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).
Tag: Fabrication
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.
How to fabricate and install Heavy Duty Threaded Inserts
Recently when channeling my Ford Model A I wanted to use Grade 8 fasteners for all of the body mounts instead of just tapping threads into the frame or inserting rivnuts that could fail over time. First of all the 1/4″ wall of the tubing wasn’t really thick enough to […]
Complex Rust Patch Panel Made Easy
At times rust repair can be ultra simple; cut the old rust out, cut a square of fresh metal and weld it in. But those repairs aren’t usually as frequent as we’d like. Rust seems to like to creep into a curved area or into a body line that takes more care to repair. I recently decided to tackle a large rusty area of the rear portion of the floor on Project Pile House.
How to Channel A Ford Model A
Back in the late 1940’s-1960’s it was pretty easy to distinguish if a hot rod in a magazine was built on the east coast or on the west. One of the big differences is how the profile and stance of the car differed. An “east coast hot rod” was easily identifiable by its low ride height and body channeled pretty hard over the chassis without chopping or lowering the roof. It seems as the years went on guys were channeling and lowering their cars more and more until there was almost no ground clearance and no headroom from the raised floor.
How To Weld a Butt Joint
One of the simplest welding joints is the butt joint. It is not the strongest, but it is one of the most useful especially for automotive body work. This type joint is used whenever you butt 2 pieces together and then weld between where the two meet. Butt welding thin […]
Building a Simple Hot Rod Chassis From Scratch
I decided to start building the chassis for a 1930 Model A Coupe project I’ve been gathering parts for. The vision for this project was to build a traditional hot rod using a strong chassis that gives the car a nice stance all while utilizing some old and original parts to give the build the “soul” of a car built back in the late 1940’s-early 1950’s. This means other than raw material used and the replacement maintenance type parts, we’ll be building it using old “stuff”.