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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