Great final outcome, Robert. My Buick is trying to keep me from finishing but I'm stubborn and will prevail in the end, as will you!
Great work !!! Installing that glass must have been a nightmare. With Your skills You have a success.
Thanks guys!! One expensive lesson we learned from installing a window three times, the tack strip that the owner bought was too thick for the headliner, and as a side effect cramped the glass going in. This also meant the upper window clips, which also serve to "position" the garnish molding, pushed the molding down far enough that the back side was visible through the glass. In order to remedy that view through the glass, we need to fabricate new clips that allow the trim to position higher on the glass. We start with a set of dies for the Lennox so we can make a run of the needed shape, and then cut them individually to size. This should give us the best consistency on size. Our first set of dies will take a folded 90* shape and form it into a "U" shape. We used the Southbend "milling machine" to provide a relief for the long side flange of the clip. Additional reliefs and some roloc sander action and we have the lower die ready for the shortened clip. Then our 3/8 end mill is brought in from the end to form a matching profile. A piece of 1018 is welded onto the side to give us more "meat" to make the folding ramp, and then machined to clean up the weld. Using the pneumatic belt sander and a cone shaped die grinder we add the ramp to the upper die and then run a profile through.. Our next set of dies for the wrap around fold.... Clips cut to length and mounting holes drilled Next on the list was to install the new wiper washer nozzles on my daily, since the old ones couldn't stand the heat under the hood with a turbo. The barb fitting had broken free of the nozzle and we no longer had windshield cleaning service. Upon removal, I found that one of the barb couplings had disintegrated as well. And here we were one hour after the auto parts stores had closed. Here's a still intact sample: Since we had some stainless brake line left over from the wagon, lets make some lemonade... Back in business.. And the artist has made some progress on the Lennox....
Back to some progress on the wagon. Finally got the correct clips for the beltline molding... We had been attempting to polish up some of the stainless trim but always seems to find 67 years worth of scratches difficult to remove. So we opted to give Trizact a try, starting with 1500, then 3000, 5000, and finally 8000.. The edge of the 3000 and up seemed to bear the brunt of the polishing duties, and wore off much sooner than the center. In an effort to get more life out of the trizact pads, we purchased a 5" Dynabrade where we could cut the outer (worn) portion off the pads and continue to use.. The Trizact did well on the stainless, a much easier task at the polishing stage... We also have been working on the wiring, and getting it run inside some protective loom. To keep things tidy and knot free, we opted for some heat shrink tubing spaced at regular intervals.. Where I've seen electrical tape used in similar situations, the tape seems to turn into a sticky mess in short order so we'll give this a try. Jared has some re-wiring to do on his 39 coupe so this is good practice (learning curve) for him.. This section is from the fuse box to the rear of the body, the tan wire pulled out is for the fuel sending unit. These clips are just about the right size for this harness "portion", we got them to run along the frame rail behind the rear axle, but found use for them in a couple other locations. Corvette part. Here Jared made a protective channel where the wire passes under the rear seat frame.
More progress on the wagon, we're getting some of our wiring run to the back of the car... In cutting out door panels our upholsterer cut out the speakers a bit too large for how we were mounting them. I don't think I had conveyed those details as I had planned on doing the speaker cutouts portion.. So to keep him from having to do that work over again, we offered to cut them out this time around. 6-32 Riv-nuts used to hold the tweeter grill in place... 8-32 machine screws were sharpened to transfer the hole pattern onto the panel, then our speaker spacers matched to those for cutting out the center hole. Next, holes drilled for our stainless trim that we had welded the impaling pins on prior.... The stainless trim would be needed for upholstery, so we got to polishing.. A board was drilled to accept the impaling pins and better hold the trim piece for our prep stage of removing 67 years worth of scratches. Also worked well in holding things steady at the buffer.. We used 3M Trizact on the DA, starting with 1500 grit and finishing with 8000 grit. This process cuts out the first two buffing stages, and seems to polish out nicer. Buffing process was using green rouge on sewn wheel and final was grey rouge on loose wheel. This is after 3000 Trizact: This is after 8000 Trizact: This is after buffing: That'll do pig, that'll do.
