I am not sure if this is a "tech" article but I wanted to share it with those who might be in need. 40 STD grill sides, repop, have doubled in price and from what I understand, you can't buy just one side? Whatever, I have 2 passenger grill sides that are broken at the bottom, and one has the top broken at the fender side as well. These have not been in an accident but either fatigued or just installed wrong resulting in them breaking ... ... and here's another with just the bottom break .... Since I am not the best welder to weld the cast like material and strength would be suspect even if I did, I decided that I could make a driver quality repair. Now, you can clean/make pretty, whatever, this repair up which I may do. But in reality in the area of the repairs and when painted black, you would have to be looking to see them. Starting with the lower repair, I made up some templates ... Ignore the center ones for the moment. I had some 3/16" plate around so I cut out the lower one first ... This portion bolts to the chin pan and I have used both of the stock hole. I then added another hole on the other side of the repair ... and cut out the second piece ... Dave Havlir's at House of Fab Tig welded the pieces together ... Here it is totally installed ... Like I said, you can clean this up to look nearly stick and once painted black, no one would ever know it's been fixed.
The upper repair was a bit trickier but my thought again was to make it strong. Btw, since the grille sides are mirror images of one another, no need to make the other side - just flip them over. Using the stick 40-41 pickup upper support piece as a guide, I went with three pieces for this repair. The stock grill has a raised area where the fender bolt come through ... That height, coupled with the short support arm thickness is about 3/16". So, here are the templates ... Here's how they look once in place ... I haven't finished it all as of yet and I will update this post when I do. I again used the stock holes and this repair will have 2-3 additional holes when done. The repair should be nice and strong - my only point to make is that it all depends on your upper support piece as to how much you will have to modify the templates - car vs truck, repop vs original. This repair, once it, is virtually invisible unless you look from underneath. Copies of the templates from both repairs are available - just PM me your address so I can snail mail them to you. I will keep you posted ....
This is the kind of smart tech I expect from HAMBers. Why buy/ toss a piece if it can be fixed? Thanks for sharing this Tom, I'm pretty sure others have done similar fixes (but maybe are a little too proud to share).
So here is the top corner piece welded up .... I need to grind off a few corners so it is easily removed. Other than that, it is moving along.
The Jalopy Journal
