Been a while since I have been able to get away from the daily stuff in order to get some work done for others.
These rear doors were pretty rough. Much of the bottom was just gone in general.  I had nothing to work with to even make a template.
So first I built the outer door skins. Tacked them in place and once I was happy with it I began building the 10 other pieces that ended up being the inner structure.
I wanted to make this as stock as possible for the sake of the door seals mating correctly when closed. I could have easily just used one piece and wrapped around the corner however I could have possibly made it so the door wouldn't even close, let alone have a seal that fits correctly.
Below are a few key pictures.

Full album link: https://picasaweb.google.com/107331329764947692089/KennySFJ?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Both doors.

Patch roughed up. Complete with hem. All folded by hand and in a 4" vise! :)

Tacked in..

Bottom of course needed repair as well.

Previous "repair"

New patch panel. Hemmed of course.

Backside

Bottom is non existent! I dont even have a reference!

Yet another picture of the lack of material!

Multiple pcs were made to create the original shapes

Finished inner panel

Forgot the finished surface picture!

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RE-SKINNED!

Here we go! Well, this door makes this the second piece on this project that will have given me a bit of trouble. The first panel was a fender that had been pushed into something and had curled it under. After I moved it back into place it had already stretched the metal when it was hit. Long story short I worked a bit to get the "waves" out of the fender.

This door was similar regarding "waves"! You'll see below that there was a previous "repair". Of course when they did they repair the panel warped slightly. By the way it was patched they obviously had no idea how to do it correctly. Not a problem..... I give them an E for effort! :)

So needless to say I inherited some issues that weren't going to make my job any easier. To make things worse I had very limited access to the back side of the door skin. This hindered my ability to hammer and dolly the HAZ (heat affected zone)(area around weld that is blue/brown) of my welds. Dollying the HAZ essentially smashes the weld flat and pushes the metal around the HAZ outward. When you weld... the metal around the HAZ contracts and tightens up. When this happens it stretches the surrounding areas (on a microscopic level). This is what causes a panel to warp from heat. Basically it shrinks. The same as if you pull two opposite corners really tight on your bed sheets. There will be a few ripples. Sheet metal does the same thing!

So as you can see there are two very poorly executed patches. Because of the proximity to each other, welding these patches in will inevitably cause a bit of warping if not done correctly. Just like the example I gave about bed sheets..... this is what will happen here. The area where the two patches are closest to each other will tighten up and cause a nice big wave. (Yes it eventually did!)

I must state it here too! NOT MY WORK!  :-)

You cant see it here, but the door skin is pushed in / warped just under the "handle" area, and then just to the right of the top patch is also pushed in.

Here is the new patch I made. Here the entire panel is still "concave" or pushed inward as if someone shut the door with thier butt and pushed it in. Because the door was "oil canning" (the door skin will pop into a position of either inward or outward). This is a sign that the metal is either stretched OR there is stress elsewhere in the panel. I had planned to move forward and use the shrinking the the HAZ was going to create, to help eliminate the oil canning. Meaning it would pull the panel tight and then the stretched metal would be pulled tight and not be able to "oil can" any longer. I have done this before with success, but this time I was not so fortunate!

Here is the lower original patch.

New patch!

Here is the only picture I have of the finished panel. NOT GOOD!

Because I was not able to hammer and dolly the HAZ the panel shrank around the patches so much it pulled a sizable warp between the two corners of the patches that are close to each other. This along with the panel being previously stretched made me stop and reassess the whole execution and method I was going to fix this. As you might notice there is a soap stone outline now!

New patch! Pretty!!!!

Committed now!

There is a heavier piece of metal where the hinge attaches to the door, that I had to drill the spot welds to get loose. Here I have drilled new holes to plug weld the piece back in place while I get the new skin in place.

               

All tacked in.

Now comes the daunting task of welding the entire thing tack by tack. Tack it, let it cool, and repeat....6 million times!!!!  :-)

Ill post up more when its complete!

