55 Wagon Progress

[Advanced Design]

Very nice. Really appreciate the focus on detail and quality of the work.

[MP&C]

Thanks!


I've had my Mig welder for quite a while now, and thought I'd downsize a bit. Most of the work I do is sheet metal, and the occasional 1/8 or 3/16 plate. I had looked at the Miller 211's online and on eBay, so I had a price range in mind. I stopped by my local Welding supply and was pleased to find that he had those prices beat by a good bit. So it came home with me..








First order of business was to test it out and do a comparison to the coupon I had done with the old machine. I still had the 11 lb. roll of .023 EZ Grind, so that was used in the new machine. Here are the results...














Both versions, .023 EZ grind and the .035 ER70S-7 in the old machine had very similar results. Good wetting, nice flat weld for minimal build, less grinding, less cleanup.






Back to the front end of the car, the hood had been giving us fits when opening, it was dragging the cowl vent in a few spots...





Removed the hood and altered the angle of the rear flange for better clearance to the cowl vent....











After refitting, the problem persisted, but was not as pronounced. We did notice the center of the hood was sagging a bit. So I jumped inside the engine compartment with the torch and did some contracting of the rear brace to give the center a lift...








Cooling off the hot spots with a damp rag did the trick. Next we worked on getting the hood's rear edge to match up to the cowl. This is something that the driver will stare at continually, so it needs to be a whole lot better than it is now:











Further refinements included this and others:





After taking the hood on and off about a dozen times, this is closer, and the outer edge adjacent to the fender needs to "droop" a bit more. We're running out of time this evening, so we'll try our luck next time with the rocker panel roller to see how well it addresses the edge.

[swamp rat]

So. In your opinion is the little touch worth the money? I have seen them at the fair and car show but kinda pricy.

I'd be remiss if I didn't say nice work yet again!

[MP&C]

I haven't done too much welding with it yet, but so far so good. Looks to have better adjustability than the old one, this one has infinite control on both settings, the old one didn't have that on the heat settings.

[ERASER5]

I thought he meant the gas torch but maybe not.

I am not a pro welder, but the big Millers and Lincolns I used in class had very heavy cables. I had to drape the cable over something to get good control of my welds.

My small Thermal Arc has a very lite weight feed cables. Much easier to work with. It won't weld a ships hull, but I don't plan on that either.

[swamp rat]

Yea i could have been more clear in my post. I was refering to the oxy acet hand held torch ☺

[MP&C]

Sorry, misread that. The torch is a Henrob, which should tell you how old it is. I think I bought it some 20-25 years ago. I believe the company has changed names twice since, they should be going by Cobra torches now. It comes with about 5 or 6 different tips for a good range in heat, and works well. I use it mainly for heating (shrinking) purposes, and should get out of my comfort zone a bit more and do some O/A welding.. Maybe it's time I try some of that and do another video so the results can be seen firsthand.... But other than high heat where someone would need a rosebud, it's done anything I've needed it for..

[MP&C]

A bit more progress last night on the front end fitment. We've taken the hood off and reinstalled so much that one of the captive nuts came out. Once we fished it out of the hole, it still looked intact, so it will get reinstalled. It was proving difficult to pull back up into the hole, so a bolt was threaded into the nut and the fancy dent puller clamped onto the bolt head. One pull and it was back in place..








It was tacked in place, and to prevent a reoccurrence with the other three, they received tack welds also.





Next, we were working on the hood to cowl gap. We noticed towards the ends of this gap it tended to tighten up. The highly calibrated gap feeler gauge was used...





Here the gap tool had no chance, we need to reform the rear fold on the ends...











The wedge anvil was used, along with a x-large cold chisel that had a radiused edge formed for the more curvaceous profiles, to reform the rear fold inward for this tight area..











Gap looks much more consistent there, a quick look at the passenger side shows it needs reforming as well, but not nearly as much. Getting late, so we'll finish this up next time...

[Advanced Design]

Very nice work! Love the dent puller.

You've followed a great and logical sequence on fitting to get to this point. My luck (or lack of sequence) I could fit my hood to cowl then realize I was off up toward the front. Not wishing to be a burden, what is a quick summary of the sequence? Was it doors to body, then fenders to doors, then front of hood to fenders (fore and aft, side to side) then hood to cowl?

Apologies if you have this in the build. Lotta great work and information here. Thank you for sharing.

