Making and fitting quarter panels

[SteveW]

I've started to skin my wood tub and have made the three metal pieces that cover the door sill and the front door post. The next step is to make one of the front quarter panels. I've cut this to rough shape and now need to trim it and bend it over the frame around the door opening. I have a couple of questions.

i) When bending it over, should I do so with the three smaller sill pieces in place (my logic being that they add about 1mm to the wood all around), or should I do it on bare wood to give a really tight fit when I add the three pieces back in again (potential down side being if I do the bending well enough I might not have enough space to force them in); and

ii) The joins between the sill pieces and the quarter panel were originally spot welded, but TC Forever recommends using bronze tacks. Is there any reason why I shouldn't do the MIG welding equivalent of spot welds (i.e. run short beads and then grind back)?

Advice would be appreciated. Pictures to follow once it's done.

Steve

[cdrolshagen]

Hi Steve,
open that link, you have the answers you are ask,

https://www.magentacloud.de/share/is.ttl.z9e

If you can´t open it, give me your E-mail adress,

Cheers Carl

[stephen stierman]

I think I made the sill pieces and bent the quarter panels over them, but it has bee a good while ago. In any case if you bend the metal very tightly over the timber you have a very difficult time getting it back off to paint the back side or do whatever other fitting or trimming you may want to do. So my advice is to bend it over but not extremely tight until you are ready to nail it in place. If you do it that way you have room to slip the sill covers in afterwards. I would MIG them as that is what I did and just grind the welds smooth, looks like a spot weld.

[SteveW]

Thanks for the advice Stephen and Carl. Carl - thats a great set of pictures that you have, very useful. You must have spent nearly as long welding the jig to keep the frame steady and in the right place as you did restoring the car! Its interesting to see that you folded the quarter panel over the sill pieces before you folded the sill pieces over the other side of the wood. That well may be easier than the way that I have started to do it, which is to make the sill pieces first as I had real problems holding them in place

My plan is to bend the panel over with the sill pieces in place and see what happens. When it comes to the MIG welding I'll try a couple of different techniques with some scraps first. One wil be to plug weld (i.e. welding through a hole drilled in the fold of the panel and onto the sill piece and then grind flat, the other will be to try short lengths of seam welding and then grind flat. From working with the sill pieces, the hardest thing seems to be to get the wood frame braced well enough so that it doesn't flex whilst hammering the metal.

Sheet metal is cheap enough if I mess up.

[stephen stierman]

I didn't plug or seam weld the outer quarter to the sill pieces, just a few tacks along the edge all around and grind smooth, I am sure when these were done originally that was all that they did. May have read that the early cars didn't even have sill covers.
Are you replacing the rear quarters also?

[SteveW]

I do wonder about maybe using tacks and counter sinking them a bit then lead loading over them to hide them.

I'm partially replacing the rear quarters. I have a couple of used sets that are in quite good condition so I was going to pick the best ones and just cut the damaged 'tails' off and weld on new metal. That way I dont have to try to make the difficult curves.

[stephen stierman]

Good plan. I made up new quarters and butt welded the elbow rail sections out of the old quarters into them, worked very nicely.

[SteveW]

The first front quarter panel is now made and fitted. In the end, I drilled through the lip of the quarter panel and the sills and put a tack through both so that it was flush with the panel. A bit of grinding and filling and you wouldn't know that they were there. I'm happy with the results. Note that the edge of the panel where the scuttle hooks over is slightly over size at the moment so that I can trim back to get a tight fit later in the build.

Next job is the rear quarter on the same side

[stephen stierman]

Good work!

[cdrolshagen]

great job!

cheers Carl

[SteveW]

After a battle of epic proportions, I have at last managed to make and fit the rear quarter panel to my satisfaction. This is an original panel that I topped and tailed with new metal to remove the rusted parts. My advice to anyone building their own tub (aside from don't! ) is to trial fit the outer wing before fitting the inner wheel arch metal. The outer wing curves up a little once inside of the body and its important to leave enough space for it to do so. On to the other side in a couple of days time, hopefully the lessons learnt on this side will make it easier.

[frenchblatter]

Steve, when Maurice in France went to fit the two rear quarter panels as supplied by Moss he fitted one OK but the second was way out. He threw it away (literally) and selected a sheet of mild steel from his stock. He them measured and cut the sheet with his plasma cuter and proceded to fit the panel. He tapped it here, tapped it there and in less than half hour had a perfect panel fitted. I just stood and watched in amazement.

See you Friday.

[SteveW]

.. He tapped it here, tapped it there and in less than half hour had a perfect panel fitted. I just stood and watched in amazement.

Skilled indeed. In my case it took a week and not half an hour!
Steve

[timandgerda]

Nice job Steve. My rear wings are in a very poor state so I don't know how well they will fit up to the tub. On the plus side I guess I can achieve an acceptable fit during repairs (if they prove to be recoverable).

[SteveW]

Nice job Steve. My rear wings are in a very poor state so I don't know how well they will fit up to the tub.

During the process of trying to get the rear of the car right I've noticed that my rear wings are not identical to each other. In particular, the way that the rear tip curves back up again is not the same. On one side the transition from the general curve of the wheel arch to the tip is quite gentle whereas on the other side it's a visibly deeper curve in the transition (sorry, hard to describe). For the moment, these have been consigned to the 'worry about it later' pile!

We should catch up some time as it's been a while.

Steve

[SteveW]

Progress is being made with my ambition to finish the tub this summer before I have to all but stop for the autumn/winter (as I turn into an astronomer for the season). Today was warm and sunny so I took the opportunity to spray one side of the car with 2K epoxy primer. I'm quite happy with the results - especially the door as I had to learn to weld last year so that I could cut it in half to replace the rusted bottom. Clearly there will be a lot of sanding and refining to come before the final top coat, but the primer will do for now. Hopefully if we get another decent day or two I can finish off and spray the other side. The panels and door are fitted, but they need some further adjustement before and sanding being ready for primer.

[frenchblatter]

Well done Steve, that's a huge jump since I saw it a few weeks ago.