Thread: 55 Wagon Progress

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Too busy Ryan!


We've been waiting for an opening at the machine shop's blasting booth, we're going to get the frame done first. They have some large platform in there now for the US Navy, so it looks like another couple weeks.. So in the meantime, Kyle has been prepping some front end components for paint..



























......and we should have this showing up tomorrow, need to get some metal cut out of the side and new replacement made up...

Custom suspension components

Just when I thought you couldn't push the bar any higher.

The disc conversion on the 55 pushes the front wheels out, those are some narrowed Heidt's units that pull them back in..

Here's what we had to contend with on the bus. Some can opener effect going on....











After cutting some of the mangled mess out of the way.........











......we saw that the bottom structural member was not going to cooperate. The horizontal section behind the weld tear at the top used to be vertical... So to save some time, we'll cut this out and make a replacement. This is 16 ga, and is there to keep vehicles out of the passenger compartment. It did it's job, so let's put in a new one to restore the integrity..








Here the bottom flange is pushed in over an inch..





Here's the replacement we made up..





Comparison....








All trimmed, we'll get the replacement panel formed and fitted Tuesday..





Spare parts...

That's important work, paying attention to the job the different support pieces are there for, and getting them back as good or better than before to keep those kids safe. You're doing good things there, and I'm not just talking about the quality of your work. Nice job.

That is coming along very nice! Great work.

Thanks guys!


Well our bus side panel is just shy of 8' long and about 24" wide. We did a light pass on the wheeling machine just enough to break the grain, figured it would have less chance of waves that way... We found out real quick that 8' is a bit long, so some 1x2's were pony-clamped under the outside edges to provide a bit of support. We tried to make a pass through the bead roller for the stepped flange at the bottom, with less than stellar results, a bit wavy up and down. Good thing we had the other half of the sheet. More wheeling, and used the offset / step dies in the Lennox Tru-Edge.





Given our challenges with the long panels, we had to call in reinforcements. Regardless of the late hour that Scott's attire suggests, it was only 8 at night!








Linear slides really came in handy, nice straight detail this go round..








Comparing the bend relief above the rear bumper ear...








Tomorrow evening well get it fitted to the bus and final trimmed..

Finished the welding of the lower structural member on the bus repair...








.....and underneath it is tied to the floor cross members





Added the frame around the fuel door, this helps prevent the side panel from flopping around as the fuel door is pushed closed..














Thursday evening we'll get all the holes pre-drilled for the skirting and start prepping for paint..

The braces for behind the lower skirt were mangled pretty well, had to untwist the pretzels to get accurate measurements..








Getting all the holes prepped...





Welding in the new braces..








All the pieces of the puzzle... Well, almost..








Now to bust it apart for paint prep..

You make it look easy.

Thanks! This one has been a bit more involved than most of them..


Well, only one more piece to make for the bus, we need a cap to join together two pieces of rub rail....





Bent up some 18 ga on the Baileigh magnetic brake...








Then for the highly technical stuff, bent the rest using vise grips to clamp it in place and a dead blow to incrementally tap the ears around...








Continued to use the hammer to tap it around, then tightened up the radius on this die/post dolly








We'll get some paint on the bus parts tomorrow..

Wow that's nice.

Thanks!


Cody Walls drove down from Delaware today so we could punch louvers in the hood sides for 35 Chevy he's been working on, see some of his beautiful work here...


Cody Walls builds a 35 Chevy | The H.A.M.B.


After using the samples we punched last month, Cody wanted to run one more test sample with larger louvers to check the flow against where the headlight lines up. Here Cody and Kyle wheel a new test sample...





Using the Lennox to punch the louvers, stops were riveted in place.








Clamped to the hood side, we decided on a slightly larger, with more to be added at the rear than the front..





The Driver's hood side takes it's turn...








One down.....





Passenger side....





All finished up...








Can't wait to see these on the car..

Wow you guys make it look so easy! What a great job. That kid's got talent!

Wow that's great metal work, I wish we had some of the equipment at our shop it'd make plane building a bunch easier. Nice works guys !!