I'm commited now

R

rbl2

Well-Known Member
Today my son and I started the body work on my 26. We'd talked about it for a long time and finally decided the talking was over.

We started out by removing the top. Then we removed the windshield and frame. Not a problem. Then we went to remove the left rear fender. It only has 4 bolts so that wasn't hard either. Except someone had welded the back end of it to the body. Same thing with the right rear fender.

Geez, I hope we haven't bitten off more than we can chew.
 
its a learning experiance, but theres ALMOST NOTHING persistance and a few tools like a welder and some basic research into body work and paint won,t fix
 
That and a couple of fenders for a 26 Chevy roadster. You wouldn't happen to have a few laying around, would you?
 
Sometimes help comes from the strangest places. Here I've been struggling with deciding whether I should by a welder and learn how to do some light welding vs hiring someone to do it for me.

Neither really had a good side and each had a bunch of down sides. Starting out with how much would it cost to buy a welder vs hiring one? Then, how long would it take me to learn to reliably weld vs hiring a pro?

Throw into all of that what the he77 am I, an antique car restorer, doing in a hot rod forum? Damifiknow. Other than I no longer go to that "other place". :roll:

I made a few phone calls and could find no one local (within 35 mile radius) to do any welding. I was seriously leaning towards buying a welder that Grumpy showed me in another thread. I went in town to take care of some chores and ran into a friend and asked if he knew any welders.

As a matter of fact he did. The local veternarian builds race cars. :eek:

So off I went in the hopes I could get him to do my welding.

Nope. My welder is too large to transport to your house. Bring your car here.

I can't. It's disabled.

Buy a welder and do it yourself, he said.

But I don't know how.

I'll teach you.

Great. I still need a welder.

Buy a cheap one, he said. He then starts to describe the one Grumpy gave me a link to. I showed him a print out of it. He said that would do nicely.

Then, he not only said he would teach me to use it but that he would also come out to my house and using my welder he would make sure what I was doing was done correctly. :D

I went to Home Depot and they didn't have one in stock. :(

So I ordered it on line. :D

Moral of the story, if you need work done to your antique car go to a vet who races cars and get him to do it for you. :mrgreen:

Meanwhile, while all that was going on, my air compressor broke a belt. It's only belt. This air compressor is capable of painting the car but barely. It's only a few months old. I bought it mostly for light use around the shop. So I have pretty much decided to buy the compressor that will leave no doubt at all that it can do the job.

Geez, this can get expensive. But I knew that getting into it all.
 
you are taking a good route with this.

always good to learn new skills, and buy new tools.

i always feel happy when i spend $ on tools. i know how much cool stuff i will be able to build with them.
 
I made my living working with my hands. I've worked wood in one form or another since the late 60's. That and I usually did all the work on my own cars until all this electronic computerized crap came out. I learned long ago to buy the best tool you could possibly afford. I hate buying a cheap tool and usually won't. I'll usually wait until I can afford a better tool. Welders on the other hand get expensive very quickly. Granted, I have woodworking tools that cost thousands of dollars but I can find a use for them almost on a daily basis. I can justify buying a good woodworking tool. I'll buy this welder, albeit an inexpensive one, and never have another use for it.
 
owning a decent welder is a bit like being addicted to crack cocain, you get sucked in thinking, no big deal, Ill try it, but once you do you find it takes up a good deal of your time, once you find out how good it feels to fabricate custom stuff, and once you get envolved your hooked.
I got a basic SEARS arc welder 30 years ago, and it never impressed me, it was a tool, but it was not that impressive,simply because I lacked the skills to use it and it was very limited in what it could do. I certainly could not easily weld up an oil pan, or make a nice looking bracket, with that arc welder, it wasn,t till a buddy got a MILLER TIG and a MIG in HIS shop , and he already had a big drill press with a vice on its table,and a band saw and a small metal lathe, purchased at a machine shop that the owner had passed on, and his widdow was dumping all the tools at bargin prices about 25 years ago that I began to see the potential.
He would just fabricate the most amazing accessory brackets, motor mounts, suspension components, oil pans, ETC, stuff that would cost THOUSANDS of dollars IF it was even available, for pocket change in most cases
ID look at a catalog, that showed a custom baffled oil pan for about a weeks pay, he would build a better one in his shop, fot $30-$35, it became obvious that having a decent welder and aquiring some skills was the route to take in this hobby
but a really cheap welder will tend to fustrate your efforts while having decent equipment is a huge help.
now the first step is learning the differance, so take a few classes or hang out with some old geezer that can teach you, or at least spend some time talking to the local lincoln, HTP, and miller dealers, local welding shops and get some background.
one of the first lessons was mocking up stuff with cardboard or plexiglass patterns, and not to start fabricating stuff untill you built a model or pattern and worked out the clearance issues.
Its a whole lot easier to move tape on cardboard, or use glue on plexi-glass to check and verify, clearance and alignment issues than to do those changes in metal.
and you darn sure will learn the wisdom in "MEASSURE TWICE BEFORE CUTTING ONCE"
 
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