In this tech article we’re working on a Model T roadster project that started out as a pile of parts. With any type of project like this you’re going to run into areas where there’s just no metal at all and we need to make it from scratch so we’re going to be making a door sill and door jamb area on this vehicle.
You can see there’s nothing left to start with so we’re going to have to make this part completely from scratch and make it fit the car and the door. I’m going to use the Eastwood Elite Shrinker Stretcher to make the project go a lot quicker.
We began by measuring the length and width of the door opening and cut a piece of 18-gauge steel to match. The metal was then bent to 90 degrees; giving us the correct width flange on both sides of our new door jamb.
Matt then added reference marks every inch, so we could easily keep track of the shrinking and stretching.
The outside corners of the jamb needed the most movement, so the stretcher jaws were installed first. We first stretched the numbered area where the radius of the front lower corner spanned until the corner was bent to about 45 degrees.
Notes were then made of which numbered marks needed more stretching and we repeated the process until the first corner was fitting the door opening nicely.
The front corner now fit the car and we were able to move to the rear corner. This bend wasn’t as severe as the metal only needed to match the angle of the remnants of the original door jamb. Notes were again marked out of which numbers needed to be stretched and Matt quickly formed the piece to match in the elite shrinker stretcher.
Above you can see we got the general shape of this door jamb area formed really quick and we’re dialing in the final shape now. Most car doors have a compound curve to them; so not only do they have the curve front to back, they also curve top to bottom. So now that we have the heavy shaping done in this area, we can go into these other flanges and shrink or stretch them to get the shape that we want on those subtle areas. After a little more adjustment we were ready to trim the jamb to size.
After a little more shrinker stretcher work the new jamb was starting to fit the car well so we cut out the remainder of the original that was interfering we had perfect fitment of our new metal.
The last step of shaping was to shrink the inside flanges to match the contour of the door bottom.
Once the outside perimeter of the new jamb matched the body nicely Matt used a slapping spoon on a forming dolly to roll the lower to match the angle at the bottom of the door.
We were now ready to prep the original metal and the new jamb for weld. Matt sanded all of the old paint and rust surrounding the weld seam.
fit the panel up to the car and you
After some filing and sanding, the new jamb fit against the body with almost no gaps. We used a couple of panel clamps to hold the metal in position before welding.
Matt started by tack welding the areas where the panel was clamped, and the weld joint was tight and flush. As the panel was tacked in place we used a hammer and dolly to adjust the panels to assure for the best fitment.
Once the panel was tacked in place Matt then jumped to the door sill area and welded the new jamb to the sill that was made earlier in the project. All welding was done with the TIG 200 Digital Welder.
After the door jamb was fully welded in place Matt used the palm da sander and the 2 inch orbital sander to smooth the weld seam and any marks left by the shrinker stretcher.
With everything welded we now have the front and rear half of the body connected together and everything’s a lot more solid. The Elite Shrinker-Stretcher really made this job go quickly because it moves metal so fast!