Great videos of your restoration work. I lost track for a while and catching back up from start to now. I say this with a compliment - I like your tool organization - tools are in either two spots. In your case based on pics your tool is either on the*****ing table or in the back of the*****ing car. Hell of a lot better than me as the tool I want is either over that in that side of the shop, or over there in the other side of the shop, or in the truck, or on the shelf, or under the car on the jack stands. You get the Jist. Looks great man - a lot of fine metal work !
Scattered tools, welcome to my world. I recall stock car flogs, tools everywhere and had to be gathered up before going to the track. My Ford had tools all over it, in it. When less and less tools were out and about, we were nearing the end.
Thanks for the comments guys.. More console work, time to fabricate the hemmed surround for the insert. In order for the surround to be seamless, we need to do some welding. For our corners we relieve the flange and trim the back side to about half the hem width. This gives us less material in the tucks for shrinking in the corners. We cut a fake insert out of 18 gauge CRS with rounded corners to use as a hammer form, gives us something to hammer against when we heat up the corners. Everything's a tool, and when the PVC pipe is the only thing in the shop that matches our needed radius, it's what we use for a radius bender. To prevent our hem from closing during the radius forming, some 18 gauge strips were placed in the hem. Press studs used to attach to the console and will be hidden underneath the center panel. Insert cut out to match our poster board sample, then it gets 800 grit, then 1000 through 5000 foam pads, then buffed.. https://youtube.com/shorts/Wlbrs908hSM?si=FEH0gssNlu9xhBkm Then we cover it with frisk film to protect our buffed surface. Test fit... Installing the surround to the filler panel Still have to touch up some areas with the buffer (heat from tacking the press studs) but here's the test fit.
He was on lunch break... Next step for the console, we need to cut some holes for the shifter. Using a horseshoe style shifter, we don't have the factory style brush seals or trim bezel for the center plexi indicator. So lets see what we can come up with first to seal the shifters side arms. I didn't have any brush stock left over from the splice trailer, and window felt wasn't thick enough. But I did have some bulb seal that looked promising. To make a surround to hold the bulb seal, we used a folded piece of 16 gauge stainless, and put an offset to hide as much of the edge trim that holds the seal as possible. To close off the ends, we used the linear stretch dies in the Lennox... https://youtube.com/shorts/cD1TrEwah2o?si=_1kBU5isw7LFb_dK https://youtube.com/shorts/--rTDf9M2Bk?si=Xt5Dk3opzAYzdQtD After welding the one end in place, the console was mocked up to get the overall length needed on the shifter seal. https://youtube.com/shorts/N9mJWH6Rjfg?si=7_w6PBdNXo32kGPq The top flanges will be trimmed to the same width as our polished stainless edge trim surround on the console insert. This one will be used for the passenger side arm, the drivers side will have a wider flange toward the driver to accommodate the shift selector position marking.
What about using door sweep brush? It’s cheap at ACE hardware. It seems to me that shifter is going to eat through that weatherstripping in no time?
In 2013 Roberts hands looked like this. And 11 years later you can tell he hasn't been working as a professional hand model. HRP
Next item on the agenda, we turned our attention to the tailgate, and started the fit up of the Mad Mooks polished stainless border trim. https://madmooks.com/ To preface, I will say the Mad Mooks parts are some of the nicest fit and finish parts you'll find ANYWHERE to trim out your Tri-five Chevy, as well as parts for other GM vehicles. Only the corner pieces didn't fit our tailgate. It appears that when yours truly did the rust repairs of the tailgate (before repop's were available) the replacement patches weren't exactly spot on. So yes, this is my F-up.. We had also ordered some stainless strips for the voids in the tailgate from McMillan Rod and Custom and wanted to retain the stainless border to use with these parts. We had some 19 gauge stainless in stock, so let's give this a go. First order is to make sure we can duplicate the dimpled hole for the countersunk screws... Next, the folded (side) flange on the trim piece is a consistent width and will need to be real accurate. So we opted for a hammer form to match the shape, used a tipping die to thin the bend location (to tell the metal where to bend) and a backstop on the Lennox to set the flange height. A paper pattern was used to capture the tailgate outline. After the flange had been folded, the top part of the hammer form is set aside and the bottom section used to hold the part for polishing. We'll get it polished, trim the width and punch dimple holes, and then do a final polish. Test fit looks much better to match our one-off tailgate.
