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Discussion starter · #61 · (Edited)
Progress Update

So this week I made more time to work on the 39. The first thing I did was get the rear bumper and brackets off so I could get a better look at the lower quarter panel in that area. It took my long breaker bar to get the bolts loose but surprisingly the bolts all came loose without twisting off.


The opening for the bumper bracket was pretty messed up and you can see how the fender doesn't line up very well to the quarter panel at the bottom.


After some straitening it out and welding in a new piece at the top it looks much better. Found some rust at the bottom outer corner where the fender and quarter panel meet so a patch is in order. At this point the fender is fitting better to the quarter panel as well. After checking this fender to the passenger side fender it looked like the fender had lost some of it's curvature during the repair process. I got it better by doing some shrinking with the torch on the fender flange and made a few small relief cuts on the flange to put a bit more curve in it at the back. Also at the front of the fender I used a hammer and dolly to stretch the patches I did earlier to add some curve there so the fender fits the body much better from front to back now. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of any of that work on the fender.


Fitting up a patch for the rust and damage farther up on the quarter panel. By patching this I should be able to adjust the fit to the fender at the same time.


Marked out the area to be cut out and replaced.


The old damaged metal cut out.


After a bit of fine tuneing the patch to the opening it should be ready to tack in. The extra tab on the patch was to fold over and fix a few rust pin holes on the inner fender. It ended up being a pain to get it to fold over and still get the patch to fit right so I ended up just cutting it off and just welded up the holes with a copper back up piece. After I media blast every thing to get epoxy primer on everything I may come back and patch that area better.


Tacked in place with the fender bolted back on to adjust the fit to the fender before tacking it in to the inner fender.


Fender back off and tacked in to the inner fender. Really a pain in the butt taking the fender on and off but almost done!!


All welded up and the welds ground out. Looks pretty good except for the lower part. It's almost impossible to get a hammer or anything else in behind there to hammer out the weld joint.


With the fender bolted back on "again" everything lines up pretty well. Time to call it done and move on.


This is where I left off today working on stripping the paint off the passenger side quarter panel and fender. Looks like a bit more rust to repair on the quarter panel and fender on the lower edges but not near as much bondo on this fender so that's good news.
 
Nice repairs, and great detail work. It does get old fitting and removing the same parts over and over again, but it also makes the difference between a decent repair and a nice repair. Your '39 is really looking great!
 
Discussion starter · #68 ·
I am really enjoying following this post. The work you are doing looks great.

It is also nice to see someone else with a variety of cars.

Here are our cars.
Thanks, Nice collection of cars. Is that a 38 or 39 on the right? The front end looks pretty similar to ours which is a 39 Standard.
 
Discussion starter · #70 ·
Nice repairs, and great detail work. It does get old fitting and removing the same parts over and over again, but it also makes the difference between a decent repair and a nice repair. Your '39 is really looking great!
Thanks Val, I'd love to be at the point you are on your 39 Chevy right now (being able to drive it is where all the hard work really pays off) but I know that is quite a ways off yet.
 
Discussion starter · #71 ·
Progress Update
So not a lot to show lately other than continuing to strip the old paint. Well and trying to figure out the new site!!
Land vehicle Vehicle Car Classic car Motor vehicle

So here is what the rest of the passenger side quarter panel looked like after getting all the paint off. Not too bad, just a few small dents in this one.


So I moved on to the passenger side front fender and found another mess of thick bondo and bad body work. Some one welded some steel rod to the wheel opening to support the thick layer of bondo.

Auto part Automotive exterior Bumper Metal

View from the bottom side along with the cracks on the edge of the wheel opening that were just filled with bondo.

Auto part Soil Arch

After grind away some of the rod that had been welded in.

Floor Concrete

Most of the rest ground away.

Vehicle Automotive tire Auto part Tire Fender

Quite a mess. This will be a challenge to repair. About my only option at this point though since there will not be any big swap meets this year. At least it's a bolt on part that can be easily replaced in the future.

Auto part Fender Metal Fuel tank Steel

Front view of the stripped fender. The front corner is pretty messed up too as it looks like someone roughly hammered out some damage and then tried to grind off the high spots creating some small holes in the process.

Fender Automotive exterior Bumper Auto part

Another view of the carnage.
Brian.
 
Discussion starter · #72 ·
So next I started stripping the hood.

Table Furniture Floor Countertop

Bottom side of the hood. looks to be in good shape other than the surface rust.

Automotive exterior Vehicle

In the middle of the process of scraping off the old paint and sanding it down to bare metal.

Furniture Table Chair Picnic table Bench

All sanded down and it looks pretty good compared to the rest of the car. No body filler or dents in it anywhere and just surface rust from what I can see. If there are any rust holes they will be very minor ones.

Fender Auto part Automotive exterior Bumper Vehicle

Here is the drivers side front fender stripped and sanded down. A few small dents and some rust holes to repair where it bolts to the running board but much better shape than the passenger side fender.

Fuel tank Auto part Fender Metal

View from the front side.

