so im looking around on Egay and I find this http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1949...076QQitemZ190092480905QQrdZ1#ebayphotohosting they are charging $239 for one rocker panel and $289 for the inner rocker. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1949...ItemQQcategoryZ10076QQitemZ190092484827QQrdZ1 is this what they normally cost? couldnt you just get the old merc panels patched and re-fabs for cheaper? I need new rockers but just tryin to find the best way to go.
Find a company that sells them, and compare the price. As complex as they appear to be, that price doesn't sound totally out of line. I don't know of a company that sells repop Merc. panels, but you can probably do a Google search and come up with something.
those rockers look pretty good george. iv e heard good things about the green mountain stuff. have nt seen nothin in person so i have no idea if any of it fits. yr merc looks like it would only need the outers. if all your inner structure is good and all you would have to do is replace the skins jc whitney has them pretty cheap or at least they used to
I don't know of any other company selling complete ones. so...yeah..if you need them...at least there is someone that makes them if you can't. tok
Hey, 'sounds like it's time to teach yourself to use a sheetmetal shear and break. Excepting where those Merc rockers/sills joggle down to the cowl, and perhaps where they end at the wheelhouse, at the rear, there isn't a lot of shape to them. Form yes, but not much shape. Any sheetmetal mechanic worth a **** should be able to shear and break these, but yes ya may have to hand form the joggle on the ends. The inners, I'd think ya could do in your sleep. If all this sounds to heavy, ya may wanna hold out for repops. S****ey Devils C.C.
I got mine from Mercuryland, I've fitted one and they seem pretty good, I think I paid about $210 a pair. I made up the inner panels from sheet no problem. The quality isn't far from those either as far as I can see and they are whole rockers to, step included.
one thing to think about if you are not doing the work yourself is to not buy anything until you talk to the installer. a guy came into a shop i was working at with a $75.00 repop fender patch when all he needed was a small peice of sheetmetal with a little bend it it. could have gotten it out of the s**** pile for free. had another guy get an NOS 52 chevy tail pan ( below the trunk lid) for who knows how much $$$. the rust extended beyond the pan, and I didn't need it. when I told him this he insisted I use it, so I made my own patch and sold his NOS panel on ebay for $150.00. no way was I going to cut a peice off of an NOS panel when I could make a patch in about 1/2 hour as for these particular merc ones... if they fit the price doesn't seem to bad.
I bought one complete rocker set from Green Mountain. Didn't use them, as I got a good parts car. But they were perfect, like the originals, better than any I've ever seen. Ya! I paid the big bucks.........OLDBEET
My discussion here is for the outer rockers. My inners were shot, and I re-made them from flat 16 ga steel...no biggie. I bought The $80 pair on eBay, the guy was local and I could pick them up to save on shipping....and I didn't know any better either. Had I known then what I know now... Basically I spent $80 bucks for $10 bucks worth of sheetmetal that was bent wrong. They are so far off that I have about 2 hours into one side just in getting the bends re-worked, and I'm still not happy with it. I have no idea what these were bent up for, but it sure wasn't a '51 Merc. I wish I never bought them. That said, these in the auction look spot on- with quite a bit of labor going into them. Labor in the US isn't cheap, and you get what you pay for. They claim that they still need work to fit, but compared to what I have- from the pics, these are a bolt on. (Weld on.) 110% better quality than what I got for my $80...de-investment. $240+ bucks each for the amount of labor involved to create them doesnt seem off. Plug and play vs. cut and make fit. If you have the skills and time+tools+materials to make them, you'd probably spend at least 4-6 hours fabbing them up. How much time/tools/skills do you have becomes the question...if you're lacking-- you have to pay to play. If you do have all that, then what is your time worth to you? If it's pretty valuable, are you willing to shell out the $80 to have someone offshore stamp it out incorrectly for you, only to have to spend more of your time reworking them to fit? Would you rather spend 12 hours making your own if you can? Or would you rather slap these up, do some tweaking, weld them in and call it a day (and knowing your money stayed here in the US?) To have a body shop fab these up from scratch, it would probably hover around the $720 mark...12 hours labor at $60 bucks an hour. I'm being generous here, I know, but the last shop I was at charged $60 bucks labor for "custom" work... One thing nobody mentions about these aftermarket Merc rockers is that front compound curved part. {SEE PIC} Every rocker panel replacement I have seen does NOT include that part, they ***ume it is okay on your car, and you splice in the new rocker...well...that part is GONE on both sides of my car. The fact that it is included on these panels in the auction probably saves about 3 hours work total right there cutting, forming, measuring, welding, hammering, etc... If I could afford it, I would jump on these in a heartbeat...but when you're a single guy with a mortgage, car payment, food bill, insurance (house and cars) bills, utilities, credit cards, etc...somehow dropping almost $600 on "rocker panels" doesn't make a whole lotta sense in the grand sceme of things... not to mention those rotted out quarter panels that need to be dealt with yet! Time to get out the hammer & welder, and make my own damn rockers! Bottom line- Worth the money? Hell yes. To me? Can't afford them.
