I always enjoy reading your posts. They always contain such detail. I was doing a search for repairing cowl area on a 1955 chev and came across your post regarding this on a tri five site. A perfect step by step guide to the whole job. Thanks for your efforts in these posts.
Here's the fabrication of our hinge covers for the wagon, since the originals didn't fit well at all. Some 1-3/16 round stock was used on the magnetic brake to provide a much closer matching radius profile, and some severe stretching was done along the bottom flange and up into the radius. The reverse crease was added using a dulled and rounded press brake die section as an anvil. Much nicer look over the stock ones. While I was working on those, Jared has been prepping our stainless trim parts for polishing/buffing...
Robert, can you see light at the end of the tunnel? I went back to your first post in 2008 when you joined the hamb and said you were working on a wagon, 15 years later your still working on the same car, you are a dedicated man!, there is nothing you have touched that hasn't seen a significant amount of work, from patch panels to intricate bits & pieces along with the one off parts you have created. This car should be in the running for the most labor intensive & impressive car of the year when it is finally daubed, as usual I am in awe! HRP
Tying up some loose ends, We still need to finish the wiring at the back of the car, but in the middle of modifying the tail light fixtures for bulb relocation. To that end, in an attempt to keep grounding issues to a minimum, quick disconnect tabs are silver soldered to the tail light housings. Working on the rear side window, we still needed to drill mounting holes for the shoulder harness through the window garnish moldings. A 1/2-13 bolt was used to fabricate a threaded hole spotter on the lathe, complete with flats for wrench installation. With garnish molding positioned, a quick tap of the dead blow hammer gives an exact location for the hole. Next, in order that we don't leave an unfinished hole edge, a punch set was machined for the lathe, complete with stepped shoulders to prevent any movement in the jaws when pressure was applied. This will swage the hole edge for a nice inward flange... And we had received our new shipment of Cubitron H/L paper from Three Mules Welding Supply for dressing out stainless, so Jared continued prepping our edge trim parts. Where the hemming process we used with the bead roller isn't an exacting science, we did have some variance in the gap opening that made the prepping process a challenge. In order to get more consistency in gap width, (and thus flange flatness) a new widget tool was fabricated out of 16 gauge to open up those tight spots. https://youtube.com/shorts/6FTmd8KPPu8?feature=share
Incredible Robert! I'm continually amazed at your level of perfection, correctness, and the amount of tooling made to complete jobs at all levels while building this wagon. Your posts are outstanding inspiration. Thanks for sharing, keep it up!!!!
Thanks Tom! More progress on the dash inset. In order to form the outer edge trim to fit, we made an "anvil" out of 19 gauge that match the dash inset. The excess flange was trimmed in the area of the sharp bend. Some heat was applied to the bend area, slight persuasion added to bend a few degrees, the area flattened to remove any puckers, and repeat. Then we needed to shrink the flange on the insides to match the opening. This was accomplished by squeezing the two edge trim ends together, adding a patch of heat to form a tuck, and then flatten out the tucks to provide the shrink. For attachment to the dash, 8-32 press studs were installed in the inner flanges where they are also out of sight. The ribbed stainless was installed in the edge trim, then wrapped around our oxygen bottle to provide the radius. And a sneak peek at our trim fitted to the dash...
Before we could install the rear bumper we needed to install the rear bumper seal, this keeps exhaust fumes from sneaking through and getting sucked in the back tailgate. The seal sits in a channel which is then "crimped" with some rounded pliers. Only my rounded pliers did not work, we needed parallel jaw pliers. So these channel locks were modified by adding the round stock. Only that did not hold well enough, so a dimpler was added to the bottom jaw, as shown... These dimples gave us enough grip, and any chips were removed and then recoated with a couple coats of epoxy primer. Here's the rear bumper in place.. Here's a closer look at the forming of the edge trim for our dash inset trim. We had made a template out of 19 gauge steel to match the dash inset, and used it (and some heat) to form the point. This video shows the shrinking of the flange so the edge trim would match. The upper and lower edge trim was squeezed while applying heat to form a tuck for shrinking the flange and providing the radius. All shaped, before polishing.. Press studs installed... Ribbed stainless insert added and our green radius brake used to match the dash profile... One last touch-up to the polishing and installed in the dash.....
