it was quite a while ago, it was done in my old workshop. It would be great if you have some photos to add! I never got any of it finished. At least it prompted you to post for the forth time in two years! David
One thing that is confusing me though is that your body's left side appears to be one piece. Mine is split into a seperate cowl and side at the faux front door jamb.
yeah yeah yeah , seen your work up close at Kumeu a few years back and was impressed. I'll be doing things a bit different on mine , like , , , and , , , not to mention , , , !!! hehehe. Now to get this thread back on track , the pic's are great. The more I can learn about the original steel (without having a body to copy here) the better. Shrapnel
This was definately in on piece. If I make a copy I will make it with a joint (butt welded) where you say because this is a big panel to work. I would also put a joint in where the B post would be. It would appear to be one panel when finished. Its not my car though it belongs to Al (flatheadal) on here. David
I was of course working to a budget on this. I made no attempt to metal finsh the job. I made some nice accurate repair sections, dressed out the worst of the dents made a new cowl top and rear panel and called it done. The steel on this was like spring steel. I gas welded it all so the welds are petty flat. Al ran it in bare metal for a while I believe. (Al if you read this do you have any photos of it like that?) David
Well like I said the body was repaired on a tight budget. I made a new rear panel, dressed out the worst of the lumps and bumps from the original panels and welded any splits... There was not enough time on the clock to make a perfect job of this and even if I had a larger budget for the job it would have been hard to make these panels perfect. I don't know if it was because the body had spent some time being shot pained in the desert but the original panels were hard as anything I have come up against. As you can see I tried to save as much as possible of the original panels but to do a good job it is necessary to cut away the rot. David
You're not stalking me are you Joe! lol. Yep I don't know how the guys in my car club keep finding this stuff. Its good to know you are interested. I did this a while ago but I think it may be of interest still, I have not posted it before. David
Neat stuff David. I'll be making all the panels for my 23T from scratch. I've got a fiberglass body (the mould of which was taken from an original steel 23) to use for my shape patterns, but I want the panels to assemble into the body as reasonably close to what an original would. So threads with pics like these give me a great deal of info. Cheers David. Shrapnel
I hope it helps, I have other photos and I will post them when I get the chance. Using a good 'glass body is a good way to go. I did that when I built the body for this car... ...many years ago. I did not have photos of original bits so I had to do the best I could and the 'glass body was not great either. David
Here is a photo of the same car when it was finished. The body was copied from a 'glass body made by a company called Jago that made crap hot rod bodies for a while back in the seveties here in the UK. It was all we had to go by at the time. It was longer and wider than an original 'T'. David
Anyway back to the original '23 T. The other side of the body was worse so needed a lot more repair sections made. I replaces the bottom ten inches or so 'round the bottom... I dressed the repairs and filed them. It all came out pretty good. The beads all lined up to perfection. I did all the beading on my Pullmax. I made a set of beading tools so now I can reproduce the beads any time I want to. I may make some of these bodies at some point. David
Cool stuff David. I like your scratch built T. I started one with very similar lines (using a modified 1937 Austin 10 grill) about 30 years ago. I didnt finish it, sold it on, and from there I believe it got parted out . My next bucket is loosly based around a car I saw in a magazine (I still have the magazine for this very reason) I picked up in 1983 . Cheers for sharing Shrapnel
your body looks quite different to the ones I've seen here Dave, where your rear panel joins the quarters mine has a swage. I'm interested to know what width your turtleback will be.
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