thats a very cheap price last year i got $1200 for a pair of nos 49 merc rockers , green mountian parts has closed down
Wow I didnt think they would cost that much. thanks for all the info guys im looking into taking a auto body cl*** next semester at riverside community college and then a welding cl*** so I can start making some of this stuff on my own. till then ill think I will just hold off = )
yeah i talked to mercury land a few weeks back they are going to start selling the inner and outer panels soon = ) and even replacement floor panels = ) they seem pretty cheap and yours looks really good maybe ill get some there when they sell all the pieces I need
I think it would be pretty hard to make those outer rockers at home. ***uming you had a break that long (most are only 3 feet long?) you need to make those rockers curved also. They bow out away from center of the car in the middle. Then curve back towards the center of the car at the front and rear wheel well. I would think you need some kind of stretcher / shrinker to make that.
You are right sir... oh, trust me, they are a pain in the ***...! I only have a small 2 ft. brake, and between that and my bench vice, I came out kinda close on the one side I have mocked up so far. My next garage purchase will be a shrinker/stretcher, so that may help out as well...I'll post decent pics when I get around to that part so everyone can see what I'm talking about. I know it's hard to visualize.
Mikes51 you are so on the money man...We've seen these rockers that were done on a break and man...they look like they were done on a break...no curve to it... read my signature, it says a lot about getting what you pay for (thanks to gringo)
Hey, I'd still build these on a break...... Now to get them to look like an oem part and not a frickin rain gutter I'd fit them to the opening, with the doors hung and figger just what will need to be cut for a dead nuts fit. I don't know what the return of the shape to the cowl or the rear wheelhouse is, but lets say it's i/4 ta 3/8'' both fore and aft. A clean slit made in the top sill area in the 1/4''-3/8'' thickness would give ya a fit good or better, than oem. Do this prior to weldin in the inner, and do a good job of metalfinishing it. Shoot it with weld thru primer upon comple- tion. If ya had a deep jaw shrinker you could pull this shape into the panel by reaching over upper leg/pinch weld flange to get the arch/ shape you need. S****ey Devils C.C.
I just received a pair of these inner rockers you are referring to on ebay. These are Green Mountain Parts, it is the son of the original guy. I have to say I am very pleased so far just by looking at them ( have not installed them yet) These pieces have a lot of tricky curves from the factory and they have replicated them almost perfectly. Yea you could just bend up some sheetmetal and make something that would work but these are really close to O.E.M. in my opinion. I spent the bucks cuz I want my Merc solid. Just my two cents. Good luck, M-C-C
FWIW we used EMS in Ohio for inner rockers in our '47 Ford. While they weren't exactly cheap we were very happy with the quality. The fit was excellent and for the '46-'48 vehicles they came in 3 pieces so you could replace whatever was necessary. Figured that for something structural like this I'd rather not be chinzy. www.emsautomotive.com/allparts.html
So the inner rockers in the pics are they as per factory because mine aren't like that at all my rockers are in 3 pieces, I had nothing to go by on the side I did so I cut up the other side which is factory.
I know this was an old post, but I had to comment when I found it again: My 'inners' were so far rusted out, I had nothing to go on. They didn't look anything like those inners on eBay either. There was only a crusty downward shaped piece of sheetmetal on the insides of the rockers- (closest to the trans tunnel on both sides) where there once had been something boxed from the factory. The rot was unbelieveable. Well, not for Michigan...but nonetheless, I had little to work with. I cut it all back until I hit "good" metal-- to find weldable material. I never researched what the "stock" inner rocker looked like, I just re-made it to how I thought it was originally. Basically, I welded some lengths of 18 GA steel coming down off the floor so that I had something to attach the rockers to. Mine are SOLID now. There were downward braces in the rear, just in front of the rear wheelhouses- from the '88 Lincoln floor- that I re-created and mated to the new inner rockers, and some braces in front (from the '51 style floor - the square boxes) that I did try to duplicate, but they don't look like the eBay auction pics. For my application, I wouldn't expect them to. Nobody will ever see them, and this ain't a resto! Go here for what I did: http://landyachts.homestead.com/mercresto2.html I think it is very solid and it will work out as intended from the factory. No body flex. As Tex Smith once said: "Make it stronger than you think is neccesary, and it should come out just about "right".
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