I've been remiss in posting an update. We've been doing a bit of block sanding interior parts, and its just hard to make those pictures look like any semblance of progress. We pulled the front fenders back off, we had mocked them up in order to modify the upper fender mounts at the cowl. They came with some excessively sized holes to allow plenty of adjustment, and we had filled in the factory hole and re-drilled to a normal clearance hole. Here shown after a spray of Organic Green KBC, and the stainless washers we used as shims. Hard to leave those stacked washers after we did the other cleanup in resizing the bracket's mounting hole. We had some black delrin scraps left over from making the radius arm bushings for Jared's 39, so we put them to use here. Since they had already been drilled, we added an aluminum plug and match drilled the holes to match the bracket. Installed, the black delrin is barely noticeable and makes for a cleaner detail over the stacked washers. Some of the parts we sprayed while the front fenders were off. Since our cowl bracket was all cleaned up now, we needed to address the attaching hardware. This started with 400 grit and worked up to 5000 trizact before hitting the buffer... https://youtube.com/shorts/nEgXyGHNFto?feature=share Much better! And so we can finalize the wiring at the back of the car, the tail-light housings had been sprayed in epoxy and we added some catalyzed white to the inner portion for some brighter lights.
While assembling the door bits, we noticed that the retaining clip for the reproduction lock cylinders did not match the originals, which would leave us with a gaping hole in the back side of the inner door. So we had media blasted the originals and sent to the Shop at Shorty's for a cerakote finish of gun metal grey. As my luck would have it, the door skins we had installed had some accuracy issues in the lock hole locations. Aligning the clip to the lock hole would result in a slight misalignment out back... and you know Robert's not having that. With Cerakote still fresh, some trimming was done so we could use the original clips to fill the hole void, and the new ones would be used to hold the lock cylinder in place as well as the original clip, whose new job has been reduced to filling a slotted opening. Some window sealant will slow any movement of the pretend clip. And the same effort repeated for the driver's side. Where it wasn't as far off as the other side, our mods were still required. Mandatory Kramer photo bomb Adding the pull rod for the door lock.... and the addition of a rubber grommet will help keep rattles down. Jared applied some Kilmat inside the tailgate and we added more bling.. And we've had a casualty with the Baileigh magnetic brake. The magnet stopped working and some troubleshooting found an open with the coil. Some inspection of the supply wires found an over heat issue. Removing all the epoxy showed it's been warm for awhile.... So it looks like we'll be in search of replacement parts.
actually it’s the 248 volts that my power company puts out is well above the 208 the machine is looking for. I’ve got a buck boost transformer I stole off the wife’s tanning bed that will go on the machine when it gets repaired.
My buck/boost transformer is a 16/32, so I can bring the 248V down to about 216. Should allow for less smoke.. More progress, we were test fitting the power antenna and noticed that the mounting bezel did not sit horizontally on the fender. I had quickly whipped up a wedge shaped and tapered spacer out of some aluminum as a quick test. Where that was functional, it did not match the chrome finish of the bezel. I picked up a chunk of 1" stainless rod (local drop cut) to make a duplicate out of stainless. The wedge shape was added first, using the 12" disc sander... then clamped in the Southbend for the taper cut and a hole boring. ....and trimmed off to length In order to hold this oddball shape for polishing, some rivnuts were used on a 1/2-13 bolt, with the wedge angle added to one for a more positive hold.. Completed, this matches the chrome finish of the bezel much better... Since we were ready to re-install the front fenders, I thought I'd grab pictures of our fine-tuning adjustment screws for the fender to door alignment. The hex bolt shown on the right is filling an existing hole that used to have a rubber plug in it. I guess having pulled out the dried and cracked old rubber plug, I wanted a more permanent solution. We were going to use that hole but it did not align with the rib on the fender's rear brace. So another hole was drilled next to it, a 3/8-16 AVK style rivet nut installed, and a fully threaded bolt added. The bolt head was covered with a rubber cap and the inside end of the bolt had a slot added for adjustment purposes. Now we could use a screwdriver to adjust the screw outward, pushing the center of the fender until it aligns to the door surface.. A jam nut on the inside tightens against the rivnut to prevent any movement. And with our upper fender mounts painted, they get installed using polished button head hardware and our barely noticeable shims we had fabricated. In the tooling department, we needed a tight radius reverse bend on some .090 aluminum for another project, so a Gene Winfield inspired 1-1/4" round stock was added to our 4" pipe. This was bolted straight into tapped holes and used two stacked flat washers to provide the gap. The aluminum was 5052 alloy and was annealed prior to bending.
