Daves55Sedan
Well-known member
After having driven this '55 Ford for 45 years, it was beginning to look like an eyesore. Although it had had some major rust damage repair in 1992, several of the repaired areas were beginning to rust through again. I thought I would just quickly cut out these few bad spots and patch them. The main goal would be to stop water from entering places where it should not be, thus preventing further rust damage. Little did I know, there was more to this than meets the naked eye. Many areas where the paint was bubbled on the exterior surface became very large holes after grinding away the rust and removing badly pitted metal until finding good structural metal to weld new patch pieces to. At first glance, I could see bubbling paint and small rustholes in the following areas on the outside of the car; right outer rocker, right rear quarter, large area at rear half of left outer rocker and significant area behind rear fenderwell on left outer quarter panel.
Further inspection in hidden areas led to the discovery of a portion of the inner rockers were almost completely gone and they needed to be cut out too. Additionally, while under the car, I noticed that some of the floor gusset braces near the connection to the inner rockers were gone. The front of the rear wheelwells were gone and started causing rustholes at the doorjambs and floor area at both backdoors.
At some point I opened the passenger side front door (probably had not been opened in ten or fifteen years) and when I set my foot on the floor, it went right thru the floor. Now this meant I needed to remove the front seat mounting bolts, push the seat away and pull up the rubber floorcovering so I could see the extent of the damage. The whole floor panel, a portion of the adjacent foot riser panel AND a large section of riser behind the main front cowl support were nearly gone. (This was the only section of floor I did not replace in 1992, but it was solid then).
Both inner rear quarter panels had several rustholes that needed to be repaired. On the left side rear outer quarter, the original plan was to just cut out and patch as needed, but when I began to cut and seek decent structural metal to weld to, the hole cutout got bigger and bigger, till I gave up on trying to salvage it and wound up cutting the entire panel off from about an inch above the contour line on down. That meant I would need to order a replacement repair panel. I really did not want to do that. After cutting off the left rear quarter, I discovered that a large portion of the attaching wheelwell all around the fenderwell was insufficient to weld to and had many large holes. I ended up cutting it all off.
The whole bottom of the rear tailpan was in real bad shape, but I decided I was not going to fix this, maybe just some fiberglass patch underneath to keep water from coming in. Much later down the line as I finished patching other areas, I decided I could not let it go like it was since it would surely turn into another huge hole in due time. Further inspection in this area led to the discovery of a large hole just above the last floor support on the right side (trunk floor) and that it was caused by that floor support being rusted away.
I do not really have many profesional sheet metal working tools. These are the tools I used and what for:
A 1970's era Black & Decker jigsaw with metal cutting blades for cutting out rusted areas on the car wherever possible, and was used for all the new flat sheetmetal cutting. A homemade wooden worktable was used for cutting out new pieces. I used an ordinary C-clamp and a 1" block of wood to clamp the metal down to the table so that the metal piece would not move during a cutting operation. Where a jigsaw could not be used to cut out rustholes on the car due to space restraints, I used a drill outfitted with a cutting disk/mandrel. I used the thinnest cutting disks I could find at the hardware store (usually, 1/16 inch). And where a drill was too large to use, I opted for a high speed Dremel rotary tool outfitted with a cutting disk. If very small corner cuts were needed on new pieces, I would use a 1970's era scissor type tin snips (yellow handles). Thankfully, the new metal I used was 18 gage, so bulldog snips (red handles with shorter snip noses) were not needed. I do own a pair of large sheet metal snips but they are big, bulky and in-accurate, so I did not use them. My new pieces would be cut to fit FLUSH with the existing metal on all outer repair panels.
Sheet metal: I had a 4ft x 6ft leftover section of 18 gage sheetmetal from the 1992 patch project that I cut up and used and ended up buying another 2ft x 3ft section which was nearly all used. The flat sheets were used to make inner rockers, outer rockers, the floor panel patch, underfloor brace/gussets, wheelwell patch pieces and all the other patch pieces I needed except for the left outer rear quarter panel. I ordered that panel from one of the Ford resto parts suppliers.