[MP&C]

I've always been told that on this car you should start with door fitment, then fenders and hood, working your way forward. It seems that every piece I've touched has needed some work to get good, consistent gaps. 1955 tolerances leave a lot to be desired...

[Dieselwrencher]

Great work, it is looking super.

[MP&C]

Thanks!


More progress today, part of our hood fitment has been hindered by the hinges. When closing the hood they didn't want to close properly and the back corners of the hood had to be pushed down by hand. Don (acardon) on Trifive website suggested replacing the original shouldered rivets with some bolts and sleeves. We hadn't heard anything promising with the reproduction hinges, so what did we have to lose.

First to come up with a hinge spring removal tool...

















Now to disassemble the hinge and remove the rivets..











Some 3/8-16 rivnuts were used to make some spacers, and used the lathe to trim them to size, allowing a few thousandths clearance. All of the rivet holes were drilled out for the spacers..





Here are the results, click on the pic for video





Thanks much to Don for the suggestion!

[duallyjams]

Solved that problem.

[swamp rat]

Nice work! I found a company that rebuilds hood hinges, obviously you don't need the link. LOL!

[Advanced Design]

Great idea and nice work. That is the smoothest operating hood hinge I've ever seen.

[MP&C]

Thanks for the comments guys. Yeah, real pleased with how the hood is now closing.


Tonight we worked on some more front end pieces. The drivers side inner fender extension had been slightly mangled, looks like perhaps a tire ran over road kill or something and threw it up, breaking some spot welds.











Kyle had already worked on straightening the lower bracket, and after I re-welded the broken spot welds, he got into some metal bumping to repair the rest of the mangle in the sheet metal.


Meanwhile, with the hood fitment about done it was time to weld up the rear corners after the rear flanges in the corners had been persuaded forward to provide consistent gap across the back edge of the hood. The Crud Thug was used to clean out the inside corners for welding..








A copper flat bar was trimmed to fit the inside corner snugly to help manage weld penetration where inside cleanup wouldn't be needed.





Welded and dressed....





Then the peak on the hood was addressed, after peaking the front of the hood awhile back I had yet to fix the low areas. A consistent crown would be essential on provide good support for the hood, and there were a few low spots along the peak. To be able to match up the low areas, a magnetic rule was placed on the underside and top. After sighting the peak and finding the lows, they were marked and the measurement notated.











Flipping the hood over, the same dimensioned areas were persuaded downward. A screen door tool was used, but proved to be rather ineffective.





Time to break out the heavy duty implements, a rounded/radiused cold chisel and a dead blow hammer, along with the small shot bag held against the opposite side....








That worked better, and showed dramatic improvement. Still a bit more to do, but we're running out of time this evening, so we'll finish this up on Saturday..

[Dieselwrencher]

Nice work on the hood hinges, and awesome metal work again. Very nice.

[duallyjams]

This thread will live for ever as a reference for metalwork.

[MP&C]

Thanks guys!


More progress today, some of the factory hardware for the inner fender and inner fender extensions used sheet metal screws and clips that had been spot welded on. We plan on using machine screws, so the clips were drilled out for 1/4-20 rivet nuts.





Kyle used the BF Goodrich installing tool. First the rivet nut is threaded onto the tool for full thread engagement..





Next, the allen wrench is held stationary, and is also held to stabilize the tool perpendicular to the work piece. The ratchet wrench adds the rotational movement where the "jack screw" draws up the rivet nut, similar to installing a pop rivet..





While he was doing that, I used some transfer punches to add the holes to the recently repaired inner fenders for the grille hardware...














Then we knocked off early and made a speed run to Annapolis for Jalopyrama. Here are some of the sights:

[FarmerSid]

Cool stuff Robert! Can you post some more pictures and info on the rivet nut tool? I think I have one in my tool box at work but never knew what it was used for.

[duallyjams]

That wagons is really nice, it was at the rodder journal at Pimlico, the front roll pan, hood and roof ribs all line up and match.

[Advanced Design]

Nice work on the wagon, great car show and more details on the rivnut tool would be interesting.....haven't seen one like that.

[Bomp]

Cool pics of some cool cars but I gotta say your info is TOPS.

[MP&C]

I was going to post a youtube link on the proper use of the rivnut tool shown, but all of the videos I've seen thus far show using the tool incorrectly. So I'll have to make one myself and I'll post up a link when done...

[Dieselwrencher]

Great work and thanks for the pics from the show. A lot of nice rides there. That riv nut tool looks pretty nice. I'm looking forward to the vid you will make.