Street Rodder Road Tour–More Metal
Another week of work resulted in more panel replacement for the Street Rodder Road Tour ’51 Ford. We’ve expressed the extensive rust inside and outside this car, and it’s time to get rid of it. We battled with the floor pans, and other structural panels, but now it’s time to tackle the exterior metal work with a bunch of patch panels from Dennis Carpenter. We also received a big shipment of Eastwood tools, which will greatly help our metalworking efforts.
The folks at Eastwood also sent us all of the necessary stuff to do lead work. Since this is a “lead sled”, it’s only fitting to finish our metal work with lead. We’ll cover that process in a later post, but for now, it’s just a matter of getting these panels welded into place. We also had to fabricate several panels because our Dennis Carpenter panels didn’t quite cover the extent of our rust. In addition to all this, we filled the gas filler door, and removed the original spears from the quarter panels, making for a super slick look. Take a look at our progress, and stay tuned for next week’s Friday morning update. We’ll dig a little deeper and continue the build.
Delton started by drilling out the spot welds on the lower portion of the quarter panel.
Several panels had to be fabricated to remove the gas filler door and the original spears on the quarter panel.
The patch panels from Dennis Carpenter feature a flanged edge, which made it easy for us to install the panels. Here, we just had the panel mocked up, but when it’s time for installation, the flange will mount to the inside of the original sheet metal. Then it will be plug welded into place.
Here’s a shot of the ’51 with the patch panels tack-welded into place. We’ll use our new Eastwood hammers and dollies to straighten the panels before final welding.
We used a Miller tig welder to attach the new patch panels. We skipped around from one side to the other to reduce the risk of warping the steel.
The front fenders also had extensive rust issues, so we’re glad Dennis Carpenter makes all of the necessary panels to repair them.
One part that we had to fabricate was the front corner of the fenders. This area had an unusual amount of rust, so we fabricated the necessary panels to get rid of the rust.
Richard and Delton test fit the front fender after welding the patch panel into place. This is an important step to check for alignment issues, so we will also install the door to check fitment.