46 chevy pickup parts

[patman]

Doug Im glad you asked that question its hard to pick and choose just a few pictures to show how these were fixed. I always have problems with J bends on a curve trying to make the J bend nice and keep them flat is always a problem so this die set just makes the round part of the J and leaves the vertical sticking out to give you some leverage to correct any bow in the panel. After corrections have been done the flat is worked with a hammer and T dolly.

Jeff That corner absolutely sucks to do!! LOTS of heat and pulling very tight tall tucks with needle nose pliers and LOTS more heat to crush the tucks it still sucks to do hot!

Pat

[patman]

Thanks guys!! Brent the dies are just made with a band saw,cutoff wheel, drill and grinder the trick is to get the radii just right. You know those goofy little plastic hole drill gauges that will fit in your shirt pocket? just cut one in half with the shear and now you have a tiny radius template so you can drill out most of the die and just cut and grind to smooth the transitions between the holes.
Kerry, I don't know about all that the key is just finding the simplest solution to a problem or stare at it until it gives up

Ok on to the running board
Attachment 19283
just a little bent up and rusty and crushed beads so its time to just make new it would take twice as long to correct the damage because its made of 16 gauge.
Attachment 19284

onto making a pattern just a simple paper pattern will show where the edges go but the tricky part to figuring out the blank's dimensions is that you need to take the circumference of each bead into account this will be important just a little bit later

Attachment 19285
Now this is going to be the first useful part that I have made on my pullmax but it did not come with a fence of any kind so i robbed some pieces from my fixture table to make a 8 foot traveling fence the part will be clamped to it and the whole thing will slide side to side.

now onto running the beads it takes 3 passes to run the beads full depth

now is point and time that accounting for the circumference of every bead was important this panel was not pre stretched so by accounting for the circumference it allows the sheet to draw to the bead and when all the beads are put in the panel will be the correct dimension. Imagine making a 4 foot wide piece of corrugated sheeting (like the outside of a steel building) it has to be wider than 4 feet as a blank to be 4 feet as a finished part.

the beads ran so close to the front and rear edges I just shrank the ends of the beads to correct some puckers on the ends


My brake is not long enough to put the 90 on the bottom of this part so just clamp a piece of bar stock to the part and lift it high enough to get after it with the air hammer with a aluminum face.

now its time to tack it together the weld seam is in a valley in-between two beads on a flat it is very important that these parts fit almost perfect

this is why this part is welded on the underside the valley of the bead is a hump on the bottom so now the trick part is all you have to grind on the top is the penetration of the weld.

finished and ready for epoxy you can see why it needed replaced with the finished running board next to the damaged part
This running board start to finish was about ten hours.
Ill fix the pictures at the top once I figure out what I did

Pat

[doug_walter2002]

Thanks Pat, That makes sense now.

[Götz]

Pat,

you made a really nice tutorial, thanks for sharing.
Did you use a contoured tool to close the beads?

Also great work on the fenders!

Götz.

[thingsthatfly2]

thank you for sharing! beautiful work.