In this episode of the Trans Am project, Mark cuts out the factory lead seams in the B-pillars and fabricates a replacement panel using 18 gauge sheet metal formed on a bench brake and shrinker-stretcher. At the same time, he also fabs a patch for the sunroof drain channels that […]
I somehow ended up with this ’29 Model A Roadster carcass I want to build a little replica-racer out of. It was cheap, the bones were there and I figured I could build it up when I found some non-existent free time. I’m a little stubborn and although I could buy an entire new steel replica body, or all of the panels new to make this car all solid again, I’d rather build the panels I need from scratch and bring a close to 90-year old car back from the dead for very little money out of my pocket. I decided I wanted to start in the front of the body and work my way back. The side cowl panels are almost ALWAYS rotted out on the bottom of these cars and after I looked at the remains of the originals I decided I could easily tackle making new panels for only a few bucks in sheet metal.
When you get a piece of flat sheet metal it tends to be very weak and it can be bent quite easily. So if it is so weak, why do we use this stuff for the bodies of our cars? Why not a heavier metal like metal plate? If we did that our cars would all be styled like and as heavy as a tank! This means none of those beautiful curves you see on classic cars (I don’t want to live in that world!).
If you want to get better at anything you need to practice and push yourself to try things a little out of your skill/comfort level. Metal Shaping is 100% one of those things that you need to practice and work to get better at, even if it means wrecking a […]
We’ve found that most car guys and gals are “hands on” learners. Sure you can read all the tech articles and watch all the Youtube videos in the world, but putting in the time practicing is where most of us really learn. We recently started holding small tech seminars where we let our customers learn from the professionals and get their hands dirty in the process.
In one of our last posts we gave you some sneak peaks of the custom running board project we’ve been working on for Project Pilehouse. During the process we documented the full build and shared some of our secrets to help you build a similar project yourself for cheap. After […]
When we last mentioned how we were lengthening the bed of PileHouse we had just cut the bed apart and braced it to fabricate the new panels. This was not an easy task, but it was made much easier after the project had spawned some new prototype products. Many of […]
When looking over Project Pile House we started seeing a lot of spots where we needed to repair rusted panels on the body. When sizing it all up, we found that many of them could be replaced with the combination of some basic hand tools and our new Patch Panel […]
Replacing door skins, quarter panels, and other patch panels can take a lot of practice to get perfect. We have found that there are a few little tips to make a seamless repair much easier. My favorite is the use of a “backing strip” to connect the new and old […]
