Making a rear corner patch for a '30 Cabriolet

30cabriolet

30cabriolet

Senior Member
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to form a rear corner patch? I have a '30 Cabriolet and none of the poorly made patches out there match a cabby, so I don't even have a starting point. Both corners are gone at the bottom and the picture shows that they need work about 1 1/2" up. Do I need to make some type of form to bend the metal around? I do not have access to shrinker or english wheel, everything will be done by hand. I figure that I will bend a lip over 90 degrees to make the bottom and then notch the lip to allow me to curve a patch. After that, I don't have a clue as what would be the best way to go to form the bead. I will be tig welding everything in place.

I also added a picture of how my car looked the other day when my son finally got to ride "IN" the car instead of on it. I have been mocking up the body to keep the lines right as I have go about patching everything. So, while it is together before I start the bodywork, I have been having fun driving it around.
 

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I made mine from scratch.

Two pieces. First I formed the around by hand. I hand hammered in the bead and then welded the bottom part.

I strongly recommend that you first put the body together tight to the sills and that you have the lower rear panel in its final tested configuration. If you are using a repro lower panel then you will want to sneak it down about 1/8" so the bottom of the rumble lid has more clearance. You will see a lot of bodies with repro lower panels and the paint all chipped off the upper corners of the lower rear panel because the clearance is too tight. This is because the top of the lower rear panel is straight across, not in a frown with the corners 1/8" lower.

The reason why I say to do it with the body tightly assembled is I had some problems. I have a bit too much gap because the body was not properly set up when I made the parts. Next car I will do better, right?

I will say I was a bit worried I would not be able to do a decent job making up the corners. They went easier then I thought they would go. I also remember they were not mirror images so make your pattern for each side.

I will look later to see if I have pictures of what I did.
 
I saw that the other day. The problem is that the Cabriolet has different beading than a Coupe. Neither the 28-29 nor the 30-31 match. I have thought about taking the 28-29 patch and adding the needed bead.
 
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