Great craftsmanship, Robert! I'm enjoying every bit of this thread. A very Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Happy New Year to everybody! Had a visit by the shop this week from cousin JB, who works at Interiors by Shannon in Alabama. He was up for the holidays. They have recently picked up a bead roller so we did some practice runs on pre-stretched and non-stretched beads, and then some beads using the Lennox Nibbler. Finished up with some shrinking on the MH-19. We ran out of time to punch louvers. Great to see him again, nice to spend time "playing" in the shop. Progress on the console this weekend... Mike is still in California visiting family, so Jake and I have been texting pics to him of what he's missing haha.. Corner number two, we've already shown some shrinking, so no we'll show stretching the inside corner.. Placing the part on a suitable flat anvil, a barrel roll hammer is used to provide stretch the inner corner... You get to a point where flat is no longer useful, so then we use another anvil, this one in the form of a square tube. Works well for what we're doing here... Fitted and welded.... Next, a pattern made of the rear hump for trimming the console.. we'll keep it snug for now for placing anchors and then trim later for carpet and sound deadening space. Standoffs used for anchors, trimmed to fit angle of the hump... and welded in place. Crossmember made for inside the console and spot welded in.
Wow i stumbled on your thread and it took me 3 or 4 nights to read all 40 pages, I was completely absorbed in it, i couldn’t read or check anything on the web since [emoji28]. It’s so technically well detailed! [emoji108] Man I would pay to be your assistant! Hahahah Thanks for sharing your knowledge and passion with us. Cause of your detailed steps I realized what I was doing wrong with my patch panels, so the next ones will be easier to do and I’m sure the results will be better as well! It’s so hard to work sheet metal when you don’t know how and when you have no one to teach you how!!! That’s gonna be one hell of a 55!!! Btw what appended with Kyle?[emoji848] Thanks again and a happy new year!! Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Thanks for the kind words. Glad some of my ramblings may help out. Kyle graduated and took some full time employment. They wound up loading him up with overtime it seems on a daily basis, so helping out at the shop gave way to him getting sleep.
More console progress today, started off using Rotacutter to put a hole in the transmission tunnel for the shifter cable. The bulkhead seal that came with the cable has some mounting holes, we'll use some AVK style rivet nuts for ease of installation/replacement. More anchors welded to the floor, some "crossmembers" fabricated, and welded into the console. To locate the holes in the crossmembers, some spotters are set in the anchors, console placed, and crossmember tapped from above to mark. Next we need to close off the front of the storage cavity to give us an anchor point for the latch. So we started the fabrication but found some limitations in our acute dies for the press brake. Not quite enough bend, so we opted for a piece of sharpened 12 ga cold rolled to give us a bit more.... Trimmed and welded in place... Video version: .
You know Robert I have been following this build over 10 years!! When I see another post and I think is in paint yet?? And then I see even more great metal fab and trick's and ideas and I think aw hell paint is over rated . As usual my friend great work. Larry
Thanks for the comments everyone! We were originally going to hinge the console lid along the passenger side, but thought it would be better accessible from either front seat if it was hinged at the rear. We're using the same hinge as we used for the widened glove box door. In our attempt to add a torsion spring to keep the lid upright in the open position, we couldn't find the size to fit our 1/8" diameter hinge pin with enough torsion to hold the lid open. (Yes, even McMaster failed us) So we decided to wrap our own. Here's a fixture we made for the Aloris tool holder on the South Bend to act as a guide for the 1/16" music wire. We also installed the older 3 jaw chuck, but not before adding a "wire catch" Here's a video of us wrapping the spring... As my South Bend lacks slow enough speed for such a task, we opted for manual rotation.. Here's the positioning and function of the hinge with torsion spring installed... With our hinge now positioned, we also found we needed to move the hinge closer to the rear edge for better lid clearance while open. Back up and punt you say?
Didn't get as many pictures this weekend as I'd have liked. While I worked on some final details on the console, Jake made some cardboard templates of our rear armrests. These will also serve to hide the seat belt retractors for the front buckets, as well as the rear speakers. Here Jake transferring the pattern to some 19 gauge cold rolled, cleaning up some of the lines as well... I was welding in the front cross piece that Jake made to the console and had some underside welds to do. Sometimes we make it easier on ourselves, especially if we can't weld upside-down all too well.. Suspended from the door track... The hinge at the rear now moved rearward, metal added for mounting the hinge and securing the "storage recess".
OK, here's our update for the past couple weeks.. We're working on getting the seats ready to go to the upholsterer, and these 2002 Monte Carlo seat belts just aren't cutting it... This these belts are riveted to a bracket that stands off from the seat, and we'll need to stand off our replacement as well. So the rivets are removed and the new seat belt gets bolted to the same bracket using 1/2" bolt, grade 8. The "new" seat belts look much more vintage correct. With console in place and bezel checked to proper height, anchors are set in place for welding to the floor pan. Bolted to shifter plate for proper alignment and standoffs used to provide space to get in there and weld... Next, our replacement for the parking brake pull handle didn't fit just right so an extension was added that will use factory holes, we do need to drill the firewall for the studs out the front end.. Jake's progress on the rear seat kick panel... Tipping wheel on the Fasti folds over the top flange that will hold our arm rest.. Bolting bracket that will secure the kick panel to the inner quarter.. And here we're cutting out our console lid... Thinning bend lines for a more crisp bend... A piece of round rod in our magnetic brake gives us radius-ed corners... A few passes in the Tommasini Wheeling Machine gives a bit of crown for better support Corner details TIG welded in... Corner detail test fit... There we go, all caught up!
Yes, upholstered to match the seats.. Our kick panels for the rear seat also need some support against the inner quarter panel to help hold the arm rest. Jake bent up a 1 x 1 angle out of 19 gauge and used the Erco to match the contour of the kick panel. In order to not block off the window mechanism access panel, we'll bolt it to that panel.. As we have yet to install all of our interior/carpet/upholstery, we made the support adjustable so we can match the kick panel height at installation.. Video version: . More details on the console, we had hemmed all the edges to help protect the upholstery when it gets wrapped, but the tunnel cutout at the rear still needed an "added" hem. Then our hem is tacked in place, edges adjusted with a drum sander, and the two edges fusion welded together using the TIG. ....and sanded smooth.. Next, layout and folding the insert for the console. Some parts needed to fill in voids will be added later.. Test fit.... Video:
Wow! That liner should be in the dictionary under "why you should pay attention in math and geometry class". Thanks again for all the work to take us along. The owner must be getting pretty excited!
But I failed, I couldn't get my head around the radius corners! More progress on the wagon, making our insert for the console whole... Clamped up for tacking with the TIG welder... Video of fusion tacks: Adding in the corner for the rear kick panel... .....getting closer all the time..
Robert,I honestly don't think failure is word that should be in your vocabulary.your work is second to none and I am looking forward to seeing this wagon sometime in the future. HRP
I've been waiting to see what kind of power-train this Wagon will have. ALL the sheetmetal work is phenomenal! I am Butch/56sedandelivery.
The Jalopy Journal
