Ah, the pitfalls of driving a vintage vehicle a****st the crazies. This car has been owned by the same family for decades. Their family travels twice a year the 3-1/2 hour drive to Ocean City, MD and back. On their last trip they had stopped for a red light, as had the car behind them. The next car back did not. The car in between was totaled, and this one needs a bit of work. One of our local collision shops is on the hook for the paint job and the shop owner reached out to me to do the metal repairs.
We had the tail pan and two fenders media blasted to get a better view of what we had to work with. Both fenders were bent up, although the drivers side took the brunt of it. There were some previous repairs to the running board attachment area that we'll address while we're here. These pics are after some hammer work to rough out the damage and get a better sense of where to proceed. The fender brace for the p***enger side had been hit with a tire chain or perhaps a retread, and the drivers side was ripped in pieces. Time to make some parts. Beading dies in the Lennox... We found it better to run the bead in the flat first and then add the side folds on the press brake. Where the originals have two bends, we thought a gradual curve that better matched the fender would give us more room for tires. This calls for a bead roller die in the wheeling machine, and some like sized spacers were used to support the brace across its width. Then the right application of leeverage... test fit A bit more room
Shout out to Ted @tb33anda3rd who had seen pictures of the rear fenders and reached out to see if we needed any other parts. He put me in contact with @MalloMike who had an original tail pan. It has a couple of minor repairs, but for 93 years old was pretty straight and solid, much better than the ripped sample we had. The smack in the rear end didn't bode well for the exhaust hangers either, the rubber isolators had ripped So these hangers were replaced and the tailpipes pulled upward a bit so we could add some relief openings for a more finished appearance. This "anvil" was fabricated to add the cutouts in the tail pan. The notch provides relief area for the side flanges while hammering the opening. For the long chrome tips, I think this makes it look more finished and less an afterthought. We turned in about 5/16 to add some strength across the opening. Still needs a bit of fine tuning.
Robert, what hammer is that? (The first one.) I've looked for one with no luck. Thanks! Glad to see you doing "how to's" again!
After looking at it, that's not what I would like to have. I would like a hammer with a straight pein on one face (for linear stretching ) and a cross pein on the other. Know of any?
The Jalopy Journal