I spent a week in Tennessee just south of Nashville, attending a metalshaping workshop and delivering the Pullmax there for Mike Abbott of Steel Rose Metal Co in Memphis TN. We had a good time learning tips and tricks, meeting old friends and making new ones. Jesse Harris, who lives about 15 minutes from me, travelled out as well, and gave an awesome demo on using the bead roller with a focus on artwork. A leading demo on an aluminum Rolls Royce door... One of the attendees lives just north of Nashville, and a few of us travelled one evening to check out his shop, Ace Chassis. He has been building pulling tractors for about 20 years now and has quite the setup for machining, welding, and sheet metal fabrication. Upon return from TN, Jared brought over his 39 Ford so we could install a new wiring harness in place of the convoluted mess that was there. He had some issues and a local fella that wires boats or something had made some repairs. This is his mainstay, I'd never seen the stuff and now having seen his work, I have my doubts about anyone who would use it on a regular basis. Here's some before pictures to highlight both his repairs and what was done before he got there. For some reason he decided that two separate runs of 12V power from the same source needed a resettable circuit breaker between them. Personally, I'm confused. But that's not the half of it. This is a "ground" cable that was attached to the frame. under the dash... This is in the passenger front floor area, there is a fusebox in there somewhere.. The battery was located behind the passenger seat, and here is the cable routing beneath the car... Yes, that's the positive battery cable against the muffler..... With all this we found our best option was to remove the battery and start cutting out ALL the wiring. First order of business was to fabricate a mounting plate for the new fuse panel to get it out of the floor... Having removed the most splices I have ever seen under a dash board, our goal was to have as few splices as possible, and make direct runs where we could. W crimps were used throughout, adding glue lined heat shrink in place of the previously favored liquid tape.. Tail light wiring was plenty long so new contact*****ons eliminated the typical splicing of pigtails.. Tach and Speedometer connected... Headlight switch... For routing purposes, and to keep from drilling the firewall, we made some cable management using rare earth magnets and cable saddles.. more to come......
Incredible craftsmanship here...A high bar indeed with a mind that finds a way...and patience is commendable with the setbacks...although there isn't a sound track......but those were hard to like...and actually I've done the same and it wasn't my car either...man did I feel an****...
I enjoyed the meet, as well and enjoyed meeting you, Jesse and the others. There as a lot of talent there and Jesse DID do a fabulous job with the bead roller art demo.
Progress on the 39's wiring, let's show this with a before and after sequence.. This car has the battery mounted behind the passenger seat, and the orange cable shown is the positive cable. (ground cable hidden above muffler) Both cables exit directly above muffler with not quite enough room for a good bend radius, as shown by the melted insulation. The other hoses shown are the heat and AC lines as that is also located behind the driver's seat. We relocated the battery cable entry points to in front of the muffler. The heat and AC lines were re-dressed and loop clamped to get them farther away from the muffler.. Rubber plugs were used to fill the old holes. This is the previous location of the fuse box (it's in there someplace) With the fuse box relocated under the dash, the floor area is cleared up with less chance of stepping on wires. The radio and antenna cabling will be routed into the glove box, the radio location. Previous underdash: Fabricated plate for mounting fuse box up under the dash.. Steering knuckle sleeve weld... Despite grinding out the mud dauber's nest and wiping multiple times with acetone, we still got a pin hole in the weld. To limit damage (shrinking) from excessive heat we left it with the pin hole. Still much better than what was there prior. The links for the front sway bar as well as the radius arms had little left for bushings. The local auto parts store was not much help for replacement parts, so some delrin round stock was used to fabricate bushings. The tag light insulator was hard plastic and brittle, so our attempts to install a longer wire for the light resulted in a broken insulator. More delrin to the rescue.. Left to do is the front end/engine compartment and re-assembly.
A recent find of some metalshaping tools, finally found a stake plate and stake anvils... Along with some dolly's I didn't have.. The wiring harness installed, here's our first test start of the 39.... Lighting tests: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bBfAGzQnuL8 With that, the 39 has left the building... Here's the test drive taking it home. Also found out the easy way of opening the ash tray...
