No one’s perfect, but we can do our best to strive to get the closest we can get to perfection every day. These ideals are the same whether you’re a cook, a machinist, a landscaper, or a guy in his garage building an old car or motorcycle. One big lesson I’ve learned over the past few years has been to slow down and take the time to make sure that parts fit together as nice as possible before welding. Just blindly rough cutting a piece and trying to make it fit another piece is going to end with an uneven weld seam and won’t end well!
Archive
Tech Tip- How to Move a Bent Edge
On my Model A project I channeled the car down over the chassis which required me to build new floor supports and pans. The way I built it all up I needed to make 6 small pans that would fit down in between each supports. This meant I had to nail the bends on either edge so the final inside measurement allowed the pans to drop down in between the supports tightly. I will have to take the pans in and out throughout the rest of the project so I wanted them to drop in and fit snug, but not so tight I needed to use a hammer to force them in (this could also bow the panel).
Tips to Making Custom Floor Pans for your Car
Mark recently decided to take on a resto-mod oddball in a Chevy Corvair. This neglected Chevy bastard-child was rescued from a local scrap yard and had seen some questionable repairs and better days. His first step in the rebuild of the car was getting the structure of the car rebuilt and solid before he started customizing the car. The first area of concern was the floor; or lack of it.
The Sorcery of Tuck Shrinking Sheet Metal
The simplest way to describe how metal moves or reacts when you shrink or stretch it is to imagine pizza dough. When you stretch the dough out to make a larger pie you’ll see it gets larger AND thinner as you stretch it out. If you watch the process they start with a small, thick, round piece of dough that they kneed out until the dough is the desired thickness and put the excess material on the edges for the “crust” The same if they wanted to make the pie smaller, you’d need to gather the dough together creating bunches and smooth it all together until it was the desired shape. Metal reacts almost EXACTLY the same.
What welder is best for Off-Road Fabrication?
What you need to first start with is what, when, and where you’ll be using your welder. Unfortunately there’s downsides to every type of welder out there, it’s just finding one that checks as many boxes as possible for you. I put together some pros and cons on each type of welding in regards to off-road and 4×4 vehicles below. Hopefully it helps you choose a welder that fits your needs the best.
Turbo Refinish with Powder Coating
Whether you’re adding a turbo to your car or just refinishing the one you already have the best and really only option is powder coating. Eastwood has everything you need to completely restore your turbo in an extremely durable corrosion-free finish that other coatings simply can’t match.
What is “Hot Flocking” and When do I do it?
This helps with adhesion, but can be VERY tricky if you aren’t careful. Start by cleaning your parts as good as possible, including any paint, grease or oil. I then like to run the part through the heat and cool cycle once heating the part past the curing temperature of your powder (check your powder bottle for the temperature). I then do one last wipe down with Acetone and then put it back in the oven and heat it to the curing temperature until the ENTIRE part is reading the cure temperature. Using an IR thermometer is key here.
5 Trail Items You Need on Your Truck
When you’re out on the trail your cell phone isn’t going to save you. There’s some key items you’ll need to get your rig going when broken down or stuck on the trail. We decided to put together a short list of our favorite Eastwood products that are trail must-haves. These aren’t the only items you need, but will definitely be key items for off-road vehicle survival!
Where and when do I use Epoxy Primer on my project?
In the past self etching primer was the go-to coating to apply over bare metal on a car. Metal required little prep work to apply it, it flashes/drys quickly, and it came in 1K Aerosol cans for small jobs. In the past 5-10 years you’ve probably been hearing more people talk about Epoxy Primers and their use as opposed to self etching primer. We decided to give you some insight on where and when epoxy primer works best.