Robert, I am constantly impressed with your attention to detail, the bits and pieces you create that add depth that the car lacked, to the casual observer it would go unnoticed. You sir are a true master of your craft! HRP
Thanks Danny! Holes drilled, dimpled countersinks, and final polish. Like it was made to go there, one more to go....
Thanks guys! We got the other side trim done for the tailgate and I had been asked to show the hammer form in more detail, so here's another go.. We actually started by pulling a paper pattern of the profile, some autobody masking paper is taped to hang over the edge, and the tracing done to show where to trim. Although we didn't have the plastic in the way at the time, here the pattern is after trimming. This is the pattern we use for the overall of the stainless, so that once the flange has been folded we will have a border of paint surrounding the trim (set in somewhat). Once the 19 gauge stainless has been trimmed to match our pattern, we use the tipping die in the Lennox to thin the "bend line", this gives the metal a suggestion of where it needs to bend so we should have a somewhat sharper crease given how the MDF tends to compress under a hammer blow. Where I would normally use one of our round backstops on the lower die, this shows to leave us without contact with the backstop at the initial entry and final exit from the machine, as the backstop is centered on the die. To correct that, we opted for 3/4 flat stock that gives us contact the entire width of the die set. The backstop distance sets the height of the side flange of the trim, and here is the stainless after running through the tipping die for thinning the bend line. Then the stainless is clamped between our MDF hammer form, note the outer portion of the hammer form matches the thinned bend line exactly. The Sandwich is held together with screws and then clamped in the vise for the hammering operation... https://youtube.com/shorts/5WiGK0550hY?si=G4bhT7Mo5BjpPIHR Once complete the bottom half of the hammer form becomes a stable base for pre-polishing, and some shorter screws are used to keep thing in unison. We use our typical polishing sequence of 400, 800, 1500, and then polishing on the buffer using green compound for a darker hue. After the initial polish, the outer flange is covered with masking tape (to protect from scratching at this next step) and calipers are used to set the width and mark the cut line, like shown here.. The bulk is trimmed away using our Milwaukee M18 shears, and final done using Wurth snips. The edge is fine tuned with our Dynabrade belt file, and then the holes are located and dimple countersunk. Then another polish job, and all the parts are located in prep for drilling the screw holes into the tailgate. Really happy with the nice parallel setback from the edge with these new trim pieces to match my patch panels. Next we'll get all the holes drilled and our upholstery added in the center...
Just started reading this and hitting "likes" and noticed it's an 11 year old thread. You deserve them though, great work. I plan on going through every page, thanks for the great documentation.
Got some pics from JB at the upholstery shop yesterday. The Radio Flyer wagon is now complete. He was initially going to do tan upholstery, but when he laid the red against the wagon he said the wild color won out. Better match to the build. So this little wagon was painted in Leonardtown MD, lettered and striped in Hummelstown PA, and now upholstered in Lexington SC. It really gets around..
JB built it for his niece and nephew. They live in SC amongst all the red clay. Yes, we laugh about the situation too.
Love all the details along the way that take this car to a level most of us can only dream of. Thank you for taking the time to keep the thread updated along the way - I know I, and I suspect many others have learned a LOT from following along and studying your techniques and solutions. Can’t wait to see the completed car.
Been playing catchup for a while since my cross-country venture for the new shop truck, time for some long overdue updates. Finishing up on our tailgate, the last stainless pieces of the puzzle came from McMillan Rod and Custom in WI. Pretty good source for polished stainless trim pieces... We had emailed them dimensions for existing holes in the tailgate, and the welded studs were spot on. All our stainless parts added for a test fit/pre-drill/pre-screw of all the hardware to insure they'd go in straight during final****embly. Here's my contribution to the upholstery effort on the car.... And our tailgate installed.... And our update would not be complete without the requisite back up and punt moment. As we were closing the tailgate there was a slight binding as the tailgate was all but closed. Hey, you know my luck by now. Seems our trial fit in bare metal showed no issues but now we had multiple layers of paint that didn't want to play nice. The hinge notches in the bottom of the tailgate skin were digging into the inside of the hinges.. At this point a hinge is an easier repair than a completed tailgate, so the hinges were milled down .080 on that face and the countersunk holes deepened that much as well.. Then about three rounds of epoxy, block, repeat to eliminate the casting flaws, and on to the organic green kandy basecoat once more... And then groundhog day, install it once more, with much better results this time.
The Jalopy Journal
