Been getting after it on the Econoline trailer this weekend.
I had gotten all the guts and spot welds off the wheel arch panel previously. Unfortunately, where it was cut off at the scrap yard was where the flange connecting the corner panel was located, so that meant I needed to graft in another section. Fortunately I had another panel from the original shipment I received - unfortunately, it had also been hit at some point in its life. The piece in question is on the lower left, beneath the top panel and to the left of the corner section.
I had removed that section and set it aside previously - I moved forward with removing all the spot welds and guts from the inside of the panel. I’ll spare you all those photos - very tedious.
I worked it for a wheel getting it back into some semblance of straight. Keen observers will notice that this thing got hit HARD as evident by the entire wheel flange behind pushed in and stretched straight (visible bottom left of panel).
Straightened it a bit more and then threw it on the original panel for some measurements.
Laid up next to the panel it will be grafted to.
Really fun part about working with vintage “oddball,” vehicles is that parts availability *****, so you need used parts. And all those parts have been crashed once already - even better when they’ve been wrecked in the same spot.
Manhandled the long panel through the “homemade” English wheel to get it back into orientation.
Then it was very tedious work - sharpie used as layout fluid and a scribe line struck. Then a tape line overlapping the scribe line to really sneak up on the cut. Repeat for each piece.
I sincerely apologize - I was in the zone and didn’t get any photos of the fit up before I started welding, but here’s a shot after a few stitches and during some massaging / measurement.
I worked on it a bit this morning finishing the weldment and doing some dressing - few areas I’m not happy with that got away with me and I had to use more filler than I would have liked - oh well, it’ll work out fine. Worked it with the hammer and dolly a bit and some DA Action, mocking things up.
Next cut coming up will be the top panel - I’m really hopeful this will be the last panel weld I’ll need to do.
This might be a lot of work, but check out what we started with!
Yeah the donor panels might be cheating, but I’ll cheat considering we want this thing painted by summer
