You mentioned chrome plating. So how much oversize do you drill the holes so they won't be too small once plated? I've wondered about that but have never had anything plated so I could find out.
Had a slight distraction yesterday, a couple hood sides for a 37 Ford showed up. The owner wanted to remove the side "grille", and add a tapered recess pan with clamshell louvers. Here's what we started with...
Some cutoff wheel action later....
In an attempt to keep as much metal on the ends as possible, we opted to flatten the sad remains of the horizontal fins. This involved some shrinking via the heating tip in the dent puller..
Looks like someone has spilled bondo all over this panel. Funny the inside didn't look all that mangled to warrant the amount we found.. Must be a TV car..
The shrinking efforts flattened out the ends fairly well...
I filled in the previous trim holes with 18 Ga plugs and TIG fusion while the owner worked away at removing the bondo so we could see what we had to work with...
Next, we had to fold a flange in the front and extend the factory bead around the opening down the front where we had flattened the panel. Some of the existing bead profiles had seen better days in the past 80 plus years, so I checked a set of joggle dies I had made for drip rail as it looked close...
New flange folded at the front, bead added using the Lennox, original beads touched up ...
Tapered pan fabricated.....
Louver layout
Welded in place..
He is having some art deco style trim pieces made to accent the louvers down the center, topped by 62 Impala fender trim. We didn't have those, so here it is with alternate SS fuel line for your viewing pleasure...
Well the owner sent me a "concept photo" complete with cardboard cutout... The piece of cardboard against the hood side will be chrome plated, the next will be a contrasting color to the car, and topped off with the Impala fender trim..
More progress on the fuel lines, with both lines now routed, we opted for glue lined heat shrink as an abrasion resistant covering where it passes closely to the body, and regular heat shrink to keep the two together.
Mike installs an anchor point for adel clamps in the shock crossmember
Hood side number two completed yesterday. The flanges of the tapered pan get some stretch treatment in the kick Erco to match the profile of the hood side..
For the questions about the cutting device, it is a long nose pneumatic cut off tool from Blue Point. For keeping the cut nice and perpendicular, and disc width, the long nose works better (for me anyhow) by having the long nose as a visual guide to keep it parallel to our centerline. I don't think I would have seen as good of results using the standard cut off tool.
Each slot has stop drill holes at the end, to help remove any cracking issue and also to better determine end of cut.
Our vent/check valve for the fuel tank will get mounted up behind the driver's tail light by the filler neck. We bent up a piece of stainless tubing last night for the vent line. The glue-lined heat shrink works well to provide a cushion/vibration dampener up against the tank.. For our stainless bends, we had also bought a roll of copper tubing to use for test bends. Inch increments were marked, bends made, and then these marked "starting points" could be transferred to the stainless for more accurate bends.....and less of a scrap pile.
3/8 Stainless used to fabricate the vent line. The vent/check valve mounts up behind the tail light/filler neck... Glue lined heat shrink works well to cus...
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