What's in the shop

[MP&C]

After seeing some of the fine work being posted by other members I thought I'd offer some contributions of my own.

Brief Bio, I have been fairly decent in bending metal, so so in actually shaping it. That's one of the main reasons I joined this site, to work on that shaping metal part. I have a few older jobs that I was going to post first, as they were from when I had fewer metalworking tools at my disposal. Hopefully I can get some feedback from the more experienced fellas here to offer alternative ways to accomplish the task more efficiently. Another perspective, so to speak.

Some of the stuff I work on is strictly metalwork, other jobs include everything up to finish paintwork. So I thought the patch panel forum would be more appropriate, if the mods feel it should go elsewhere please feel free to move it.

I had someone ask me to install a PRC radiator in a 38 Chevy, said it needed some brackets made. How hard can this be, right? Here's what he dropped off:







I did ask him why he had rectangular lights on the front of a rounded car, he blamed it on a previous owner. So shaving the lights was added to the list.







Looking at the original radiator support flanges and the core support, someone had done a pretty good job of hacking them up over the years..





The bottom corners of the core support had been cut out, which would weaken the front end and allow for more flex. Let's fix that first.





Flange was folded down with hammer and dolly, then finished the welds.





For the radiator, I was looking for a bolt-in as much as possible, to cut down on welding to the front nose. Some 18 ga bent angles were made to form the outer pieces, some shrinking on the Lancaster was needed to match the contour.

The bottom end I would sandwich between the core support and the inner fender, to make use of existing harware. Not much else to bolt to up top, so it looks like we'll need brackets to use the front headlight bolts.



The inner angle bent up, set to correct width, clamped, scribed, trimmed, and welded.













Fitted in place....



This gives us a clue why the core support had been cut out. Must have tried the wrong radiator at some point...







Then to make a shroud to keep the air flowing where we want it....







...and with the grille in place....

[3 Chiefs]

Very nice work Robert. I never thought about the square lights till you mentioned it. They did look out of place. Thanks for sharing your work.

Paul

[Carbuilder]

Robert nice project very good info & tutorial keep them coming Danny.

[CARS]

Good call on the lights Robert. Now what are you going to do to blend in that fine weld patch to the 1/4" of filler surrounding it :twisted:

Don't you just love fixing other shop's repairs???

[MP&C]

Thanks for the comments guys. Chris, sometimes you're glad you didn't get the whole job

[Randy Ferguson]

Nice job Robert. Thanks for posting it. We'd love to see more.

[Rick (madera)]

Very nice Robert! Yes, good call on the lights indeed!

[Bill Gibson]

Nice job Robert!

[limatine johnson]

Im replying to the post by mp&C ,his work covers a broad area in of panel making in that there are all types of areas and considerations to be dealt with.Excellent work

[MP&C]

Thanks for the comments guys. This evening we disected the wagons tail gate. the outer skin looked fairly decent for 55 year old metal, only a couple pin holes showing....









The major issue with these tail gates, due to how they lean forward, any water collecting inside lays in the inner panel....



.......as you can see from the rear....



We laid out the proposed cut lines, used holes in the inside corners to add a radius, and made some sparks...







The tailgate has some internal stiffeners to help support the loading and unloading, and they have suffered some damage as well....







Since they're just spot welded in, and it will be easier to weld in newly fabricated ones than attempt repairs of the rusty ones in place......





That's about all we got done this evening, will need to unfold some flanges to remove the rest of the inner skin and fix the pinholes in the outer skin next....






So given the limited to nil press capabilities in my shop, what would be the easiest method with least amount of pieces to form up the lower detail on the bottom here?