Maybe when the weather warms, I can camp out and sweep your floors for a week or twelve....... The work here is impeccable, and you really are a detail guy in not only your work load....but the sheer talent of telling a great story. Thanks so much for taking the time for a real deal "scratch and sniff" metal working thread. Just incredible. I do apologize for the late arrival, but I look forward to some more inspirations from here on out !! Thanks again !
Haha! And they need sweeping awful bad too! Okay, got things together today. Here's the total conglomeration... Welded rings to hold the Tig rod tubes...... Retaining clip so the Mig torch doesn't have to lay on the floor... As you can see, not much for wasted space. Here's the outlet box for the Mig.... and Tig..... Bottle bracket..... I did give it a good shove to see how top heavy it was, and with the two bottles directly over the rear wheels it's very stable. Don't think I'll need worry about any accidental turnovers...
I was assembling the welding cart yesterday, as Kyle tried his hand at the rocker panel roller on the driver's side. It had a poor match to the fender, just as the passenger side did. This made a noticeable improvement, and the front edge was tweaked using the door skin hammer.. With a more consistent contour across the gap, we can start getting the front end ready for some epoxy..
Well things don't always go as planned. Today was a slight back up and punt. Part of the hood peaking work in "fixing" the low spots...... ....resulted in a slight tear in the sheet metal.... It was about 1/2" long and opened about 1/32. I thought this would be a good place to use the Tig, but it didn't work out that way.. Remainder of the tear can be seen at arrow.. This helps to show that the Tig process prefers tight fitting panel joints.. Well, time to fix the gaping hole.. Making room for the new patch Nice tight fit, tacked in place.. Tig welded, dressed and planished.... The dulled and radiused chisel was retired and this was used to tweak the peak for a nice consistent crown...
Hood repair??? ....Oh, Jeeze Robert...now you're just showing off. Thanks for taking the time to share you skills with us. JT
Tonight we worked on getting the front fenders ready for epoxy primer, just a few more items to cross off the list. An earlier repair to resolve some rust on the top of the fenders......... .........when checking the gap to the hood recently we noticed it was slightly wide at these spots where the weld had pulled. Shown here with the straight edge.... Time to make a tool that will reach between the inner fender brace for a bit of bumping... The shortened hammer comes in handy again... A few good raps along the area brought it out nicely. Next, we have some early model fender emblems to install on the front fenders, so we needed to fill the old holes... Three separate quick zaps were used (about a minute in between) to minimize the heat introduced into the panel for filling the slotted holes. Note minimal HAZ.. Holes laid out and drilled for the new emblem... Other fender... Note minimal weld bead height using EZ Grind.. Next, we had one more minor adjustment to do to the driver door lower corner. It was tweaked inward slightly and needed some adjustment. I recently noticed one of my hole punches was broken, and it looks like it will work for what we need, in conjunction with the vise grip dent puller... Kyle started media blasting the inside of the driver's fender.... A bit of a squeeze in a 58" wide blast cabinet.. Rather tight to the door! Until next time.....
While I was doing the family thing today at an FLL robotics competition, Kyle worked some more on prepping the front fenders for priming.. One down...... One to go.... Another issue that plagues most of the trifive Chevrolets is cracking at the leaded joint at the top of the A pillar. A look at the other side shows a gap that is quite a stretch to expect a good permanent repair regardless of the filler used.. At over 1/4" wide, something we will need to address... So we'll attempt a repair similar to the radius-ing that was done on the rear tailgate, using STEEL.. Until next time....
While Kyle continued media blasting fenders, I worked on closed up a gaping hole.... A couple weak spots dictated a bigger hole. Here the radius was added from the A pillar to beneath the drip rail.. Test fit Welded in place..... Used a torch and wire brush to clean off the other side, looks like this gap was a factory deal, and we have another radius to install..
This is an extremely informative and interesting thread. Thank you for taking the time to post, I'm learning a ton reading this. It's cool that you're using a MIG too.
Glad the welders can do wheelies on their new cart ! Clearly this repair was much easier because of such. Looks nice ! On another note......after the wizardry involving the back half's jambs and door fitment.......I look forward to what you do here. Those front door gaps look like Flying Wallenda death traps !! Third to last door top picture looks like it's fly is open. Good luck !
This thread continues to be an education for many of us. A quick question - On the repair you made to the hood peak, you chose to make the patch round. I am assuming this was a tactic to minimize distortion from heat, but have never seen it done before. Could you expand on why / how you came to do it this way for those of us learning from your methods. Thanks!
Anytime you weld into a sharp 90* corner, the shrinking effects will compound on the inside corner as they are realized from both directions in a confined area. This makes any planishing to relieve the distortion more of a challenge. So any "corner" of a patch panel, wherever possible, should be a sweeping radius instead of a sharp 90. This helps to balance out the shrinking effects on either side of the weld. So for a small patch meant to remove a defect (a couple in this case) a round patch usually will give better results..
