38 Dodge P/U Sheet metal repair

[roddguy1]

This is a project I've been working on for a fellow here in town. It's a 1938 Dodge that needed some sheet metal repair. So this thread is going to focus only on that part of this build. I will get some finished pics once he has it done. It is scheduled to be ready for the Performance World car show this coming March in Toronto.

The first peaces he gave me to work on was the front fenders and rad shell. Needless to say that 70 plus years in Ontario had not been kind to this truck. Once I had them dipped and epoxy primed this is what I had to work with on the fenders.

 

[roddguy1]

Then is was a lot of hammer and dolly work to take out the worst of the damage and then run them on the English Wheel to smooth them out. I also welded up some of the minor cracks and began to lay out the replacement panels.

 

[roddguy1]

One of the more challenging things he wanted done was to close in the spare tire well. I started with a sheet of steel oversize and began pounding out the ruff shape on the shot bag with a nylon mallet. Then it was off to the English wheel for smoothing and shaping. this went back and forth a number of times until I had a shape I was happy with. Once this panel was tacked in I started to lay out a new piece for part of the fender lip.

 

[roddguy1]

I then braced the fender to keep it in line and to hold the shape of the wheel opening. Once I was happy with that I bent up a new wire for the lip. Because of all the old damage and stretching in the panel the lip no longer had it's correct shape through the upper front edge. So a little artists eye was needed to get a correct shape. I then finished laying out the new panel, ran it through the English Wheel and then the bead roller to get the shape of the lip in.

 

[roddguy1]

Now that I'm ready with the new panel I marked and trimmed out the old lip. Welded in the new wire for the lip, and tacked in the new panel. I needed to make some relief cuts to shrink down some of the area above the new panel. Next it's fully welded in and then dressed.

 

[roddguy1]

Here an overall view of the fender and then on to the lower apron corner. The same process was followed here as well.

 

[roddguy1]

The other fender went through all the same repairs.

 

[roddguy1]

A couple more finished pics of the left fender.

 

[roddguy1]

And a few pics of the finished right fender and repaired rad shell.

 

[roddguy1]

I did knock out some dents in the hood panels and fixed a few edges but really nothing to see. Here are a few pics of the panels being test fit on the truck. If you look close at the first pic you can see a rendering on the wall of how the truck will look when finished.

 

[roddguy1]

Next it was on to the doors. There overall condition was pretty good but as usual for around here the bottoms were wiped out.

 

[roddguy1]

Time to build a new set of door bottoms and outer skins. The inner bottoms were a bit of a challenge but the outside skin was pretty straight forward. The only really difficult part was not over stretching them on he English wheel when I was wheeling in the curve of the door bottom.

 

[bob w]

Nice work, and lots of it! How many hours do you estimate you have in the fenders?
On the hammer and dolly work, do you mainly use a slapper?
You're a heck of a metal man.[cl

 

[roddguy1]

Fitting and making where to remove the old bottom. Then tacked and welded in place.

 

[roddguy1]

Nice work, and lots of it! How many hours do you estimate you have in the fenders?
On the hammer and dolly work, do you mainly use a slapper?
You're a heck of a metal man.[cl

You know Bob I don't even own a slapper. lol I should probably try it sometime. So no, I use a variety of body hammers and special tools that I've built to do certain things that I think up. I'd have to look at my books but I believe I charged 57 hrs on the fenders.

 

[roddguy1]

Here is the outer skin going on and wrapped on to the inner door bottom.

 

[roddguy1]

And a few finished pics.