Story by Per Shroeder
There’s an oft-told bit of wisdom for those looking to buy a car: Avoid a rusty one at all costs. Sure, that’s easy for us to say from behind a keyboard, but when you’re out there roaming used car lots and surfing the Internet, you'll find that rusty cars are the norm in most parts of …
Avoid overlapping sheet metal, or putting a patch over existing metal. That's going to fail, and it will require a sh-t ton of bondo to ever look like it wasn't repaired. Ideally you want to do the metal work so that if someone strips the paint off later, they can't tell that there's any repair there at all. There should not be any sign of a restoration attempt. It takes a lot of skill and some time to make a proper patch, one that fits so well that once its welded in it disappears. In order to do this, take a piece of deep drawing steel (AKDS) and form it exactly to the shape of the original panel using a shot bag and nylon hammer, shrinker / stretcher, bead roller, and English wheel if necessary. I cut that patch to a nice shape with ROUND corners, no square corners or angles, everything rounded and smooth. If your patch is square or has corners, the panel will pull into those corners and you'll never get it straight. Laying that patch over the area to be patched, I trace its outline with a fine sharpie or something similar. Then I cut on that line with a sawzall as accurately as possible. The patch should fit right into place with a consistent gap that is the kerf of the saw blade. Then I tack it in, hammering each tack to prevent it from pulling the panel out of shape. No matter how much you keep the heat down, the weld itself will shrink so you have to hammer each weld with a dolly on the back to keep it from pulling. I keep doing that, tack and hammer, and if I need to I use a piece of copper bar shaped to the inside of the panel to keep the welds from bubbling through the back, so I have less grinding to do where it's hard to reach. One thing that will warp a panel for sure is welding like it's plate. Don't lay a long heavy bead on it. If you can TIG thin sheet properly you can do much less grinding.
What ever happened to Per, as in, any idea what he went on to do next? I miss his articles.
In reply to einy (Forum Supporter) :
Per moved to Ohio to be with family, and now works for Stoddard Porsche parts. We've kept in touch over the years.
einy (Forum Supporter) said:What ever happened to Per, as in, any idea what he went on to do next? I miss his articles.
You'll probably would run into him this weekend(Aug. 28-29) when Stoddard is having their swap meet and car show at their Highland Heights(Cleveland) location. Check stoddard.com/news for details.
This just popped up in my feed for some reason - anyone know about that Virtual Body Shop option? I assume they didn't make it or are at least absolutely terrible at GoogleFu but it could be a great resource if its the latter.
Typed in virtualbodywork.com go daddy offered to sell that site. I'd prefer to contact the company listed. Thanks!
In reply to NavyNGLO :
I used to have an old English wheel. I learned how to shape metal, get it to move where I wanted to.
I started out with a big ball peen hammer and a sand bag. Just pounded on that piece until it was roughly the shape I needed and then put it through the wheel to smooth it out.
The trick is the wheel only stretches. If I over stretched someplace I'd have to pull out my shrinking hammer and go to work. Too much ( and boy is it ever easy to shrink too much because you know the wheel will stretch it back out) and at some point you'd hear a crack.
Now cut that piece out and weld a patch panel in? That maybe the only way. But the temptation is to throw it in the trash and start over. I've learned to not smash it up because a couple of tries and maybe the first one is the closest.
If you're working with Aluminum one of the best tools I ever had was a bunch of spoons. Silver spoons various sizes shapes etc. I could roll dents and hand prints out in a few minutes. One hand working the spoon the other hand feeling the metal reacting. Telling you to switch shapes or angles. More or less pressure. You can actually feel if the paint wants to crack or flake. Just close your eyes and let the top hand tell the spoon hand what to do next.
Plated or stainless won't work. You need both the mass and pliability of solid silver.
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