More progress on the wagon. While reassembling the front end, Jared noticed the fenders were a bit high at the cowl. This next picture shows it, although the perspective makes it a bit exaggerated. So we pulled each of our new shims we had made and shaved another 1/16" off the height. This shows the fender height after adjusting the shim height. But shows our next back up and punt moment. The wedge shim we had made for the antenna was too steep, and this shows the actual angle needed. So we made another with less angle... Note some "pre-polishing" was done on the lathe prior to cutting off the wedge to make things a bit easier. Final version installed and vertical orientation verified... Next, we got the driver's door wiring routed through the upper door hinge... much easier after the trial-and-error practice we did on the passenger side. ...and with the front fenders back on to stay, Jared reassembled some of the core support parts. Moving to the rear of the car, we started the rear tail-light install now that they have been painted inside and out. Wiring was routed through OEM style boots to help minimize any water intrusion into the lamp sockets. Replacement button contacts were used in the sockets (w-crimp) to eliminate any unneeded splicing of the wiring. Wiring complete, with bulb seal attached to the housing: Rivet-nuts were installed for mounting the housing.... Insides of the housings were painted white in the interest of brighter lights (safety) Nice snug fit to the body, and a functional test to make sure we're done here.. Moving to the passenger side, we'd need to secure the harness to the tail-light swing arm mechanism (part of the hidden gas door mod) so we planned to add some heli-coils in the arm for adel clamps. I had a long 1/8" bit to get in close to the corner, but our final size of 13/64 for the 10-32 heli-coil tap would be another issue. Then I noticed some tubing in the scrap pile that had a 3/16 ID, just undersized. So our drill bit was clamped in the 3 jaw chuck of the lathe, and the tail stock used to press the two together. Now we had an extended bit to complete the heli-coil installation. ...and a functional test of the wiring on the arm... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JzA6W2BdyyQ
Wagon 2.0 progress, I was tasked with adding a paint job to this: but had a couple of issues to address first prior to paint. The dropped axle design lacked lateral strength of an I-beam, so we ordered some 1/8 x 1/2 flat bar to cap the top and bottom, adding much needed strength. Next, the frame hoop was produced with limited tooling availability, and the corners made use of pie-cuts that some still remained and would show through the paint. I attempted to weld some of these closed, but realized it would be quicker to remake the hoop. Always one to make tools into multiple use, the new tubing corners were bent on our buffer stand "radius brake" The rear "axle" stanchions had been bolted on using rivnuts, but I was worried the side wall of the tubing may deflect from weight in the wagon. So in true Robert overbuilding form, some threaded standoffs were turned into a sleeve that would weld on both sides of the tubing for less stress upset. Both ends were ground flush prior to welding.. Welding the front end to the new frame hoop... Next, to clean up the front end components a bit in order to add oilite bushings... With spindle perches welded to the ends of our "I-beam" front end... a test fit of all the bits.. And here with our center link added, the last fabrication detail needed will be the handle.. to be continued...
Here's the hidden fuel door in action, and why we needed the helicoils for adel clamps to hold the wiring in place....and away from moving parts. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UwCy8mKRJFU The back end is starting to look like a car again... ....and more work on the other wagon, here's the start of the pull handle... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a-8Nmkh_bmQ A functional test of the steering bits... For the pull handle, we had tried out some knurling on aluminum to see if we liked that.... But this would have required more hardware, and the aluminum handle was over-ruled for simplicity of a welded steel tube. Here we formed the handle's hoop, and some side "extensions" were added so we could have a consistent shoulder around the "steering column" for fillet weld. And some shots in da weeds... may have clearance issues
The Jalopy Journal
