Page Thirteen – The Grind

First there’s welding, then there’s grinding, and usually more welding, followed by more grinding...

An Ode to Rotten Rockers

In my last posted (April 1), I lamented the search for solid metal; the lament continues.

Burn-Through

I’m using 16-gauge sheet metal straight from Lowes, but Rootes used something slightly thinner. My little metal gauge gauge proclaims the Rootes stuff to be 16-gauge, but my eyes and fingers tell me it’s thinner. Perhaps Alphie’s original tissue has degraded slightly over time, maybe the Brits measure metal gauge differently (I have learned that measuring metal gauge is particularly occult, requiring voodoo), but the MIG welder burns through the Rootes metal with aplomb, like COVID quarantiners burn through toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

Welding my Lowes sheet metal to Rootes metal often means making ugly metal warts big enough to fill the burn-through, which in turn means copious grinding! (There is the possibility, although remote as a Siberian village, that I'm not that good with the MIG... Surely not!)

The point, whenever I think I have found solid metal to which I can suture new tissue, I find more flimsy, diseased metal.

Fitting Sheet Metal Pieces

I’m getting the hang of making metal jigsaw puzzle pieces. I’ve shown how I make a file folder template, which I transfer to sheet metal, but that’s not the end of it. The "Fitting" can be tedious.

The Fitting involves hundreds of trips from Alphie to the bandsaw, to Alphie, to the vice for grinder work, back to Alphie for gazing and scratching, back to the vice for hand filing, back to Alphie… You get the picture.

Eventually, the piece fits and is welded to Alphie. Then there’s the Grinding of the Welds, followed by the Welding of the Grinds, followed by the Grinding of the Re-welds… It’s the “fun” I signed up for – truth be told, I love it, but no one ever said I was all that "right."

Latest Harbor Freight tool grab

All of this is very time consuming, and as per my addiction, I turn to my patron saint in harried times. The good folk at Harbor Freight call me if I don’t show every other week or so.

Check out my new belt sander! It cuts the time to “adjust” a piece to fit the puzzle significantly. (Part of the car hobby, like most of men’s hobbies, is buying more stuff to support the addiction. What fun would car resurrection be if we couldn’t buy more tools? And parts? And other cars? And die casts, but I digress...)

ROCKER PANEL(S)!

Color-coded no less! Remember Alphie
Is upside down on the rotisserie

I say rocker panels – plural – because each rocker panel is a three-piece assembly. I made you a drawing:

At the time of this post, I have the “panel,” as I call it, in place. The “panel” is a flat piece of sheet metal that creates the panel from the lower door sill (rocker) to the junction of the floorboard of Alphie’s interior.

How the "Panel" and the Stepped Inner-Rocker go together
with some cool 3D text!

The stepped panel, the piece scavenged from Bob’s Butt (in the pic) creates the inner rocker panel. The inner rocker meets the “panel’ just below the pinch weld at the very bottom of the rocker assembly. The chunk of inner rocker from Bob’s Butt gives me the dimensions and placement to fabricate the rest of the inner rocker.

Chunk of Bob's Butt that gives reference
for inner-rocker placement and fender lip support

The outer rocker panel, the one visible on the exterior, covers both the “panel” and the inner rocker and is pinch welded to the edge of the inner rocker – see the pics. I haven’t purchased the outer rockers yet, because I want to fit the snoz from the Organ Donor first.

After I weld in the chunk of Bob’s Butt, I will bend, fit and weld in the remainder of the inner rocker.

Before POR 15

POR 15

I’m not big on pushing products, but the shiny black paint you see is POR 15 – that’s Paint Over Rust 15. Anyone who has ever worked on or talked to anyone who has ever owned or worked on a Sunbeam Alpine or Tiger will tell you that the rockers were rusty as they rolled off the assembly line, it’s factory rust!

After POR 15

Alphie shall rust no more! I have treated the factory rust with POR 15’s Metal Prep, essentially a rust converter that gives the POR 15 paint something to grab. POR 15 paint chemically combines with the rust and seals it against moisture.

Alphie’s new rockers will be slathered in a thick comfy coat, inside and out. A hundred years from now, Alphie may have rusted to dust in a field somewhere, but her rockers will still be there like T-Rex fossils waiting on future archaeologists!

I’ll add more pictures to this post as I complete the inner rocker.

More Pictures!

Here's a pic of the next sections of the inner rocker. Why make sections, you ask? Because my little metal brake can handle one foot sections, but a two foot section is beyond its and my capacity. I mean, I can FIT the two foot section in the brake, but bending it requires a Marvel Avenger - yeah, I tried anyway!

First I fit each piece to the contours of the inner rocker upper section (remember, Alphie's upside down in the pic). Next, I'll try TIG welding two sections on the bench and fit them. If that works well, I'll TIG the entire piece on the bench then fit it to Alphie.