Did I miss TECH WEEK?

Ok, I know I missed tech week, but I was busy, and frankly, the competition was pretty much out of my league anyway... But I still want to try to give something back to the HAMB community, so take this tech for what it is, and even if it sucks you may be able to steal an idea or two!!

Anyway, the fenders on my 39 coupe were well... pretty much used up when I got the car in 1979. In the mid 80s I had the fenders "professionally repaired" by the "premiere" shop in my area, they reluctantly repaired the fenders letting me know that they really liked doing "tri-5" Chevys....

Anyway, I started redoing my 39 in August of last year, and I reworked the automotive sins of my youth uncovering many skeletons. Once I worked my way back to the fenders that I thought were pretty much "ok" I was shocked back to reality when the fenders kind of "bent" way too easy and the beads of the fenders opened up in to several gaping cracks...

So I did what I usually do, I thought about it a lot before starting my work. Fortunately I had the benefit of a few months work on the body of the car where I learned that if a person is not too timid or too careless, about ANYTHING can be fixed when working with steel.
I thought this process up for bead repair, I ended up going several similar repairs on each front fender using fairly common tools.

First thing I did was to mark the area for removal of the damaged area, for this repair I just used masking tape.

Followed by a nice simple cut with a cut off wheel.

Here is another view of the fender after the bad piece had been removed. Take note of the pitted area, this WILL create problems that I will mention a little later.

Here is another photo of the old "repair" I cut out. This picture will give you a better idea of WHY I did this work.

Using the old piece as a guide I rough cut a patch out of new steel of the same thickness.

Using a vise, I started to recreate the bead edge.. all pretty simple.

Well, I ran out of room on the vise once i reached 90 degrees, so I simply clamped the patch onto my bench mounted metal brake to finish the job. any number of flat surfaces would work just as well.

Compare the two pieces...

And into the stretcher..

Compare..

Compare again..


Fit the piece into the opening for a nice butt weld.

Like that...

Weld, Grind, Finish.... FINISHED!!!
But... Remember that pitted area in the 3rd or 4th picture? Well, I decided to document this repair after doing several of these in different areas of the fenders. Nearly every repair had a "problem area" where "metal fatigue" and/or other stress from vibration, corrosion and previous repairs had damaged the parent metal so badly that I could not weld it. It would simply "explode" and burn away the instant I tried to weld it. For this "documented repair" I was making I thought I had become "good enough" to weld this problem area up without replacing it. Well I was wrong . So anyway, I had to make up a patch to replace the surrounding area and crown it to fit. Here is the picture of the patch.

Unfortunately, I did not document this part of the repair because I was pissed off and it was getting late... So anyway I threw in a few pics of similar patches I did elsewhere on the fenders so this tech will be more or less complete.

The fenders are VERY firm, and I think that these repairs are very permanent and at least very close to as strong as the fender ever were if not stronger...

Let me know what you think! (And yea, I have a nice little TIG, but I still don't have the talent to comfortably use the damn thing... so yea, a TIG guy could do a lot better with this process!)





I used the same process on this longer area, a little more shrinking and stretching on both edges to get the shape right, but I have to say that this process is VERY QUICK and VERY EASY, and it came out GREAT in spite of my marginal welding abilities and my rookie metal working status.

Well that is all folks!

 

Oh hell, I shouldn't have left the beat up rotten 40 rear coupe fenders in the yard 10-12 years ago after all. After seeing this they look oh so savable. Hope nobody has run the tractor over them since I last saw them about a month ago.

 

Very nice.

 

Sorry everyone,,,,

I am about to shamelessly bump my own thread just in case someone might give a damn.....



Why,,,???

Because I can damnit...