47-55.1 body working question for cowl lead seams

[rnrdthefox]

I'm about to start the bodywork on the cowl sides where it was previously leaded. I'm thinking about using kitty hair first to fill in the bulk of the transition then use a thinner coat of body filler. This makes sense to me since it's a joint and kitty hair seems to be made for this. Is this a good approach? Thanks.

[PDW HOTRODS]

That is fine. Most shops don't use lead anymore. Another option to use is
All-metal or Metal-2-metal. They are aluminum reinforced. Make sure the area is roughed up with a grinding disc or something so it will hold well. Any of these work, just try to keep regular filler thin. Especially at flex points. These trucks were built for work and the cab and frame were made to let it twist and flex a little.

[8man]

I've been watching Fitzee's Fabrications and Carter Auto Restyling on YouTube, and they weld in a panel to fill in the gap.

I think I'll do that on the 54, unless someone can tell me there is a major downside to this.

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but it seems like a good spot to discuss this.

[Tempest67]

I find that Fitzee makes it look easy,

Here is his lead seam video, hope it helps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC6PLc049IA

[mr48chev]

Lead cured a lot of ills in body work back in the 50's. The cab got welded together pretty well by hand and then the next guy down the line laid on the lead to cover the seam and the guy past him took the body file to the lead.

As far as body filler, it's what ever you feel works best for you. Plastic filler needs for all the seams behind it to be welded solid though as moisture will get behind it if you have holes behind it. The cab corner on my 48 is a prime example of doing a quick and nasty bondo job instead of hours of metal work coming back to bite off a big chunk of tail featers later.

I'd say that the caliber of metal work on repairs and custom work has gone up tons in the past 30 years. Things you did as a norm 40 years ago just flat don't fly now. Cutting and shaping a filler panel to go over that seam and welding and working it in so you use very little filler is one thing that we do now that we didn't do years ago as a norm. I'm thinking that the vidoos from Fitzee and other skilled metal workers raise the bar for a lot of us in that department though.

[leegreen]

The availability of the tools has changed and the Internet has let us share the skills.
I bet there are way more English Wheels in North America now than in 1950 and that the low point in that number was 30-40 years ago. My father wanted one for hobby aircraft work circa 1995, he had to build his own including having to get the wheels custom machined after travelling 10 hours each way to see one in person. He wanted a planishing hammer and located one via airplane contacts..... it is 1940s vintage. Now you can buy adequate for hobby use versions of both cheap at your local china tool place.

In the 1980s I dearly wanted this high tech thing called a wire feed welder, but they were beyond my means, now you can get one cheaper than a set of used tires.

I've learned more about working sheet metal from youtube in the last 3 years than I picked up in the last 40

[dsraven]

a lot of the aircraft industry tool supply places have decent prices on sheet metal tools. aircraft spruice, the yardstore,, panamerican. google these places for more info

[rnrdthefox]

Thanks for all the comments. I'm going to proceed with the kitty hair using a 36 grit roll lock to remove the primer in that area and rough things up. I will finish with the rage ultra I've been using. I was hoping to be able to leave the epoxy primer, but the datasheet didn't call that out as an approved substrate. I called Evercoat's hotline and talked to them to verify. They said I had to remove the epoxy primer where I put the kitty hair.

[mr48chev]

One thing is that the quality of plastic body fillers has increased times over since i bought a quart of some sort of filler at the local Coast to Coast store in the 60's to do a repair wrong on my 51 Merc.

That and our desire to a better job because we see better jobs being done is a good part of it. Watching those guys on *****in Rides make a filler panel for a seam to weld in rather than using a gob of filler and then sanding it off or spending hours metal working a panel to get it perfect rather than spreading on a layer of filler and hitting it with the air board.

I gave and sent a 54 front fender to a kid in the Phoenix area who banged up his left front fender in the first ride arond the block in the truck. It had come as part of a pile I bought at an auction and when I was getting it ready to send I saw that some minor dents had been filled with bondo rather than hammered out. 5 minutes with a flap wheel got all the filler out and exposed the dents, 30 minutes with a hammer and dolly had all the dents worked out to where I could hit it with the flap wheel and then spray bomb a few coats of primer on it. Just my quest to know that I had sent something that was just a little better than it started out as.

When I did the 48 in 1973 to take it to the Street Rod Nationals in Tulsa I owned one body hammer and two dollys. I had bought the hammer at Sears in Waco for about 8 dollars and still have it and use it all the time now. Now I have a drawer full of Eastwood hammers and dollys plus a lot of others I have picked up over the past 50 years.

In the past ten years I picked up a shop full of equipment to work on my projects with. A HF English wheel that I bought with serious discounts as it had been their floor model for a couple of years and they had dropped the price several times before I decided to grab it then the manager gave me another discount when I bought it. I had to go back to buy the extra anvils after I figured out what the stock number was and that at the time they had three sets in the back room of the store. So far I have just played with i on some aluminum though.

I'd say that the shows on TV, the you tube instruction videos and the general push to do it better rather than get it done to meet a timeline has contributed to the quality of work we do and the desire to do higher quality work. Some of the PNW guys remember the Unfinished Nationals events that happened at Graham Wa for several years that were put on by Kustoms Northwest. It was an event that you drove, drug or hauled your unfinished project out to for show and tell. Possibly where the bare metal thing got started as quite often a builder took his project to the show in bare metal to show the qualty of his metal work before taking it back in the shop and prepping it for paint. One of the guys showed up with a famous old PNW custom car known as My Blue Heaven, It's a 59 Galaxy that was sectioned when it was nearly new and he was showing me photos of what he found of the original body work or what passed for body work where they had built panels in it by putting screen wire in the space and then covering the screen wire with body filler. All of that is gone now as he had his metal work on display. That car is on the east coast somewhere now though.