Thread: 52 Chevy tail pan

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Spent today hosting a Pullmax Workshop for some of the guys from the VA HAMB. OJ Higgins recently took delivery of a gargantuan Trumpf universal machine (a Pullmax on Steroids) and wanted a down and dirty on how these machines could be put to use. So OJ and a few other VA guys stopped by today and for a sample to use, ClutchDumpinDan brought by a tail pan from his 52 Chevy that was in dire need of rust repair.. We found a piece of 18 gauge cold rolled steel large enough to do the trick, so Dan cut it in half just in case we needed to do this twice...








Dies made for the universal tool holder in the Lennox Nibbler





Profile check...





Test sample...





Our new panel ready to run through the dies...





Step detail





Tipping the leading edge..





Dan takes a twinkie break





Videos....


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB8wdKQHwqE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbrMeTq0HXE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWELebyXNF0



Comparing new to old...





Rusty seal joggle on the old panel...





The new one...








Adding some bead details to change things up a bit...








Comparison....





Fancy tool for finishing the bead ends...

You guys do amazing stuff!

If the one you made is mounted one day some purist will look at it and shake his head and won't be able to figure out why it's different. That just tickles me to no end.

Canadian car.

Boy oh boy that is awesome! I really like your bead end tool. do you run that in the bottom side in to the edge of the roller when you want to finish an end?

Place the panel flat on the table, use the "half pipe" as a punch to crisp up the ends. No fuss no muss.

Great to see these skills, and knowledge
passed on!

Rich

Had some questions about how we did the "J" detail for the bumper seal..





I missed getting some of the pictures of the dies, so had to go back afterwards...


These are all the dies used, I had three different lower dies to progressively fold the sides in. The location is set by using a backstop on the first pass, using the die show on the right..





This is the final die shown with a sample run...

Great!! Love this stuff.

.

Very nice!

Do you save all the special dies and stamps you make for each project? How long does it take to make something like that? Thanks for all the pics!

The phenolic dies used in the universal tool holders took about 15 minutes to cut out and get dialed in. The steel ones you see here were probably 1-1/2 to 2 hours, add more if welding is involved. Steel dies take much longer to make, especially if you take them to a polish finish and heat treat them, or depending on the complexity of the design. I keep all the dies I make, in many cases you can reuse on something new. The beads added on the tailpan were the same dies we used for the bead detail around the louvers on the 35 Chevy hood sides.

Doesn't seem like much got done this weekend, but here's what we did..


Stopped by the local CNC router facility to get some generic guides made for bead detail on the Lennox Nibbler...





Also had some blanks cut out over there to the right side. These were to form stops so we can adjust length of our pattern shorter as needed..








It has a snug fit like so:





Next was to turn up a new die with less crown than the other we've been using, just to have a different look, a flatter bead..











Setting up for some practice runs...








Here's a comparison between the new die and the fuller radius we've been using..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMi7...ature=youtu.be


Thursday night headed over to Virginia, the 52 Chevy tail pan now resided in Fredericksburg and I needed to borrow the original and new one for the Coming Out car show in Charlotte Hall, being held Sunday (today). I had been dragging my feet about even going to the show, but the weather forecast promised beautiful weather, so I went ahead and reserved a vendor spot to show off our fabrication work. Friday night started gathering some samples to take and a put some pictures together for an album..





We still had all the original pieces for the lift gate repair, so that was a good sample..

Set up at the show, I figured parked next to the Ice Cream truck would be easier on my will power than the smell of three BBQ trucks on the other side...








Got these pictures right after we set up and before all the crowd showed up. Had a blast, talking metalshaping, rust repair, etc. for most of the day.. I guess I've got to get back to work now...

We don't always get to see pictures of our smaller fabrications once installed by the owners, but since this tailpan is an exception we'll share..

That looks perfect!