1959 356A S/R coupe project chassis # 108625

[JTR70]

Checking beam for parallel part 2:
Rotated the dowls and checked it from the front. Same result, I could not generate a rocking motion in the plate. The twin beams on this side are running as parallel in relation to one another as they can be.
Moved over to the left side. A slight rocking motion could be generated over here. Feeler gauge inserted into the discrepancy.
Thickest gauge I could get in there was 6 thousandths. Practically nothing...
My factory manual states max misalignment allowed is 31 thousandths... This beam is golden.

It was nice luxury to confirm this beams trueness with a factory checking tool but I'd have been shocked to find this assembly out of spec. If you've ever held this unit in your hands the first thing you'll notice is just what a heavy duty unit it actually is. The tubes and outer(also inner) flanges are really heavy gauge steel and if you're seeing my earlier pictures on the actual "frame" attachment points that surround it, it becomes apparent that the much thinner corrugated sheets really have a tiger by the tail. This beam assembly is the boss and the pressed frame sections will give way and deform long before it does. I do have a bent beam assembly floating around in my shop but the car it came out of had this beam shoved all the way back up and into the pedals. So they will bend but this car wasn't hit that hard. Onto pulling this beam assembly back out to factory specs.

Thanks for looking and my thanks once again to John Brooks!
Justin

[roy mawbey]

Well done Justin great to know just how good that check was!
Roy

[JTR70]

Hey Roy, it checked out a lot better than I thought it was going to.

[JTR70]

Initial front beam pull: Planning the first pull. The jig shows this side of the beam pushed slightly back and upward. The bump stop was the natural choice to anchor onto for this initial downward and out pull.
Chassis chalked, beam jig with pins installed and new puller set and ready to take the first bite. Just had to lower the bottle jack slightly as it went.
The chassis is supported and chalked right to the end of the bulkhead wall to be the fulcrum point for the downward correction. As the pull went the obvious kink at the top of the chassis was heated, pulled out a little further, then repeated. The round cove was also hammered back into form as this process went.
By the end of the first pull the bottom pin was in with the upper very close but still just slightly out of range for insertion. The next pull needs to be at a more level approach to get this one. BTW: once the tension was released the beam relaxed out of range again though not as far as initially. I knew it wasn't going to give up on the first try. Anyway before I go further I'm heading over to the left side for its first pull to catch it up with this side. I left the bottom pin in over here to let it all get used to the idea while I pull the other side.
In process now of removing the lower gusset and the brake line tab in preparation to give this side its first pull.

Thanks for looking!

Justin

[JTR70]

Left side beam pull:
Gusset removed like the other side to weaken this area a little further to make the pull easier on everyone. Brake line tab was also removed so its out of the way while I make the repairs to the cove hole later on. I forgot to take a shot of this area before the pull and as you can see the pins were successfully inserted at this point.
Earlier photo highlighting how far out this side of the beam was.
Trying to equal out both sides of this beam as much as possible as the pulling goes so I' started down low on this side first. Since the right side top remains out just a touch I figured I'd address the top beam correction last.
After several pretty high tension tugs I heard a "click" somewhere behind the beam. I tried the pins and much to my surprise and relief I was able to get them both inserted on this single pull. I thought for sure I was going to have to do a second pull from the top to get the upper pin in but no it all came out in one shot.
Here was the source of that "click" sound I heard on that final tug. This fracture highlights the trigger point in all that old damage above it and why all weld repairs where paused ahead of this area until it could be pulled out.

[JTR70]

Second right side pull:
Three pins inserted with one more to go. The top pin is crowded out by literally half the width of the edge of the beam.

I thought I could sneak it in with a quick and direct pull down from this angle but after several cranks with no real change I felt there was too much tension going through the lower pin as the pivot point so I stopped. It would have to be at a more level angle.
The only possible anchor point I had on hand high enough and stout enough to secure to was a leg on my welding table. This entire table is super heavy duty and weighs every bit of 300+pounds; only a floor jack can pick up an end of it. Anyway once it was resting against the beam I knew it was going to give me what I needed.

I started cranking but it still didn't want to give those last couple of MM's. Only after I reheated that upper area where it had kinked did it finally give me the needed clearance to get that final pin home.

