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1940 Packard 120 Convertible Restoration


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I started on the filler neck cover while I'm waiting on new bead roller dies to dimple the trunk floor.  They should be here tomorrow.

To start, I made "tucks" in the edge using a set of modified Vice-Grips that MP&C posted about in the Garage/Tool section on 67-72chevytrucks.com awhile back.  Hammering these out will cause the edge to shrink.  The middle was stretched with a mallet and sand bag. 

 

 

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First quick pass through the planishing hammer to see the rough shape.  Needs more stretching to raise the top still. 

 

 

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Made a pattern to check the shape from the original piece. 

 

 

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Thanks for showing the details of each step.  Blacking out the area and then scribing a line is a great technique.  Laying out the paper and drawing on that and using tape and magnets to hold it down... all very helpful.  

I really hope to one day give this a try.

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Appreciate the comments!!  


I started the right section of the trunk floor by laying out the bead pattern and rolling them.  Not a fun piece to make; all of the beads in a tight area and at different angles made for some interesting distortion.  Pre-stretching helped a ton but I still had some straightening to do after each bead. 

 

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Before rolling the beads I "tuned up" the edges of the dies.  The sharp outer edges would sometimes leave a slight bend beside the bead.  I made a mandrel out of 3/4" OD tubing with a hex nut JB welded inside and a tack weld to set the depth of the die on the mandrel.  This let me chuck the male die in the lathe and slightly rounded off the outer edges.

 

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With the beads done I laid out where the bends for the "ramp" would be. 

 

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I made a fork to form tucks that will allow me to shrink deep into the panel. 

 

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And started forming tucks and hammering them back flat.  I made a few passes then started working out towards the edge making shorter tucks to curl the top edge inward more.  

 

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Flattening the tucks.  You can see how much shrinking is happening, the lower part is flat while the upper part is still holding the shape of the tuck. 

 

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Bowl shape starting to form after one pass of full depth tucks.

 

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This would have worked, but I didn't shrink enough at the inner part of the bowl shape, and at the point I figured that out it was too late to get the tuck fork back in that deep.  So I cut it out and will make a separate bowl shape to weld in.  Looking back, it would have been easier to do this from the start, but it was a good learning experience, and now I have a tuck fork for future use.  I didn't get any pictures of the bowl shape before I cut it out.  It looked good but the shape didn't quite match. 

 

The ramp was formed by stretching at the base of the transition, then bending on the lines over a piece of tubing.  

 

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Since the floor has a ton of straight beads I made a depth stop/guide for the bead roller.  I also clamped a piece of flat bar to the guide to keep the edge flat.  The dies were wanting to flare the edge upward since they were very close to the edge, the flat bar prevented the edge from raising up.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Started making a new corner for the right hand trunk panel. 

 

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Trimmed the panel to size and turned the edges 90* to create a flange. 

 

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This was and interesting spot to make... 

 

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To start the layout of the center section I stretched a piece of tape across the floor.  I marked off a section 26" wide on the floor pan, and made matching marks on the tape.  With the tape pulled off, I measured the marks on the tape- 26 and 7/8".  There are 7 beads, so each bead is drawing in enough metal from the sides to make the panel "shorter" by 1/8" each.  If I were to lay out the bead pattern on the new metal without taking this into account the panel would end up too short, and the beads would be too close together.  

 

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Bead pattern laid out with an extra 1/8" between the beads compared to the paper pattern I made earlier. 

 

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First bead in the center trunk pan.  To end the bead cleanly, I used a air chisel tip with the end slightly rounded over to sharpen up the shape. 

 

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On the top side, I ran over the end of the bead with a surface conditioning disc on the 3" grinder, then finished with a scuff pad.  There's really no need to do this step other than it looks good while its in bare metal, so I won't do it on the rest of them.  Just showing what's possible if you wanted to go the extra step. Some Packards had trunks that were "flocked" and that process would hide details like this. 

 

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Test fitting the right side trunk pan.

 

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  • 2 months later...

Been catching up on a few other projects around the shop but I'm back on the Packard now.  We've been finishing up our new paint room, the owner of the '55 International was in town a few weeks ago so he brought it back to have seatbelts installed, plus we started back on the Model T firetruck project.  

I've cut out 90% of the bracing, its no longer needed now that it can hold itself together again.  I did make bolt-in braces that mount in the door jambs since the body will have to come back off the frame later on.  

I also finished the lead work on the upper quarter panels. Got it in epoxy and today I'm skimming it with filler to smooth the file marks and get the shape 100%.  I'll get the other side finished after lunch and shoot more epoxy to seal it up.  

 

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This isn't going to be a "no bondo" restoration... but that's not a bad thing. Filler gets a bad reputation because it's been badly abused over the years, like some of the previous repairs on this car. Modern fillers are very stable, and I make sure that the metal is as straight as possible before I apply filler. It typically spreads on about 1/16" thick and 80-90% of it is sanded off. You can see how thin it is on this spot- the red epoxy is visible in spots. I feel more comfortable using a product that was meant to be used as a filler to get the body 100% straight than using repeated coats of high build primer to do the same thing. High build primers have solvents that have to evaporate out which can cause shrinkage if it's piled on too thick... body filler doesn't have that problem. 

 

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I finished making the driver side trunk pan and made corners for both the left and right sides.  

 

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Edited by theastronaut (see edit history)
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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 7 months later...

Unfortunately there won't be any updates, at least not any time soon.  The owner's budget was used up to get the car to this point, which he knew he didn't have enough to finish the project but at least wanted to start it.  He'll be saving up and selling one of his other collector cars to be able to eventually start back on the Packard.  

 

I've been busy on other projects since stopping on the Packard, one of which was my '63 VW Convertible that I finished last week.  I'll start a separate topic for the details on it. 

 

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Edited by theastronaut (see edit history)
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  • 6 months later...

That was one of the best /or probably the best/ restoration threads I have ever seen! A pity that Photobucket ruined it with their payment changes. Is there any chance to upload the photos somewhere else, on Facebook or some photo archive? Even if not in the thread, but just gathered in an album, it was a really fantastic work, worth seeing and inspiring!

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13 hours ago, Ted230 said:

That was one of the best /or probably the best/ restoration threads I have ever seen! A pity that Photobucket ruined it with their payment changes. Is there any chance to upload the photos somewhere else, on Facebook or some photo archive? Even if not in the thread, but just gathered in an album, it was a really fantastic work, worth seeing and inspiring!

It used to be that some website forums required a download from a service like Photobucket to the forum site.  Note sure why, possibly because uploads would be better controlled for size.  If the original poster still had the photos they could be uploaded directly to this site again.  The limitation might be the inability to edit the older posts.

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I hate that it's happened, I've lost around 25 build threads like this one on various forums.  I cross post a lot, so it was easiest to use photobucket and copy/paste each update to the separate forums.   The best option for now, if you're able to download Google Chrome, is to add this extension to make photobucket pics work again.  This works automatically anywhere you may run across dead photobucket links. 

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-embed-fix/naolkcpnnlofnnghnmfegnfnflicjjgj?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog

 

I also use this extension, the first one sometimes misses a few pics so running both I've had pics load 100%. 

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-hotlink-fix/kegnjbncdcliihbemealioapbifiaedg

 

 

If you're not able, I did post the Packard build on another forum with the pics uploaded directly to that forum, so they're still up.  Works to view them if you're on a mobile device or can't use the Chrome extension fix. 

 

http://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14811&forum=10

Edited by theastronaut (see edit history)
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  • 1 month later...

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