Mother nature, rust and panel shaping.

Cars that are lucky enough and survive long enough to become classics also come with classic problems. Worn components, rust and obsolete or unattainable parts. The cars that are lucky enough to get restored don't always get the best attention, be it the skills of the restorer, or a half assed effort to hastily try and get the car on the road. (Haste makes waste!!!) I appreciate that the vehicle is on the road, but personally poor craftsmanship drives me crazy and there is no need for it if the proper effort is applied. Now, not everyone in the hobby has the skill to do concourse work, I personally don't claim to know everything or to be the best, but what I hope to achieve while writing this blog is to show how I, or my friends who help/teach me, do things.

If you remember back to an earlier post my good buddy Chad helped me replace the outer rocker and lower front quarter of the drivers side. We used sheet metal ordered from National  Chevy Association. With a little bit of hammer and dolly manipulation they fit quite well (mostly it was shipping damage that needed repair)

The piece below this text is the rear inner rocker on the passenger side. It it not available from restoration suppliers, it is a piece that needs to be made.

 

You can see that this piece is almost non-existent from the rust. This is not a difficult piece to make, but we needed to improvise a little bit. Here's how we did it with minimal tools.

The entire rocker, inner rocker inner quarte and outer lower quarter are removed from the car so all rusty pieces are gone. The areas in the above picture are all cleaned prior to welding.

What we don't show is the cardboard template we used to get the profile of the rusted out inner quarter 2 pictures above. This template was then transferred to the 18 GA sheet metal, which was clamped to the table and flanged down using duck bill vice grips. Below you can see Chad straightening the flange with a little bit of hammer and dolly work.

2 inch tape was used to layout the edge of where the flange is, the reason this is done is so that a little bit of extra metal is left over when we are done, it also gives a little bit of a buffer in case the template is not exactly perfect.

The template we made showed where the bend should start, a tear drop hammer and a couch cushion were used to manipulate the metal into a general shape that we wanted.

To really manipulate the shape. the telepost in the basement was used to radius along the line we made with the hammer.

 With slight hammer and dolly work, the radius was finished and the flange was banged into the bottom edge.This is then fit to the car to see if it matches the new quarter.

first, the inner was spot welded to the floor it was coated with a copper rich weld through primer to prevent corrosion in the future. The reason this is done is so that we have a guide to go off of, before it was removed measurements were taken so the bottom flange is in the factory location.

The outer rocker was drilled with 10 holes on each flange (top and bottom) as welll as on the front and the back section (2 holes each) to attach to the factory spot weld areas.

The outer rocker was also treated to some weld through primer

Rocker now welded into place. Prior to this picture the door was installed and checked for squareness before the rocker was final welded. After this point the lower front quarter is tack welded in place to use as a guide to weld the inner quarter to.

A picture prior to cutting out all the rust and installing the new quarters and rockers.

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Here is the piece we made earlier in place before the floor braces were welded in, it fit well and a minimum of hammer and dolly work were needed after installation to make it fit. It was then spot welded, using 1/4 inch holes to attach to where the original floor was. The inner rockers from this piece forward to the inners we made earlier by flanging another flat straight piece over the edge of the table, then hammer and dollied straight drilled for spot welds and installed. In retrospect, we should have made the rear inner quarter 5 inches longer, because 5 inches is all we needed, then it would have been 2 pieces instead of 3.

Here Chad is finish welding the panels in place.

It doesnt look like much work, now that I go back and look at my pictures, however, this little project took 2 guys, 2 days at 10 hours per day, so around 20 hours each equalling 40 hours. Chad and I dont mess around too much, thankfully Chad has a good work ethic and can keep me motivated and working the whole day. The results show. All that is left when we shut it down on sunday was to weld the floor braces to the inner rocker and cut off the excess flange to mach up with the factory pinch weld spec, and to grind  down the weld on the front quarter and the quarter and rocker escapade is DONE-ZO!!!!!!