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Metal Shaping and Restomods - My Fab Thread

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phivelug

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Apr 17, 2023
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Florida
Hi fellas, I'm new here. My name is Justin Garner and I've been building big money restomods, racecars and now rockets for quite sometime; currently living in Space Coast Florida area. I left the automotive industry about a year ago and transitioned into aerospace and now I'm a TIG/Plasma welder for a big space company. I'm currently building a house and will outfit my garage as a fabshop to continue my side business building racecar turbo manifolds/parts and probably get back into some sheet metal shaping once I get more equipment. I felt this would be a cool place to share some of my fab work and pass on and gain some knowledge. I post a few photos in this first post and go back later and describe the projects and processes with more text and photos as I have time.
Check me out on instagram at www.instagram.com/justingarner_ www.silhouettepower.com onto some pics.

1957 Chevy Cameo truck I built with a quad turbo charged LSX engine, with a BMW DCT gearbox behind it. Here's a few, ill post more later.
Engine bay, LSX 376
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CNC billet steering wheel, 12" motec digital dash displayed fabricated into stock sheet metal dash.

joMwSIt - Imgur.jpgA ton of fabwork underneath the bed floor.
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Epoxy/wood river bedfloor. Handmade stamped old school chevy fill panel.

1968 Camaro I built when working for the Roadster Shop
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Turbo manifolds I build for Japanese motors.
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Ill post a lot more projects with in depth stuff also that i've built over the years, also limited to 10 images per post. For some reason its not allowing my to insert with hyperlink via imgur (and help with that?) Garage and house build photos coming also!
 
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LXCam

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Now we're talking, you're going to fit right in here. Nice work and welcome to the joint bud.

Don't get me wrong, you're work is very clean and very impressive. But that stainless billet collector is flipping killer too. Are you working directly with them on the design?. Just wondering.
 
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engineer2

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Dec 13, 2009
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Chicago burbs
Nice fab work! The Roadster Shop is near here. They look like they keep pretty busy.
Question: Do they do stock restorations, or is that not their thing?
I worked in that same building in 1972-1977 when it was Arrow Pneumatics (formerly Arrow Tool Co.)
Saw your Camaro pic and instantly recognized the photo location as West Winchester Rd. off of Rt. 83.
 
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phivelug

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LXCam said:
Now we're talking, you're going to fit right in here. Nice work and welcome to the joint bud.

Don't get me wrong, you're work is very clean and very impressive. But that stainless billet collector is flipping killer too. Are you working directly with them on the design?. Just wondering.
Click to expand...
Its a CNC shop out of Finland, I just have them slap my logo on them. www.elmerracing.com
engineer2 said:
Nice fab work! The Roadster Shop is near here. They look like they keep pretty busy.
Question: Do they do stock restorations, or is that not their thing?
I worked in that same building in 1972-1977 when it was Arrow Pneumatics (formerly Arrow Tool Co.)
Saw your Camaro pic and instantly recognized the photo location as West Winchester Rd. off of Rt. 83.
Click to expand...
They don't really do "stock restorations" They do have their survivor and legend series though. Survivor is typically a mostly rust free car where they keep the paint on the car, throw a ls3 and a chassis under it an update the interior some. Legend series is their new line of square body trucks that come with lt4 powerplant and their chassis that incorporates a ton of oem gm parts to make and repair needed easy on the road.
 
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phivelug

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Ill start off with some of the work on that Camaro. I did about 95% of all the fabwork on that car when I first started at RoadsterShop in 2016, I was super green in metal shaping at this point. That car came in "restored" and painted. Following stripping the paint we found a ton of issues. It needed new 1/4s, floors, etc. Seen in the first post you can see where I cut out the entire floor pan. I replaced the front half with an oem replacement type floor and the back half and tubs I had to make from scratch to accommodate the IRS on the RS fast track chassis this car received.
Lets start off with some mini tubs. This was my first attempt at this process. Take an oem wheel tub, cut it in half and widen it for maximum clearance that the frame allows.

The body line where the tub meets up isnt square, its actually very curvy and changes directions multiple times, so i made a template of that body line and transferred it to a flat sheet of 18 gauge sheet metal. Once i had it all layed out, i threw my sheet in a slip roll to give it a head start with some shape, and my mounting flange i tipped with a bead roller.

here is the first stage of that
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here is the factory panel after i cut the mounting flange off, this will **** weld to my hand made section
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fast forward a bit through the hard part, which was shrinking/stretching the piece to get the desired radius to match the body tub line. now i have that set and i locate my inner oem tub panel and scribe my cut line to **** weld them together.
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here it is welded together, you can see how much shape the mounting flange has and its key to get that spot on.

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here you can see the inner body line that i said was crucial to get right, not bad for my first attempt at making a tub from scratch
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After some planishing, hammering and metal finishing they are in the car.
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onto the back half of the floor for the next post.
 
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phivelug

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Actually ill throw in some front floor action also. Braced everything real good before cutting out.
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got to work
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began fitting the new chassis
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both inner rockers were in pretty bad shape so i cut out the front half on each side and replaced
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and new floor welded in, had to channel both sides to fit our frame rail and bolt up.
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onto the transmission tunnel. made a sheet metal buck to help make a template and get the fitment i wanted.
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tig welded in
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and metal finished with a trim plate for the shifter
 
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phivelug

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Thanks for the love everybody, lets dive into that quad turbo 57 chevy truck build. Mirror image Garett GTX3071r Gen 2 turbos.

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Modified the engine mounts with this chassis and moved the motor back 4 inches into the cab to be able to eventually cram and fmic and radiator in front of this engine package. Had to open up the firewall I had already built for this truck when we thought it was gonna be a tamer twin turbo ls setup. Here i get the motor mounted where i want it and build jigs to mock up the turbos in the location I liked.

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Also when this truck airs out and lays on the ground the wheel and tire clearance to the motor shrinks drastically so I really got to check all my measurements and fitments to make sure this will all work, be symmetrical and look cool without any interference.

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Here I started fabbing the collectors for the turbo manifolds.
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Silcon bronze weld onto the flange for some extra ductility since I built them with thin wall stainless. Manifolds now coming together, got to build 4.
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Also had to factor in all the downpipes, charge piping, wastegate dump tubes etc. It was alot for such a small space.
 
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phivelug

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Here I modified the turbo housings to weld on the vangen flanges for the fmic piping, no silicone couplers on this build. Had to flare it out for the right size of the 2" if I recall correctly flange. Just did that in a press brake.
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All 4 manifolds done with turbos hanging.
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Wastegates were next.
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Next I started building the main section of the exhaust on each side of the truck so I can properly route the 4 downpipes to them. This is all built out of titanium, was my first major ti project at the time. I needed to build some merge collectors for them. 3" 2-1 into a 4" flare out for the exhaust.

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Slip fit to make install easier. More on the next post.
 
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phivelug

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Mated the exhaust collectors to the rest of the exhaust.

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Cant find pics on my phone, im sure they are there somewhere of this installed under the truck. These two sections then had a slip fit on the end with the remainder shooting out of the bedside. Here you can see the trim piece I had made with the shop logo and the truck owners company logo, with the tear drop sitting flush.

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