Hi All, Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Well, I cut the lower door panel out and tacked the new piece in. In my haste I cut the panel too close to the bottom and when I started tacking I found that I could not get a dolly behind the weld. I now have the patch tacked every 1" and the panel pulled in about a 1/4" at the seam so I welded some studs to it and was able to pull the seam back out. The question is should I pull the seam out past where it needs to be and then finish welding or should I weld it and let it pull in then pull it back out with the studs? Thanks in advance for the help! Paul
Do you have any pics you can post of the way your doin it? Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
I can't figure out how to post pic's, the file is too big even though it's only one picture. Any help on posting pic's would be greatly appreciated.
You need to dolly that or pave it with mud. I've made dollies to get into tight areas, Had friends hold them, removed inner structure, or over cut it where I could get the Dolly in at the weld. Pulling it with studs is going to make a rippled mess Tig should be straight argon gas
I've come to the conclusion that I **** at body work so this car is going to have some plastic in it. My hats' off to you guys that do this stuff and make it look perfect without the filler!
So if I bent a piece of 1/2" x 3" flat bar for a dolly and found a way to get it in there do you think it would have enough m*** to hammer the weld or would it cave it in more? Also is it ok to hammer the weld after it is cold? I really don't want to heat it and have the whole door warp. the heat ring on the welds is only about 1/2" diameter. Is the 12", 6", 3" etc. the correct way to tack the patch in?
Yes you can stretch the weld cold. How you tack something together varies. I stretch each tack before making the next most of the time. Make whatever you have to. Do whatever you have to. That's why they call it body WORK.!
OK, I've made some dollies to get behind the weld and hammered most of the crease out. I still have about a 3" spot that is pulled in. It has been the worst spot since the initial weld. It is also the spot that I tried to heat and fast cool to shrink that spot. I need some advise on how to get that spot to come back up. Should I keep trying to hammer it or do I need to try the heat again? The first time I tried the heat I think it pulled in deeper. Tinbender, I looked at your T-bird project and WOW!!, that's some nice work!!
Your hammering on the Dollie will stretch the metal back. Adding more heat will shrink it further again and you'll be headed in the wrong direction. You can stretch it too much by hammering too much or you can be hammering in the wrong spot. The shrinking disk is really good for helping correcting that.
Thanks Burner. X 2 on what 31Vicky said. Try as much as possible to only stretch and shrink the actual damage. A lot of the metal is just being pulled by shrinkage or pushed buy stretched metal. Elastic damage. You dont want to add stretching or shrinking on elastic damage. Pictures always help. Take some at different angles.
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