More progress, although it doesn't appear like much, progress just the same... Door skins had been left "loose" on the inner door to allow twisting/tweaking for fitment within the door opening. Drilled some 3/16 holes from flange into inner door and plug welded. I've had many people ask how well the epoxy primer holds up to the heat of plug welds, here is a good indicator. It shows discoloration at the surface, but note the nice green primer underneath where the grinding wheel went through the paint.. Parts ready for epoxy primer.. These are the stiffeners for inside the door skin that go behind the door handle. The inside of the door will be sprayed, as well as these parts, and allowed to flash. Then another application on both and they'll get bolted in place, letting the epoxy primer act as an adhesive to hold in place and seal to the door skin. Once door handles are bolted on they will be there for good.. This car has belt line trim that goes around the perimeter at the bottom of the windows, which needed to be added to the new door skins. I had saved a piece from the old door skins to get the locations correct. Here's the layout of the slots for the stainless attaching hardware, we'll get that finished next time..
Robert,there is no doubt in my mind that this will be the straightest 55 Chevy wagon on the planet,amazing work! HRP
I wish I just a the patients (sp?) he does. How much time is in the car so far ? Or do you not keep track ?
Thanks for all the comments guys. I only got my shop's time clock about halfway into this project, and the timekeeping at the beginning didn't account for all of the time (sometimes I forgot to write time down). So I don't have an accurate amount, but it is ongoing.... A time clock has been about the best thing added in the shop! Why is it when you're getting ready to mix primer you find other issues to fix?? More minor tweaks so that hopefully we can spray this afternoon... A crack that looks to be from some previous body damage. A post dolly is used to provide an off dolly effect, and the body hammer is struck on the "high" spot. Used a copper backing since we're so close to the edge and the metal has been fatigued. Filled the crack and dressed the weld... Then I noticed a low spot on the fender's bodyline crease... Time to lose another Craftsman chisel to become a body tool... ....the rod was heated and bent around, then finished welding. Placed the fender on the large shot bag and used the dead blow hammer to apply the persuasive force... Much better with a more consistent crown across the fender..
We have primer! Sprayed the SPI epoxy tonight, later this week we'll spray the doors and outside of the fenders and hood. Then we can assemble the front end and block across the adjacent panels..
Already the best most perfect body 55 wagon ever. going to be awesome in paint. Do you ever get to the point of "Why am I doing this when 98% of the people looking at it will never notice the work that went into making it perfect?"
Most of the changes we have done are subtle enough that they don't reach out and grab you. Like shaving of pinch weld seams and others, we were looking for just enough that it will have people scratching their head, knowing something's not "right", but not being able to put their finger on it... until about the fourth time around the car..
One of our projects for tonight was to make a stand to hold the doors for painting. I have some heavy duty "tripods" on casters that have a 2" ID pipe on top with a setscrew, which works well for changing out various fixtures for painting, as shown below on the left.... My thoughts were to make a similar "tree" to hold the doors, using the hinge mounts. Here's the prototype design... Here's our CAD layout this evening (cardboard aided design). As the flat bar is a bit cheaper than the pipe, we altered the pattern slightly... While Kyle was working on the parts for the door "tree", I turned my attention to one of the doors that still needed some finesse. One of the problem areas on the 55 wagon is that apparently GM did not have sufficient quantity of passenger doors specific to the wagon for the assembly line, so the quick fix was to install doors from the 2 door sedan. The downside was that the rear of the door tapers off where the sedans roof starts to drop off to the back window. With the belt line trim details aligned, note what appears to be a sagging rear edge with a widening gap to the upper door opening.... Most people don't notice this detail.. For comparison, the driver's door aligns well to the trim lines... To fix the passenger door, we plan on a sectioning and a lift kit, adding a wider patch in the B post of the door to make up the difference. This may just work yet.. Hope so, there's a big gap there.. New section fabbed and fitted... Bottom seam welded in place... Yeah, this will be much better... One seam down, one to go... ....and Kyle tackled his first welding project this evening.. until next time, Merry Christmas to all!
Actually, he put my first "attempts" to shame... Had some time this evening so worked a bit more on the wagon.. Finished up the door paint fixture.. will be adding some ballast to the base.. Just to compare the driver's door and fitment / body line alignment to what we had to modify on the passenger side: Paint stick gap width at the top rear, all body lines straight across, about as close as you can get to what should be there. Also needed to finish the slotted holes for the trim under the door's window. We'll use a carbide ball nose in the Dremel... Straightedge spanned across two slots for a more precise scribed line..
Today Kyle worked on another paint fixture for the wagon, one to hold the front fenders, while I started on adding the weatherstrip and drain holes in the bottom of the driver's door. I had made new bottoms and hadn't gotten around to these holes just yet. I did save the old bottoms to use as patterns. The old was merely laid over the new and traced to get the horizontal alignment of the drain holes and weatherstrip holes. Then a more accurate measurement located the vertical dimension of the drain holes... After drilling, a couple of twirls by hand of a 3/8 bit worked nicely to de-bur the holes, inside and out.. The end of the old section was cut out and trimmed to be able to use it as a scribing template.. Using our same Dremel set up from the top slots..... Kyle is getting the hang of this welding stuff..... While he started media blasting the core support, I finished up the passenger door's "un-chop" Outside done, now for the inside piece... Fitted: And that will do it for today....
The Jalopy Journal