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FJ-40 Inner Fender modification.

This is yet another small part of the metal work on my current project. The story here, is that the owner had picked up a set of fenders in much better shape than the originals. They needed some work but not a terrible amount. Either way, he was under the impression that the fenders were the same across all the years and didn't expect the issue we found.

As in the previous post, you can see we welded the Cowl to the Tub. Of course excitement to see it looking whole again prompted the addition of the fenders to be put in place. That's when trouble showed up. Nothing major, but certainly a hiccup! :)

We had to "clearance" the inner fender to allow the fender to bolt to the frame. The Steering gear box was hitting the inner fender. The following pictures document the modification that was needed.

So here is the "problem area" The Steering box is hitting the area that is marked.

Realized I didn't snap any pictures!

Im cutting through carefully as I don't want to destroy the original "pocket"

Missed a few pics in the sequence here. As you can see I drill out all the remaining spot welds in order to remove the "pocket". I then (with a little planning) found where I could safely cut in order to "stretch" the piece.

Placing the two parts was fairly easy. I left the left piece where it was originally, then moved the other half forward to match the new edge. I moved the new edge about 1" toward the front of the fender.

Here I have nearly finished this modification. I wanted the edge of the sheet metal to look factory and un-modified. It came out fairly nice. Ken was very happy.

I delivered and checked the fitment, and was fortunate that I nailed it the first time. 

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The melding of a South American FJ40 tub, and the Original Cowl

Since I began this project for Ken there has been the looming task of joining the "tub" he bought out of South America somewhere, to the original Cowl.

First, I have to say... This tub was incredible! The quality and craftsmanship is great! The sheet metal is nice and heavy, the form and fit was nice. This is not to say it fell together, but it was extremely close!

The only modifications I had to make were toward the front of the tub where the rocker panel meets the cowl. The width was spot on, but the rockers were slightly twisted. Meaning the top of the rockers where it curves up to a point, were tipped to the inside a bit.
This is pretty standard for mating up pieces like this. Chances are that the original factory parts didnt fit as well as we made this one fit!

So with a little bit of cutting on the inside of the tub along the floor to free up the rocker, I was able to twist the top of the rocker out to be flush with the cowl.

We also had to trim a little bit of excess to get a nice clean body seam. Again..... nothing out of the norm when mating body panels! However......... This was news to Ken who has never done anything like this. He naturally went into this Saturday morning thinking we would be done in an hour! ;-)

So the following pictures are several hours of fitting, grinding, fitting, cutting, and more fitting to get a nice clean mate up! Hope you like!


A nice tight body seam... Still not quite right though...... The "point" at the top will be welded entirely...

Here is the floor pan overlap. It sits on a structural body cross member as well.

Inside the rocker. I removed the flange that would normally bolt into that hole partially because it was holding the body seam open on the outside and also because.... its really not needed since the cowl gets welded on in so many places! Its not like you can un-bolt the cowl anyway! :)

Starting to look good! The radius following the doors looks good, and the seam is nice and tight!

Here she is all tacked in place! Its starting to look like a vehicle again!

Beautiful engine by the way!!!!

Another "tacked in" picture.

Needless to say Ken was quite happy to see some progress and of course a piece this large makes it seem like a lot of progress has made. As we all know this is the kind of stuff that gets a forgotten project rolling again!

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Railings and such of the past.

So, I was digging through pictures of stuff I have made and realized I have made quite a few gates and hand rails. Here are a few!

One of several gates I have made for Tom.

This was made as an entry gate to his back yard, and deck area.

More of Kens handrail details.

So here are several rails I had to dig for. Turns out most of the pieces I built when I was doing this for a career are what they have on their website as advertisement!

All of these were hand built. Rolled, designed and welded by me!

This curving staircase was a first for me. It came out very nice however.

A few hand built Awnings.

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