All the pins where in! The front and rear beams are finally back within factory specs in relation to one another; its a nice start. This is only step one of this new chapter as there is a ton tension going through those pins as the beam desperately wants to back. I'll be further relaxing and correcting the metal panel behind the beam with additional chain pulls as it goes. The final goal is pin alignment with zero tension on them and the frame. I was just happy and relieved to have gotten to this stage. Small bites...

Thanks for looking!

Justin

[roy mawbey]

Justin, Fantastic and so well described and detailed with all those photos. I have wondered for years how they attempted this type of bodywork repair on the Cellette. Now it makes sense to me.

One question I have, the red pull out ' jack' handle used to stretch the chains did you have to put a long handle on it to increase the 'pull' on the chain? ( I expect the pull out unit has a different name to it not jack as I used.)

Never gave a thought to the stretched out part moving back on release of chain pressure !

Great thread!

Roy

[JTR70]

Thank you Roy! Cellette sells a dedicated pneumatic pulling tower/arm attachment but that is several thousand more plus freight; Not a good investment for the actual amount of use it would see for my purposes. Then there is the storage in my little shop while not in use. I knew I could rig something and get by without it since this beam really didn't have far to go. Yes, it wants to spring backwards slightly and while that's a pain and a bit of curve ball to account for during this process its a good sign as it means the steel retains its tensile strength. Had this chassis gone through a fire the metal would all be annelid. If pulled on like I'm doing here it would just move with no spring back or strength. While much simpler and easy to manipulate, that would not be a good sign.

[JTR70]

Going to begin taking the rearward pressure off of the left side pins first.
Bottle jack placed under the left side to take up the weight of this corner with chain puller back into position with tension allowing the pins to slide in and out freely.
While its under load I'm going to repair the lower cove first to begin restoring the integrity of this wall.
At first glance I thought this was an initial cut was from a pneumatic chisel thinking that the body shop may have planned to clip this car way back when but Vic Skirmants correctly diagnosed its cause being from the tie-rod striking it during the accident.
After a few rounds of heat it was coming up and closing but this area was badly mangled and stretched in the accident. You can see the tear overlapping itself here.

[JTR70]

I ran a cutting wheel through the tear to take out the excess then stitched it working from the bottom to chase out to the flange. Once I got there I ran into shape and alignment issues. The metal is thick and the area is very tough to get at on this bench, especially from the backside. After a couple of attempts I knew the flanged edge was not going to turn out cleanly. I needed to start fresh.
I could fabricate a new flanged section but with this original donor just laying around taking up space; here was the answer.
This beam by the way is bent! Bottom tube is bowed badly in the center as it was shoved clear into the front of the floor. This unit was a factory replacement front chassis clip that could have been purchased from Porsche back in the day. This was installed so long ago that it was brazed in and the new battery box unit that would have come with it had almost rusted away. The green primer lurks underneath, brass welds are were a ton of spot welds should be (factory) to attach to the sides of trunk floor. The coupe this came from had a rough life. It was obviously wrecked bad enough to require a new frame clip then it subsequently wrecked again... and bad enough to bend this replacement beam! Then...it was repair attempted again at some point with a bunch of fish plating and huge MIG weld passes. Just a knarly mess the front of this car was. What a valuable NOS frame section this would be today had it not been sacrificed all those years ago, sad.
Final cut line. Going to get past the damaged flange and a little of the sin below it.
New section harvested from that donor.

Thanks for looking!

Justin

[roy mawbey]

This story just gets more and more interesting Justin! What a way round the problem and it shows again and again just how important or useful, a donor car or donor part is whe restoring. Also Vic was clever in working out how that gash happened. Mind you, I have over the the years gained a lot of respect for what he has done on 356 cars, I think he also knows them inside out the same as you!

Roy

[JTR70]

Hi Roy,
Agree, Donor and or reference cars and parts is the key to have any shot at an accurate restoration. Vic is on an entirely different level and has probably forgotten more about these cars than I'll ever know...

[JTR70]

Catching this back up from last week.

Donor section stitched in while under load from the chain puller to help lock in the beams correct position.
Before I moved onto tacking and welding in the lower flange run a beam position check in its relaxed state was first.
Tension released and pins pulled to test where the beam is going to sit in its relaxed state. As you can see its positioned only slightly back and well within striking distance. The right side is pinned but its still bent and under load so I'm sure its having an effect over here.
Pins in and puller tension added back in. Residual rust wire wheeled clean then the new lower flange section was tacked to further lock in the beam position.
New lower flange stitched and dressed. Gone about as far as I can on this side for the moment. Headed over to the right side to repeat this process.

[roy mawbey]

So sensible to weld and check, weld and check Justin.

Not sure I would have thought about that. Getting too old now to even think about doing that !
Roy

[JTR70]

Thats a lesson I've learned the hard way Roy. If you're not watching as it goes it tends to want to go sideways.

[JTR70]

Begin wrestling with the right side.
Again, under tension from the puller I went back to hammering down all the obvious deformations and a few of the not so obvious ones that I was only able to pickup by looking at an undamaged reference. I drilled and opened up the lap joint at the top which is where most of the collapse occurred.
Thought I had it all relaxed out and set. Getting ready to stitch up the new flange section.
Stitched, released the tension and pulled the pins. Shit! It didn't take like I thought it was going to. Its pulled out far enough but the its still bucked upward by about a quarter inch. Just when I thought it was getting easy Roy....

Once the pins were reinserted under tension the left rear tube pin spins freely with no load on it. Its just not sitting square...yet.
I could have easily faked the pictures and claimed "all square" as a 1/4 inch worth of discrepancy between the front and back beams could easily be absorbed but its not honest and besides we've come way too far in time and tooling to half-ass it now. I'd have to dive a little deeper to get at the trigger point holding this side up. That next...

Thanks for looking!

Justin

[roy mawbey]

Justin, I can imagine how you felt when you saw the discrepancy ! On the pull back what happens if you slowly increase the pull back pressure and go over by a small amount the point where the alignment pins don't enter but do when pressure is released? Or then does the problem get WORSE because the pull back is from a DIFFERENT position entirely if the pins do not correspond as expected. In the end , might you not have to accept some small discrepancy?

This is not easy at all. As I said once before I have never read an account of how they did these jobs on factory repairs, They must have had these exact problems .
Have you tried putting a dial indicator with magnetic base placed on the cellette and the indicator onto a relevant area you are stretching to actually see the pull out value and so you can repeat the pull back exactly? Then only in theory, you might have more control on the pull back distance. and the release value?
Roy

[JTR70]

Remember a few posts back when I was talking about how important tensile strength in the steel was Roy? Well not so much a fan of that at the moment as its working against me in retaining the deformation. Its almost there and an 8th of an inch isn't much but it just didn't want to give it to me. A dial indicator is a good idea but I ended up relief cutting it in the end. As for acceptable discrepancy; The bottom beam has to be right on the money without tension which is what I've got at the moment. The top beam is still tending to wanting to lean back just a touch when the pin is pulled. If this discrepancy remains once the dust settles I'd be just fine with that as its only increasing the castor slightly which would if anything help the car to track better but not noticeably since its so slight. I'll post that shortly along with the rest of this sausage making process you said you never get to see Roy.

Justin

[JTR70]

Had to have clear access to the back of this wall and the remaining deformation.
I normally make it a rule to stay clear of ID panels but after a bit of deliberation it became clear that I needed a clean shot at the back side of the damaged frame panel. Removing the forward section of this floor would give me needed access. The second advantage to removing this panel is allowing me to fix and open up this leading edge flange; which still contains the old vertical walls flange. It would be very difficult to straighten and open this up while mounted. Can't get at it easily on this bench(metal plated floor just below) and can't be done the rotisserie as my attachment point would right underneath and also in the way.
Drilling out the row of spot welds along the sides and cutting it in half along the toe-board bulk head wall flange. At mid-flange to both support and conceal the weld joint once its stitched back in. Foward panel removed giving me plenty of access.
This was the view I needed especially the upper rearward corner.
With this panel free I can both open and straighten this leading edge out on my table. As you can see its heavily spot welded along the sides and would be nearly impossible to fix this cleanly mounted in the car and me working upside down.

Thanks for looking.

Justin

[roy mawbey]

Well done Justin very good thinking on making it accessable to work on. Your photo's and method of working are as I have said many times really good. So many traps you cou;d fall into without giving everything such careful thought. I hope others are following this thread as its so interesting to see your efforts stage by stage.

Roy

[JTR70]

Thanks Roy! Trying to document as best as I can what really went into repairing this old car body but these posts are still just a small window into the process. Having done this work yourself, you know what a hard slog it can be at times.