Thread: 55.2-59 go easy please
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Old 05-10-2023, 06:24 PM   #5
leegreen
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Join Date: Mar 2022
Location: Surrey BC
Posts: 726
Re: go easy please

give yourself a break, everyone starts somewhere and everyone has messed up a panel worse than that getting started. That door is not an easy repair.

Did we see this door before with a prior repair?

Unless you have already hammered on it a lot that is probably shrunk along the bead of the weld. There is not enough metal there so it is pulling the door flat.
The solution is to get a dolly behind the weld and hammer the bead, hammer on dolly so you get a good anvil like 'ting' and slowly tap your way along the weld from edge towards center. concentrate on the weld bead and and an inch or so either side - the area that was heat discolored after the welding.

Push out with the dolly firmly. As you slowly stretch the metal back it will relax the panel and it will curve back out. It will take a bunch of tapping away, but you should see it start to move after a couple minutes. Pounding harder wont help.

If you can't get your arm and a dolly back there make up something sturdy that will reach in there, like a truck leaf spring mounted in the vice and slide it through the window slot, balance the door on it and hammer at the point of contact



It is also possible that the metal is stretched, but that will only happen if you already hammered it too much or you tried to weld in too large a patch. Welds shrink as they cool, because metal gets softer as you heat it and it expands as you heat it....the soft metal is crushed together with the expansion then it gets hard again faster than it shrinks as it cools. if that makes any sense. We can talk about how to shrink if you find stretching does not work.
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