WOW Robert, that's quite a haul of new tools to play with. Have fun. Great job on the '39. Love that car and now it's a much safer car. Thanks for posting the videos.....Don.
Dang! Nice score! How do you find these old tools? I am excited over getting a Beverly B2 from a local liquidation auction.
So your next post will be about how to perfectly fix broken glass, I bet. Seriously, this is a master class in solving problems and craftsmanship. Thanks for taking the time to show us how the magic happens. Total commitment to excellence.
Robert, was John any help of figuring out the glass problem, I did see that the third time was the charm. HRP
Danny, John is always good help. He told me what they would do then we modified the plan to fit the tools I had to work with.
The hinge covers for the wagon is one of the many loose ends we have left to address, quite a bit of rust... A quick test fit before we go off fabricating anything shows these factory original parts are no better than many of the reproduction parts you get today.. I had planned on fabrication work, didn't know we needed a redesign. We ordered a piece of round stock to match the radius to use on the Magnetic brake, that should arrive Tuesday. Next, we need to fold a hem for our stainless edge trim we plan on using for the ribbed stainless dash insert. The magnetic brake leaves a bit to be desired in having balls enough to hem a short return flange, so we packed up our sheet metal strips we had cut to size and went to another local metalshaper's shop to make use of his apron brake. A piece of .030 aluminum acted as a spacer to maintain our hem gap. The brake worked well but the parts needed a bit more flatness to provide nice crisp details. Since he also had a powered Mittler Bros. bead roller, we used some flat dies and ran through all the bent pieces. test fit of the ribbed stainless.... And for a teaser of how it will look after polishing....
I always enjoy reading your posts. They always contain such detail. I was doing a search for repairing cowl area on a 1955 chev and came across your post regarding this on a tri five site. A perfect step by step guide to the whole job. Thanks for your efforts in these posts.
Here's the fabrication of our hinge covers for the wagon, since the originals didn't fit well at all. Some 1-3/16 round stock was used on the magnetic brake to provide a much closer matching radius profile, and some severe stretching was done along the bottom flange and up into the radius. The reverse crease was added using a dulled and rounded press brake die section as an anvil. Much nicer look over the stock ones. While I was working on those, Jared has been prepping our stainless trim parts for polishing/buffing...
Robert, can you see light at the end of the tunnel? I went back to your first post in 2008 when you joined the hamb and said you were working on a wagon, 15 years later your still working on the same car, you are a dedicated man!, there is nothing you have touched that hasn't seen a significant amount of work, from patch panels to intricate bits & pieces along with the one off parts you have created. This car should be in the running for the most labor intensive & impressive car of the year when it is finally daubed, as usual I am in awe! HRP
Tying up some loose ends, We still need to finish the wiring at the back of the car, but in the middle of modifying the tail light fixtures for bulb relocation. To that end, in an attempt to keep grounding issues to a minimum, quick disconnect tabs are silver soldered to the tail light housings. Working on the rear side window, we still needed to drill mounting holes for the shoulder harness through the window garnish moldings. A 1/2-13 bolt was used to fabricate a threaded hole spotter on the lathe, complete with flats for wrench installation. With garnish molding positioned, a quick tap of the dead blow hammer gives an exact location for the hole. Next, in order that we don't leave an unfinished hole edge, a punch set was machined for the lathe, complete with stepped shoulders to prevent any movement in the jaws when pressure was applied. This will swage the hole edge for a nice inward flange... And we had received our new shipment of Cubitron H/L paper from Three Mules Welding Supply for dressing out stainless, so Jared continued prepping our edge trim parts. Where the hemming process we used with the bead roller isn't an exacting science, we did have some variance in the gap opening that made the prepping process a challenge. In order to get more consistency in gap width, (and thus flange flatness) a new widget tool was fabricated out of 16 gauge to open up those tight spots. https://youtube.com/shorts/6FTmd8KPPu8?feature=share
Incredible Robert! I'm continually amazed at your level of perfection, correctness, and the amount of tooling made to complete jobs at all levels while building this wagon. Your posts are outstanding inspiration. Thanks for sharing, keep it up!!!!
The Jalopy Journal
