Alright, I’m sure I probably startled many of you with those pics I posted last night, but I assure you everything’s ok.
I haven’t completely lost my marbles, at least not yet. There’s a perfectly good reason things look the way they do in those pictures, but of course for it to make sense, I’ve got to start at the beginning.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on making the templates and sheet metal pieces that will become the basis for my flush mount marker lights in the front fenders.
It started out by creating a template from some shirt cardboard. After taking measurements of the lights and fenders, this is what I came up with:
After cutting out the areas where the lenses would protrude, I did a quick test fit. The opening for the amber part of the lens was a tad on the small side, so adjustments were made until it fit nicely:
Precision is the name of the game here. The better and nicer I can get the templates to fit the lights now, the less guesswork there’ll be when it comes time to fit the lights in the actual pieces.
Next step was to cut out the outside dimension that the patches will be:
Satisfied with the fit and finish, I traced out my templates onto some sheet metal. I learned a long time ago to make it easier on myself and to always make both sides at the same time whenever possible.
I chose a little heavier gauge than I normally would, and heavier than what G body sheet metal is. Probably somewhere around 18 gauge. I’ll get more into why a bit later.
There’s a slight taper to one edge of each of the lights, so the driver’s side was made a mirror image by simply flipping the template around and tracing from the backside. To prevent future confusion, they immediately got labeled as to which one was which and then were cut out around the outside:
Next, before I could consider going any further I had to start to shape the patch to match the contour of the fender. Since I’m working on the passenger’s side, all pics from here on out are of that side only. I used an old section of railroad track I keep around to use as an anvil, and gradually formed the patch to match the fender:
To give you an idea of how much curvature I had to put into it, here it is on the flat bench top:
Test fit against the fender:
Once I was relatively happy with how it was matching the curvature of the fender, it was time to drill holes to create the inside corners of the openings. The corners of the lenses where they’ll protrude through the metal aren’t perfectly square, they’ve got a rounded edge to them. I used a 1/4” drill bit which seemed to match the corners nicely:
To transfer this to the templates, I used a hole template intended for drafting to match the corners and transfer them to the templates:
Then it was just a matter of center punching them and drilling out the holes:
Next up was to make centering marks on the fender by carefully measuring the opening. This shows me where to precisely place the patch to locate it in the same spot as the original.
“But D, that’s all well and good, but how did you get from doing this to having the entire front end of the car all blown apart???”
Patience my friends, I’m getting to that.
Next, the fender was marked out for where it needed to be cut to accept the new patch, the green masking tape provides a nice hi-vis edge for me to follow when cutting.
But wait, we can’t fit and burn it in just yet, we’ve got no way of mounting the light to the backside yet! After using the light to mark the location of the mounting holes on the backside of the template, they were transferred to the patch, marked out, and 1/4” holes were drilled.
The process I’m about to outline next has proven to be the most effective way I’ve found to weld studs to sheet metal.
Using some regular old grade 5 1/4”x1” long bolts and nuts...
...I double nutted them to keep them fixed solid in the vise and cut the heads off with a regular hacksaw:
With that done, I repositioned a stud in the vise, and set up a nut just below where the stud will sit in relation to the hole:
Easiest way to think of this is the nut provides a “stop” for the sheet metal to sit on and is easily adjusted to set the depth/height at the same time.
Here’s a pic to illustrate what I mean with the patch sitting on top of the stud:
This is about perfect, the stud sits just below, allowing room for penetration of the weld, yet still be invisible and strong when the weld is ground down.
Burned in:
The backsides of both studs after welding:
Continued >>>
let the mods continue!
