Thread: 55 Wagon Progress

Tweet

Your passes doing a bit of fusing with the tig torch has got me inspired. I haven't fired mine up in a while and reminds me practice makes perfect. This Sunday I'm going to have to fire her up and play with some scrap.

Originally Posted by sprayed99

Your passes doing a bit of fusing with the tig torch has got me inspired. I haven't fired mine up in a while and reminds me practice makes perfect. This Sunday I'm going to have to fire her up and play with some scrap.

Yeah, sometimes you have to step out of that comfort zone....




About a month ago I attempted some drip rail fab for a Jeep Cherokee... after making some new dies for the bead roller made some further refinements today.....

Just a test today to see if I could bend up some Jeep Cherokee drip rail to match the small sample I was sent in the mail. This was done with 18ga crs using the bead roller, mag brake, and press brake. The layout details needs just a bit of tweaking, but I think it may just work...

Just as a follow up to this, the dies I used in the original attempt had about a .07 offset. I didn't want to alter their size as they get used once in a blue moon for sheet metal offset, like I did for the 55 Chevy truck windshield panel.. So I decided to make another set, and based on the dimensional difference between the good sample and the trial piece, it looked like I needed to add about .04 to the offset, or .110 total. So here are the new dies...








I again used the "backstop" die, and had to go back and trim a bit more off the width of the lower die to get the drip rail height correct.











Then the "backstop" die was radiused to use with the skateboard wheel in providing the radius for the front face...








Then a few passes with the tipping die to fold up the front face...








The ends wanted to fold much more than the rest of the trial piece, so rather than continually readjust the tension, I sacrificed the first inch or so and just cut it off in the band saw.


Here is the outer portion formed, the height is about perfect, this is using die width and back stop to regulate dimension...





The offset also turned out much better. The sharp bend on mine wasn't quite as tight together, but we'll see what the Jeep guys say to this version.....

Great work on all of it!

As always, Thank You Robert. While I may not run out to the shop to try bending sheet metal like you.. You posts always expand my thinking of how to accomplish metal work...

What he said.

Thanks for the comments guys. I enjoy posting my "thinking out loud" that often occurs in the shop, at times it provides me another perspective in someone's comment that perhaps I overlooked. So it helps to expand my thinking as well.

The shop's new apprentice started last night, so hopefully we can post project updates a bit more frequently

We did some more metal bumping on the roof repair. We had some high spots to address, so Kyle held the shot bag on the inside while I used the body hammer on the outside.




I used the blunted pick end of this hammer to address the narrow high spots. I've found it helps to more precisely locate your "strike area" by laying a guide finger next to it. Tap down the area, move to the next....





We did have a larger high spot that made use of the hammer face, and on the bottom side Kyle held the donut dolly in place. This made short work of bringing down the high spots..





Note the "graduated" markings on the roof are also on the inside to keep inside guy and outside guy on the same page with hammer and dolly alignment.

Just a note on using a finger to locate areas needing attention, MOVE YOUR FINGER BEFORE STRIKING AREA WITH THE PICK!!!!! Sometimes I get to concentrating so much on the area I'm working that the hand not holing the hammer gets in the way!!! Life is tough for us Norwegians!!!!

Just to clarify, I was doing more of a precise bumping than hammer blows. Didn't want to add any dents. So the tip of the hammer was barely raised up past my finger...

I was told, long ago that, if I would put a piece of paper between my fingers and the metal I would feel more finer imperfections. It appeared to work, perhaps only because I wanted it too, don't know.

I use a soft cloth like a hankie You can feel things you can't see.

Ice little factoid for future use there August. I will have to give that a try, or the soft cloth Charlie!

Today we worked on tying up some loose ends. We had a slight mis-alignment at the front corner of the passenger door..





The lower hinge had already been adjusted as far as the floating nut would let it...





So the door was removed, and since we have no milling machine, we went through about 8 of these 60 grit sanding discs..














For a better comparison, here's the before again...





After

Very nice! The LH bottom rear corner of my door on my 40 sticks out farther than the quarter, but the upper half is flush. When I get to that point, I'm going to have to get your take on how I should fix it as I don't want to ruin the door.

On a painted car, this involves rolling down the window, wrapping a 2x4 in a towel, and place the 2x4 between the door jamb and the center part of the door that fits. Then lean on the door above and below the 2x4 to "tweak" the fit. On a car without paint, save the wear and tear on the towel.


With the lower corner of the door fitting better, it becomes all the more obvious how poor of a reproduction these outer rocker panels are. The "concave" radius does not match the fender to the front or the quarter to the rear of the rocker. This would have been a good fix using the Wheeling machine with a Go Kart slick, had it been noticed before installation.





Matching the lower anvils of the Wheeling machine to the radius on the quarter, this one fits the best. Also notice how it doesn't fit as well in the rocker panel..








At this point I thought I'd try a "portable" version of the Wheeling machine to add a bit more radius to the rocker panel.








Built in guide......





After some "wheeling", and some bumping of the leading edge with a door skin hammer:


Just to show the comparison, before



After: