The Resurrection of Foam Car - 63 T6B

[MMW]

Coming along nicely. Thanks for posting. When you roll the hem will you heat it or do it cold?

[Phil Planck]

Mic

First time cold. Hopefully there is only a first time. If I screw up I will heat it to open it back up.

Phil

[JTR70]

Nice looking weld joint Phil! Looks like it will only require a razor thin swatch of filler to be perfect; The best any of us can hope for.
Fantastic job! Justin

[roy mawbey]

Really nice welding Phil. Enjoying your thread.

Roy

[tperazzo]

Really nice Phil. I finished this area on my car and will add some pics too. Very difficult area if you ask me. Door gap, fender elevation, hemmed edge over a curved path, whew. I need to read Roland's chapter on this again. I ended up cheating on the upper hemmed area.

Just saw your welding post, and this happens on long welds for sure where the gap goes to interference at the ends.

I do a little bit of gap adjustment, but try to keep the removal to a minimum. Best to stretch the weld to relax the panel to fit close to the way you trimmed it. If too much is removed on the ends than the contour changes. I smack the welded area backed with a heavy dolly and make it ring 5 times with fairly hard hits.

I don't necessarily start welding in the middle either, instead I pick the spots that line up the best and move around from there. Alternating hammer on dolly and welding as I go.

Keep up the good work!

[Phil Planck]

Today was the moment of truth as I hemmed the fender flange to the outer closing panel. First I scribed the lines for the bend and trimming the flange.






Ron Roland said to make the flange 1/2", however the old remaining flange was .40" so I trimmed another .10" off of the flange. He also recommends 3 holes to plug weld so I punched those out.



Time to start bending the flange. Here I am about half way down with the first iteration of the bend:


Here the bend is about 75% done, using a hammer with a dolly flush to the bend line on the back side:



I bought a hemming tool to use on the doors way back when, so I dug that out and used it to start getting the total hem thickness down to 4mm, which is what I measured on my unmolested 55 coupe:


Here is the box the tool came in:


Time to fit the door to see how the gap looks:


Gap is pretty good, with about an 8" section a little wider. Checked the hem thickness and this area measured 5mm so ran the tool over to get it down to 4mm which should even up the gap.
Here are some shots of the hemmed flange all finished:

[John Pierce]

Wow! Looks fantastic. That's a lot of work...how many hours did it take you? You are putting a lot of hours in and progressing quickly.

[Phil Planck]

John
The actual hemming took 1 hr. 15 min. Scribing & Trimming the flange was about 30 min.

All of the time is in the prep work - getting the closing panel flange in just the right location and fab, fit, weld in the repair panel.

[DG58INNM]

Very nice Phil. I like the little flange hemming tool. Where did you get that?
DG

[MMW]

Very nice Phil. I like the little flange hemming tool. Where did you get that?
DG

Looking awesome Phil. I thought the same thing about the tool & looked it up. Just type "the skinner tool" in the web search & lots of hits come up. Here is two.

http://www.wivco.com/the_skinner.htm

http://www.tptools.com/-The-Skinner-Door-Panel-Installation-Tool,7853.html

[roy mawbey]

Phil,

This is most interesting indeed. Both my fenders are original or certainly 50 years old that's as far back as all the service and repair receipts go. So it has always intriqued me how Justin has got his gap so perfect on the area you have been working on.

Only the other day I checked my front door closure gap to establish if I could get it better like his. When the door is swung open and then you look very carefully at the flange and then slowly close the door the arc of the door front misses the back of the flange by the smallest amount. I thought wow, the flange thickness needs to be reduced to ever get near the gaps Justin has. The hemming tool would have done that I reckon for sure but, the factory did not achieve the 4mm thickness its more like 5 or 6 mm I will measure it and advise.

So my door gap is at best 4mm at the front ( I think actually within factory tolerance?) but if they had compressed that bend to the thickness you seem to have Phil it would mean my gap could be much less.

So very important that thickness factor. Get it wrong and you have to live with it. Something you must take into account when working on the door closure. I can't wait to measure the thickness on both doors and report back. If only these threads had been around 37 years ago when I did my bodywork I would have been all over those flanges. Just thought original metal all good at that place on the car leave well alone

Roy

[Phil Planck]

DG

As has already been posted, I got the skinner here:
http://www.wivco.com/the_skinner.htm

Roy - My 55 coupe flange thickness is 4mm with paint, and it has never been restored.

Phil

[JTR70]

That is a great tool, I'll be adding that one to my wish list as well! Really clean job on that hem joint Phil!

[DG58INNM]

Thanks for the tip on this Phil (and Mic too). This WIVCO place will probably be wondering why there is suddenly a run on Skinners
DG

[Phil Planck]

Next big task will be removing the lead on the lock post as Justin did and probably welding in a new front of quarter panel, as there are several rust holes up near the top. Dreading starting this, I decided to repair to rusty areas on the front fender. There were 6 or 7 small holes in two spots. Don't understand how a fender can rust out here unless the undercoating failed and water got trapped. Anyway, cut out the first bad spot:




I tried a no gap fit and beveled the edges to hopefully get good penetration. Started tacking in:



Finished up the tack/planish/grind process. Then used a file on this convex surface to get the weld pretty smooth. Cut out the second area and fit and scribed a patch: