I'm now moving onto the door repairs on my 49 F1. The entire lower edge of each door is rotted out so the outer skin is separated from the inner panel.

I just received inner and outer lower door patch panels I ordered to repair the two doors. Given that these doors seem to curve in two directions, does anyone have an experiences/pointers they can share on the best way to splice these patch panels in while maintaining the correct lines of the door?

Ron W

 

Where are your skills at? What welder do you have? A couple of pictures of what you are starting with would be great.

 

I have an Eastwood 185 MIG welder that I load with 0.025 wire for sheetmetal work. I'm an OK welder and can do fairly decent stitch welds with only a few pores that need to be fixed after flattening the welds with a flap wheel. Ability to form and shape sheetmetal is pretty basic which is why I ordered the premade patch panels.

Here's an image of the one door showing how it is completely rusted through in the corner and along the bottom seam. To eliminate the need to re-rivet the hinges, I'm going to be cutting and welding the new inner patch panel around them as the metal the hinge is attached to looks to be in OK shape.




Ron

 

I have never done doors before but have some experience welding. go slow, just a dot at a time every few inches. then let things cool off, then go between the dots. Always let things cool. I like to grind down the welds once in a while as well. do everything you can to keep the heat down. I like to cut above the rust line into solid metal. don't be afraid to cut higher, rust has a great way of hiding. A good habit to have is once you do a few welds, take a hammer and dolly and pound the weld down. it will help stretch the metal back as it will shrink as you weld.

 

Hello 53, I can tell you what I did, might have been wrong, but it worked for me. I had my two doors sandblasted first, to see if they were worth repairing, then sprayed epoxy. I think your outer skin patch is probably about 11"long. I used all of it. The inner patch I cut down to just below the first bead up from the bottom of the door. looks like you will have to go up higher. The inner panel is spot welded to the steel rei nforcement in the corners at the factory. You will need to drill them out. I replaced the inner patch first. I ground the edge of the hemmed edge up 11" on the sides, and across the bottom to release inner and outer panels from each other. I left outer skin on for now so I could gage where the bottom of inner panel would be. I clamped the new inner patch to inner door by using long throated
Vise grip c clamps thru the acc ess door. Once it's tacked on, it establishes where the outer skin will go. Go low and slow when tacking the outer panel, it is thin. Soon they will be making replacement panels out of Reynolds wrap. Then I slowly hammered over the hemmed edge at like 30* then 60*, then the rest of the way over. Just do one at a time. So you can look at the other one if you need a reference. Hope that helps somewhat. Good luck with your project. Larry

 

I would media clean that door, you probably have rot up higher than you think. Be careful cleaning the outer skin. It’s easy to warp the panel, which requires a lot more work. Those doors are moisture traps. Once you remove all the rust and do your metal repair, I would POR the whole inside.

JB

 

Ron, I have a passenger door listed on eBay. The bottom is not better than yours but the rest is very nice. I live in Lock Haven, about 2 hours north of Lebanon.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/194033187414

 

53NAA,

I hope the cut away pictures below help you get a look at the corner brace. As the guys above touch on, it is really what provides strength to the door.

I am hoping to do exactly what 3twinridgesf and 52burjes describe. I have a found a shop that can media blast the doors (actually the whole truck) and hit it with epoxy primer. My hope is that by leaving the bottom of the doors open like this, they can really get in there and blast and then paint much better than trying to get in from above. The down side is that I will have to clean off some of the epoxy primer so I can get good welds. I am thinking that is a small price to pay. (Always open to suggestions.)

 

Well, I'm reactivating this thread. I finally finished one door on the rebuild so I thought I'd recap what I did. Whether it is the correct way to do this or not, I'm not sure.

Before I cut everything apart, I created a vertical reference line on the front and rear of the door perpendicular to the inner surface (where this is located is immaterial as long as it is away from where the patch will go). Measure from the each reference line to the bottom edge of the door and document this. I then removed the fold of the outer skin with an angle grinder, taking care not to damage the flange underneath it. I then measured from the flange to the reference line and wrote this down since it would be used to position the inner door patch panel.
I started with the inner patch panel first since I could use the outer skin to help position and orient the inner panel. I first cut 1" or so off the top of the new panel to better position the panel on the door and make sure I didn't interfere with the ribs in the door. This pretty much aligned the cut with the edge of the check strap opening. I measured the new inner patch panel height, subtracted an inch, measured up from the button of the door and drew a cut line across the length of the door. I then cut the old lower inner door off on the line. The new patch panel was then positioned in place making sure to position it using the dimensions from the reference lines. I clamped the new inner panel to the old outer skin and marked the final cut I needed to make to fit it to the door. The inner panel was then removed and the final cut made. After a little tweaking to fine tune the fit and get a roughly 1/16" gap for the stitch weld seam, I stitch welded it into place hitting each weld with a jet of air after the weld was done to control heating the panel.

The second step duplicated the process above on the outer skin. Again, measuring from the reference lines to make sure the outer skin was positioned identically to the old skin. Prior to welding, the lower edge of the outer skin was clamped to the new inner panel flange. After welding, the lower outer skin flanges were folded over and hammered tight. All the welds were then ground with a flap wheel. The inner panel welds finished beautifully. On the other hand, the outer skin weld area concaved in despite my best efforts to control the heat and so I have some questions for the forum.

So, since this is my first effort doing this kind of a patch, I'd appreciate some advice from those of you with more sheetmetal repair experience than me:
1) How does one pull out this concave weld area in the outer door skin to get it back to match the outer door skin contour? (I've tried hammer and dolly but access to do this is very tight.)
2) Is the 3/16" inch of concavity too much for body filler to smooth and blend into the door contour?
3) Since I still need to do the other door, how do I prevent this from happening in the first place?

Photos are shown below.

Thanks in advance for any and all advice on this!

Ron

 

Ron,

I have been hoping some more experienced bodywork experts would weigh in by now, but let me offer a few things. (I think you and I are at about the same level, so take what I offer with a grain of salt or two.)

1. How to pull out the weld area ? I get the frustration of trying to hammer and dolly in restricted space. It seems like it is not accomplishing anything. However, you might find that you can still eke out a little more with a little more time. Several times I have been sure I was not getting anywhere when careful measurements showed a little progress.

2. Is 3/16 " too much ? I don't think so. I presume you are concerned about the filler holding up over time. Getting it to look good should not be a problem. As I am sure you know, moisture from the backside is the enemy of filler. I always take a very bright LED light and shine through the weld to get all the pinholes. The fact that this is not a fender that is getting direct water hitting it from the back is good. (Of course, we both know these doors get plenty of moisture or we would not be where we both find ourselves. )

3. Prevention on the other door. Eastwood makes some magnetized copper pieces that I try to put on the backside whenever the surface allows. I use them to prevent burn-thru, but I think they help to distribute the heat a little. I also noted that you use a shot of cold air to cool the weld quickly. There seems to be two schools of thought on that. For years it was suggested as a good way to reduce heat. However, others have said that this "quench" effect can make the weld even harder to hammer and stretch back out. Who to believe ? I tend to go with whatever Ron Covell or our very own AX Racer offers. You have probably read some stuff from Ron in Classic Trucks and/or Street Rodder when they were still in print. Likewise, you may have read some great MIG welding tutorials from AX Racer on FTE. neither one of them was a fan of cooling the welds.

Hope this helps until more saavy readers provide their thoughts !

 

You have been given some good advise above, but I will add a bit as well.
for pulling the area out, as odd as if may sound, put the dolly on the inside of the door and hammer from the outside. But hold the dolly tight. It will stretch the metal and from there you should be able to push it out a bit. But go slow, death by a million strokes is the way to go.. 3/16" is not to much but you don't want much more then that if possible. I never cool my welds, preferring to let them cool naturally. Just the way I was told to do it. When you weld, do small tacks every 4" or so. Then go back and go half way between them. then go back and go half way again. Keep doing this, keeping the weld tacks away from each other by a couple of inches if possible. I will actually do some weld grinding as I go so I don't have so much heat build up from grinding the whole weld.

 

Thanks for the feedback! Good idea to do weld grinding as you go rather than at the end. I forgot to mention I did do skip welding when stitching the seam. I continued this until I got the spacing to the point where I could close the gap with 4 weld zaps. This has always worked well for me. On this patch, after grinding, I only had four pin holes to fix.

I'll continue to try to hammer and dolly it out. I was using the dolly on the inside which is a tough spot to really hold it tightly in place but I'll keep working it. I like Marten's comment about "death by a million strokes". If that's what it will take, I'll keep at it.

I'll also try not cooling my welds when I do the other door and see if that helps. Another tidbit I found on the web recommends not leaving a gap when welding curved surfaces together since the gap provides room for shrinkage and exacerbates the suck in. I'll try that as well and let everyone know how that works out.

Thanks and Happy New Year!

 

You definitely don't want to cool or quench your welds. That creates shrinkage. Heating and rapid cooling is the process one does for shrinking stretched metal. You're plenty shrunk.

I also noted where you said you welded the skin face before folding over the edge flange to the shell. I'm not sure what's right or wrong, but everyone I know has always folded the skin flange first, locking down the panel, and welded the seam last.

When welding the seam, do your skip welds (the small tack method that Marten mentioned is good), but don't try to do the whole thing at once. Do some welding and walk away awhile. Let it cool, then weld some more and walk away. Lather, rinse, repeat. This will keep the panel from getting too hot. It may take longer to weld it up, but may save you a bunch of time later. I like the copper magnet trick mentioned above. That will help hold the panels together and create a heat sink at the same time, and copper won't weld to the panel. Anything you can do to keep the heat down will be helpful to prevent shrinkage.

Marten has good advice on the hammer and dolly thing. I know it's hard, but outward pressure from the dolly inside while hammering outside will stretch the panel back out.

When you get to the finish work stage, be sure to take a wire wheel or small sand blaster to your weld string and remove all that black carbon. All of it. If you put filler over that it will come back to bite you later.

Overall, you're looking really good. Keep it up.