Land vehicle Vehicle Car Motor vehicle Classic car


Land vehicle Vehicle Car Motor vehicle Classic car

So today I loosely bolted on the front fenders grille and hood sides in place to see how everything fit. Overall not too bad except for the hood sides don't fit very well to the fenders but nothing is tightened up very well at this point and the hood is just set in place, not bolted on to the hinges. Just nice to get an idea what it will look like for now and a good place to store them for now too.
Next project will be to get the doors off and strip those down.
Brian
 

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That '39 grille is sure a beauty, and so unique!
Nice to see one great fender, as it could easily have been two bad ones!
Looks like the passenger fender had a tough life, and will take a bit of your skill to bring it back. I had the vertical crack at one front fender in the middle of the arc of the opening. It had been poorly welded, and I ended up just cutting out a 1" wide section, and fabricating a filler. Both of my lower fenders have a lip and rolled edge at the bottom rear. And both had metal backed behind to repair small rust holes. I had to remove the metal, and bend up a repair piece on both to fix the ugly repairs, and eliminate the rust holes.
 
Discussion starter · #74 ·
That '39 grille is sure a beauty, and so unique!
Nice to see one great fender, as it could easily have been two bad ones!
Looks like the passenger fender had a tough life, and will take a bit of your skill to bring it back. I had the vertical crack at one front fender in the middle of the arc of the opening. It had been poorly welded, and I ended up just cutting out a 1" wide section, and fabricating a filler. Both of my lower fenders have a lip and rolled edge at the bottom rear. And both had metal backed behind to repair small rust holes. I had to remove the metal, and bend up a repair piece on both to fix the ugly repairs, and eliminate the rust holes.
Thanks,
I have always liked the streamlined look of the front end on this car too. I agree that I may have to make a patch panel or 2 to fix the passenger side fender but will give it a shot at fixing what i have first.
Brian
 
Discussion starter · #75 ·
Not too much progress to report. I've had a couple of other projects recently so not a lot done but still moving forward.
Started on stripping the doors starting with the passenger side. They are pretty easy to get on and off right now because a while back I had driven out the hinge pins. So pretty easy to pop them out now to remove the doors.

Vehicle Car Vehicle door Automotive exterior Bumper

Passenger side door with all the paint removed from the outer skin. Mostly in pretty good shape other than some small rust holes in the bottom that will need to be repaired. The inside mouldings and window were a challenge to remove. Ford does some things quite differently than GM so it took a while to figure out how some of it came apart.

Land vehicle Vehicle Car Classic car Classic

Back on the car it still fits pretty good. Once I get the inside of the door media blasted I will see how much rust repair this one will need.

Bumper Automotive exterior Auto part Vehicle Car

So on to the drivers side door. You can see here where some had cut out and probably peeled back the inner structure to do a dent repair. Not a good sign.

Vehicle Skiff Metal Table

Bottom of the door looks pretty solid though. I don't think there will be much rust repair to do on this one.

Car Bumper Vehicle Gas Automotive exterior

With the paint sanded off I found a lot of surfaced rust under the paint and a bunch of lead filler in the lower rear corner covering up some nice damage.

Floor Rust

View of the damage from the inside. This will take some work to smooth out. One good thing though after removing the factory tar based sound deadener the metal is in great shape on the inside of the door.

Metal

So today with while starting to work out the damage I decided to remove the diagonal brace from the door as it would be impossible to do it right with the brace still in place as the brace was in the way of getting at the lower rear corner of the door where some of the worst damage was.

Metal

With the brace out I will have much better access to the lower corner. I already started to put some heat on the damaged area as it will need some shrinking once the dents are hammered out anyway.
More to come.
 

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Discussion starter · #76 ·
So in between working on the passenger door and the drivers door I had done some cleaning and organizing of all the parts I have removed from the car so far. One thing that needed some repair before I put it away for now was the window crank mechanism for the passenger side rear window. These things are pretty cool how they work as the windows (both front and rear) slide backwards a couple of inches before the window goes down.

Metal

Passenger side mechanism is on the left. The arm with the big hook on it got bent and twisted at some point due to the widow glass getting stuck in the channels. I may have made it worse getting it out as it was stuck in there pretty tight.

Machine tool Toolroom Machine Tool Tool and cutter grinder

From this view you can see how bent and twisted it is.

Metalworking hand tool Tool Tool accessory Metal

With a little help from the welding torch the arm is back where it belongs again.

Architecture Metal Art

So the next problem is to repair the teeth on the gear that got stripped out and damaged.

Metalworking hand tool Auto part Tool accessory Machine Metal

With a copper back up clamped in place I welded up the damaged area.

Saw Tool Hand saw Blade

Then ground it down to the same thickness as the rest of the gear and to the outer diameter.

Auto part Tool

I had made a pattern of the opposite side of the gear with some card board and some spray paint.

Circular saw Blade Saw Tool Tool accessory

Next I drew some lines on the pattern so I could layout where to file out the new teeth.

Circular saw Architecture Blade Saw Circle

New teeth filed out. I mostly used a triangle shaped file to accomplish this. Not perfect but it works almost as good as new now.

Tool Blade Metal Hand saw

Another view of the finished repair. Now I can store this thing away and it will be ready to go when I need it later.
Next I will be back on the drivers door repairs.
 
Wow! Very nice work on the gear repair! Looks like the doors will be less work than the previous repairs you've had to make. I'm surprised to see how open the inner doors are on a Ford vs. what I see on similar year GM cars. Easy to access operators, and the back side of the skin too!
 
Discussion starter · #78 ·
Wow! Very nice work on the gear repair! Looks like the doors will be less work than the previous repairs you've had to make. I'm surprised to see how open the inner doors are on a Ford vs. what I see on similar year GM cars. Easy to access operators, and the back side of the skin too!
Thanks,
More open but still plenty in the way yet. Ford sure did some things different than GM, some things better, some not so much. lol
 
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