I really do not have any professionally manufactured metal bending apparatus here other than a set of handheld crimp type bending tool, but it is only applicable for bending short pieces. For bending long pieces (such as inner and outer rocker panels), I used two identical long pieces of structural angle iron, placed in a vice with the sheet metal piece sandwiched between them. I used two very strong magnets (one at each end of the angles to hold the top leg of the angles perfectly even while clamping the vice down against the legs in the vice. It is a little cumbersome getting the marks on the sheet metal piece lined up exactly where you want to make the bend while clamping down the vice, but with patience, it can be done. Once the vice is clamped down tight, a long piece of straight (not warped) lumber is placed against the protruding sheetmetal. I used a carpenters hammer to hammer the lumber aginst the metal until the metal was bent over where I want it. On most corners, a hard (abrupt) bend was desired, but where a radiused corner is desired, it can also be done with this apparatus by moving the lumber up off the beginning of the bend while hammering.
I do have a fairly nice but cheap handheld sheet metal hole punch that is good for punching holes to accept a sheet metal screw which I used a lot for temporary fitting of inner rocker panels and the outer rear quarter panel. I also used a 1 inch hole punch to punch the large hole for the license plate light glass lens in the bottom lip of the rear tailpan. You really needed a larger punch since the base of the lens is bigger, but 1 inch was the largest I had, so I cut out more with a jigsaw and made the hole perfectly round with a grinder bit in a Dremel rotary tool. This had to be duplicated for the trunk floor extension under the tailpan, since I had to cut off both upper and trunk floor in the rear.
The car was parked in a 1-1/2 car garage with an attached 10ft x 18ft workshop/storage area. Many of you can probably imagine the headache of trying to do a project of this size in such a small area as car parts that needed to be removed had to be stacked somewhere while allowing for working space. Both rear tires had to be removed, both seats, all floorcoverings, various trim pieces and boxes of hardware. It can be done with thoughtful organization of not only the work itself, but access to tools and stacking of parts & materials. For the hardware, I used cigarrette boxes with the tops cut off and cut pieces of paper with names and location of fasteners and slipped the paper between the box and cellophane wrapping for easy identification. Needless to say, any fasteners that required cleaning/rust removal and rust prevention treatments were taken care of at the time they were removed, then put in the cigarrette boxes. As the boxes accumulated, I put them all in a larger cardboard box so they would all be in one place and everything would be ready when it was time to re-assemble the car.
After stacking removed carparts, I used an old homemade wood worktable to do all sheetmetal cutting in the workshop. A block of wood for clamping the flat sheets down to the table and some C-clamps were brought to the table and left there for use over-and-over again as the project progressed as well as the jigsaw and blades.
Photos of the progress of work in all these areas are inserted in upcoming posts with matching descriptions of the work in those areas. The descriptions of how I did the work which accompany the photos are not meant to be suggestive that these methods are necessarily the right way to fix the problems. It is only a journal telling what I did and how it was done, that the reader may find some of the information useful if he finds himself plagued with similar rust repair woes. There are ten parts to the series that will be posted separately from this and separately from each other.
Further inspection in hidden areas led to the discovery of a portion of the inner rockers were almost completely gone and they needed to be cut out too. Additionally, while under the car, I noticed that some of the floor gusset braces near the connection to the inner rockers were gone. The front of the rear wheelwells were gone and started causing rustholes at the doorjambs and floor area at both backdoors.
At some point I opened the passenger side front door (probably had not been opened in ten or fifteen years) and when I set my foot on the floor, it went right thru the floor. Now this meant I needed to remove the front seat mounting bolts, push the seat away and pull up the rubber floorcovering so I could see the extent of the damage. The whole floor panel, a portion of the adjacent foot riser panel AND a large section of riser behind the main front cowl support were nearly gone. (This was the only section of floor I did not replace in 1992, but it was solid then).
Both inner rear quarter panels had several rustholes that needed to be repaired. On the left side rear outer quarter, the original plan was to just cut out and patch as needed, but when I began to cut and seek decent structural metal to weld to, the hole cutout got bigger and bigger, till I gave up on trying to salvage it and wound up cutting the entire panel off from about an inch above the contour line on down. That meant I would need to order a replacement repair panel. I really did not want to do that. After cutting off the left rear quarter, I discovered that a large portion of the attaching wheelwell all around the fenderwell was insufficient to weld to and had many large holes. I ended up cutting it all off.
The whole bottom of the rear tailpan was in real bad shape, but I decided I was not going to fix this, maybe just some fiberglass patch underneath to keep water from coming in. Much later down the line as I finished patching other areas, I decided I could not let it go like it was since it would surely turn into another huge hole in due time. Further inspection in this area led to the discovery of a large hole just above the last floor support on the right side (trunk floor) and that it was caused by that floor support being rusted away.
