i need ideas on how to mount a decklid onto my '31 chevy and fabricate a rain gutter. i'm not tied to any idea yet on what i'd like to do for hinges and a latch.. any ideas on where to find good looking hardware? the rain gutter is what really perplexes me. right now, the quarters have a 90° bend at the trunk opening with no trough to catch rainwater. the decklid (a repro) also has a simple 90° bend with no provision for weatherstripping. chopolds and i have discussed using his brake and shrinker/stretcher to form a u-shaped gutter from two L's. does anyone have any other ideas or pictures of what you've done? any input would be appreciated! ed ps- chopolds, thanks for your help getting the quarters s***ched into place.
You could bend a peice of 3/4 square tubing to the shape you need then cut the "top" off to make your rain gutter. 3/4 bends pretty easy. If you have a plaz it would be easy to cut. I extended a few trunk gutters using this method. Clark
Check these places, cant remember which one for sure, but you can get the trunk pieces you need from one of these places for a ford...probably able to fabrbicate to fit a chevy? http://www.macsautoparts.com http://www.snydersantiqueauto.com http://www.fordor.com
Did a 31 crysler 4 door c-dan for a guy not long ago, was missing all the rain gutters had Hurley Sheet Metal in Wichita make'um. 316-262-7955. one piece about 10 ft long, cheap as dirt and worked perfect!
clark, chopolds and I discussed using tubing. i bent a lot of 1" tubing to replace the wood in the body, so i think that 3/4" would be more than do-able. where would you put the weatherstripping with this setup? thanks, ed
To go around the radius, cut a piece of plywood that is as thick as you want the gutter wide,with the exact arc you want to fit the opening, take patterns/templates off the body. ake it several onches longer that the piece so you can drill some 2" dia holes in it to put clamps in, then sandwich a strip of steel wide enough to make your "U" shape in between the two halves of plywood and hammer the sides up around the board. work bothe sides at the same time so the metal doesn't squirm out unevenly while you're working it. them unclamp and do another one for the other side.
I fabricated the drip rail n my 36 with a shrinker/stretcher. Each side was made in two pieces. A U shape curved to hold the decklid and an angle piece to mate the U piece to the body. I used the decklid as reference for the shape because the shape on the body wasn't too stable. The sites not letting me post pics right now but if your interested I'll put some up later.
ron - i would be very interested in seeing pictures if you can post them. alternately, you could email them to me (edburger@gmail.com) and i'll upload them to the board. everyone else - i'm liking the hammerform ideas so far.. i think they'll result in the cleanest parts. still no ideas on how/where to mount the weatherstripping... i'm all ears! keep the comments coming! next weekend i'll do some damage and let you guys know how it turns out. ed
What Unk said. DrJs reply tells how its done. MDF works well for the forms. Doing it this way you could make a whole side panel for the trunk, that looked factory. Make some cut outs in it for access inside the 1/4, slap the edges over and it would really work well and tie the floor and 1/4s together.
[sorry for the lack of pictures. they make this thread near worthless.] last weekend I decided to give the hammerforms a try. after screwing up the first one, i made two rain gutters that looked pretty decent for a first time hack. i'll give you the procedure that finally worked. i started by tracing the outline of my quarter panel opening onto a piece of heavy cardboard. this was then transferred onto 3/4" thick mdf and cut out with a jigsaw. i made two sets of hammerforms. i needed three 3/4" sides, so i figured that a 3" wide strip of metal would give me my shape plus a little extra to trim to fit. i then used the hanmmerform as a template to trace out my 3" wide strip. i clamped the metal between the two female curves (whoa!), leaving 3/4" of the metal sandwiched between the forms. here's what made the second try work -- at the furthest two ends of the metal strip, i drilled a hole thru the entire sandwich, two layers of mdf and the metal, and ran a bolt thru it. this held the metal in place and prevented it from sliding. on the first two tries i used clamps every 4" or 5" to hold the sandwich togther. on the third try, i drilled holes every 2" - 3" in the hammerform and used bolts to hold it together. this resulted in a much tighter squeeze. after that i pretty much just hammered on it until it was in the right shape! there wasn't a whole lot of skill involved; the difficulty was in perfecting the technique. ed
The Jalopy Journal
