The pan on the right was originally made to fill in the area from the back of the body to the bumper because of the extended quarters. At the time a lot of thought was put into the form of it along with suggestions and help from my good friend who owns a louver press. Louvers are bitchin, but, they dont have the aesthetics I was going for. When I decided to dial in my car and redo some of the poor quality work I had originally done, the splash pan was on the slate for an update as well. The picture on the left is an outline traced onto plywood I had laying around from a crate. The green tape represents the flange where it bolts to the body, while the shapes in the middle of the panel are to be rolled and dropped down.
This picture shows the vapour barrier I used as a template over the drawing I made. This way I can get a good template to transfer to some sheet metal.
The lines of the template have a small hole punched in at 1/16 inch increments allowing for dots to be placed on the sheet metal. Connect the dots!!!
After drawing the layout lines onto the sheet metal, it is matched with the original template to make sure it is correct. The reason I did not do this panel in one piece is the throat in my bead roller is not big enough to be able to roll the middle part if it is one piece.
Rolling in the dropped panels.
Matching it up with the template
The process is exactly the same for the other side. The two panels are then skip welded together mith the MIG. I dont have a TIG yet
The welds are ground down, now the panel gets placed so that a template for the flange to the body can be made.
The same process is used to transfer the template to the sheet metal for the flange which gets rolled out.
Fit is pretty decent! Not bad for an amateur!
Unfortunately I did not get any pictures of the process of cutting the panels to match. Basically, I screwed the flange to the body and used my trusty jack with a board stacked on it to hold the panel while I could position it to the proper place. I tack welded it to hold it and used a zip cut on the angle grinder to cut the long lengths and a sawzall to cut the rounded corners. Then it was skip welded and ground down. The picture above is after it was ground, tack welded and refit to check it. At this point adjustments could still be made if needed.
Before this picture I had to fit the bumper to the car and measure along many points and transfer the arc to the sheet metal. I then trimmed the sheetmetal with my electric sheers, hoping that it was the correct distance. I fit the pan then installed the bumper. The fit ended up being pretty good!
Time to metal finish it, body work it and spray some primer!!!