I do not really have many profesional sheet metal working tools. These are the tools I used and what for:
A 1970's era Black & Decker jigsaw with metal cutting blades for cutting out rusted areas on the car wherever possible, and was used for all the new flat sheetmetal cutting. A homemade wooden worktable was used for cutting out new pieces. I used an ordinary C-clamp and a 1" block of wood to clamp the metal down to the table so that the metal piece would not move during a cutting operation. Where a jigsaw could not be used to cut out rustholes on the car due to space restraints, I used a drill outfitted with a cutting disk/mandrel. I used the thinnest cutting disks I could find at the hardware store (usually, 1/16 inch). And where a drill was too large to use, I opted for a high speed Dremel rotary tool outfitted with a cutting disk. If very small corner cuts were needed on new pieces, I would use a 1970's era scissor type tin snips (yellow handles). Thankfully, the new metal I used was 18 gage, so bulldog snips (red handles with shorter snip noses) were not needed. I do own a pair of large sheet metal snips but they are big, bulky and in-accurate, so I did not use them. My new pieces would be cut to fit FLUSH with the existing metal on all outer repair panels.
Sheet metal: I had a 4ft x 6ft leftover section of 18 gage sheetmetal from the 1992 patch project that I cut up and used and ended up buying another 2ft x 3ft section which was nearly all used. The flat sheets were used to make inner rockers, outer rockers, the floor panel patch, underfloor brace/gussets, wheelwell patch pieces and all the other patch pieces I needed except for the left outer rear quarter panel. I ordered that panel from one of the Ford resto parts suppliers.
I really do not have any professionally manufactured metal bending apparatus here other than a set of handheld crimp type bending tool, but it is only applicable for bending short pieces. For bending long pieces (such as inner and outer rocker panels), I used two identical long pieces of structural angle iron, placed in a vice with the sheet metal piece sandwiched between them. I used two very strong magnets (one at each end of the angles to hold the top leg of the angles perfectly even while clamping the vice down against the legs in the vice. It is a little cumbersome getting the marks on the sheet metal piece lined up exactly where you want to make the bend while clamping down the vice, but with patience, it can be done. Once the vice is clamped down tight, a long piece of straight (not warped) lumber is placed against the protruding sheetmetal. I used a carpenters hammer to hammer the lumber aginst the metal until the metal was bent over where I want it. On most corners, a hard (abrupt) bend was desired, but where a radiused corner is desired, it can also be done with this apparatus by moving the lumber up off the beginning of the bend while hammering.
I do have a fairly nice but cheap handheld sheet metal hole punch that is good for punching holes to accept a sheet metal screw which I used a lot for temporary fitting of inner rocker panels and the outer rear quarter panel. I also used a 1 inch hole punch to punch the large hole for the license plate light glass lens in the bottom lip of the rear tailpan. You really needed a larger punch since the base of the lens is bigger, but 1 inch was the largest I had, so I cut out more with a jigsaw and made the hole perfectly round with a grinder bit in a Dremel rotary tool. This had to be duplicated for the trunk floor extension under the tailpan, since I had to cut off both upper and trunk floor in the rear.
The car was parked in a 1-1/2 car garage with an attached 10ft x 18ft workshop/storage area. Many of you can probably imagine the headache of trying to do a project of this size in such a small area as car parts that needed to be removed had to be stacked somewhere while allowing for working space. Both rear tires had to be removed, both seats, all floorcoverings, various trim pieces and boxes of hardware. It can be done with thoughtful organization of not only the work itself, but access to tools and stacking of parts & materials. For the hardware, I used cigarrette boxes with the tops cut off and cut pieces of paper with names and location of fasteners and slipped the paper between the box and cellophane wrapping for easy identification. Needless to say, any fasteners that required cleaning/rust removal and rust prevention treatments were taken care of at the time they were removed, then put in the cigarrette boxes. As the boxes accumulated, I put them all in a larger cardboard box so they would all be in one place and everything would be ready when it was time to re-assemble the car.
After stacking removed carparts, I used an old homemade wood worktable to do all sheetmetal cutting in the workshop. A block of wood for clamping the flat sheets down to the table and some C-clamps were brought to the table and left there for use over-and-over again as the project progressed as well as the jigsaw and blades.
Photos of the progress of work in all these areas are inserted in upcoming posts with matching descriptions of the work in those areas. The descriptions of how I did the work which accompany the photos are not meant to be suggestive that these methods are necessarily the right way to fix the problems. It is only a journal telling what I did and how it was done, that the reader may find some of the information useful if he finds himself plagued with similar rust repair woes. There are ten parts to the series that will be posted separately from this and separately from each other.
