Still chipping away at the last two sections of floor. A couple nights ago, I welded out the last and long side of the passenger’s side panel, and it went fairly well. Had to do some hammer and dolly work to keep things straight as I went, but once I had that licked it turned out amazing.
Long welds on truly flat surfaces like this can be extremely tricky to do. No bends or strengthening ribs anywhere near means that the metal will warp wherever it wants.
The past two nights, I’ve been working on the driver’s side piece. Last night I welded an extension onto the top, got the right angle where it bent over, then trimmed and welded it together. Tonight was about making the piece that creates the nice finished rounded edge. Since nobody commented on how that was made on the other side, tonight I thought I’d do a quick rundown of how it’s done.
It all starts with a 1” piece of sheetmetal, bent to the desired angle directly in the middle:
In my case, I was able to overlay it on the main piece to check my angle:
While it was overlaid, I made 2 marks on it, one signalling the beginning of the bend, and one signalling the end. This way I know the bend has to occur within this area. The arrow just determines orientation, in this case it refers to “up”.
Now where the magic happens. No it’s not some sort of black magic voodoo, just simple physics. May I introduce the Eastwood shrinker/stretcher:
In this case, we want to pull the metal together on itself in one plane, so the shrinker jaws are installed. The material goes in the jaws, in my case I positioned it directly in between my two marks for the first shrink.
With only one good firm pull of the handle, this is the effect it has on the piece:
Doesn’t look like much right?
After 3 pulls:
Definitely starting to see some movement in the metal now. After test fitting each time and adjusting where the next shrink had to go, after 4 or 5 more shrinks it was getting really close:
A look from the inside, you can see the curvature is very good and the angles are still bang on with no large gaps:
After 2 more very light shrinks in a select couple of areas, it was fitting well enough that I didn’t even have to hold it in place anymore.
As is probably painfully obvious by now, by shrinking the material on one plane only, it forces the other to bend to accommodate. That’s why this tool is so incredibly useful in customizing, fabrication, and restoration. Wheel arches and many other things that require a bent edge can be created with it.
Back to the piece, fast forward a bit, and I’ve trimmed it down to its minimum required size, marked and cut out the existing straight areas, and am test fitting it to the main piece.
A little more trimming, test fitting and tweaking, I had it to the point where I could tack it in place with a few carefully placed welds.
I will have to go back and open up the one gap between the two pieces a little for weld penetration, but I wanted it to fit tightly at first to verify I had good alignment.
A quick test fit in the car, and we have a winner!
Tomorrow night I will weld and metal finish it out on the bench, then place it back in the car to mark out the material on the side of the floor piece that will need to be removed.
And that’s how it’s done kids, no black magic voodoo. I thought this might be useful to some of you, this is all stuff I had to learn and teach myself. Hopefully it’s of some use to y’all on your own projects.
D.
Long welds on truly flat surfaces like this can be extremely tricky to do. No bends or strengthening ribs anywhere near means that the metal will warp wherever it wants.
The past two nights, I’ve been working on the driver’s side piece. Last night I welded an extension onto the top, got the right angle where it bent over, then trimmed and welded it together. Tonight was about making the piece that creates the nice finished rounded edge. Since nobody commented on how that was made on the other side, tonight I thought I’d do a quick rundown of how it’s done.
It all starts with a 1” piece of sheetmetal, bent to the desired angle directly in the middle:
In my case, I was able to overlay it on the main piece to check my angle:
While it was overlaid, I made 2 marks on it, one signalling the beginning of the bend, and one signalling the end. This way I know the bend has to occur within this area. The arrow just determines orientation, in this case it refers to “up”.
Now where the magic happens. No it’s not some sort of black magic voodoo, just simple physics. May I introduce the Eastwood shrinker/stretcher:
In this case, we want to pull the metal together on itself in one plane, so the shrinker jaws are installed. The material goes in the jaws, in my case I positioned it directly in between my two marks for the first shrink.
With only one good firm pull of the handle, this is the effect it has on the piece:
Doesn’t look like much right?
After 3 pulls:
Definitely starting to see some movement in the metal now. After test fitting each time and adjusting where the next shrink had to go, after 4 or 5 more shrinks it was getting really close:
A look from the inside, you can see the curvature is very good and the angles are still bang on with no large gaps:
After 2 more very light shrinks in a select couple of areas, it was fitting well enough that I didn’t even have to hold it in place anymore.
As is probably painfully obvious by now, by shrinking the material on one plane only, it forces the other to bend to accommodate. That’s why this tool is so incredibly useful in customizing, fabrication, and restoration. Wheel arches and many other things that require a bent edge can be created with it.
Back to the piece, fast forward a bit, and I’ve trimmed it down to its minimum required size, marked and cut out the existing straight areas, and am test fitting it to the main piece.
A little more trimming, test fitting and tweaking, I had it to the point where I could tack it in place with a few carefully placed welds.
I will have to go back and open up the one gap between the two pieces a little for weld penetration, but I wanted it to fit tightly at first to verify I had good alignment.
A quick test fit in the car, and we have a winner!
Tomorrow night I will weld and metal finish it out on the bench, then place it back in the car to mark out the material on the side of the floor piece that will need to be removed.
And that’s how it’s done kids, no black magic voodoo. I thought this might be useful to some of you, this is all stuff I had to learn and teach myself. Hopefully it’s of some use to y’all on your own projects.
D.
