Body Mouldings

464Saloon

For those of you with nice and restored cars, what are you doing for body mouldings? My car has suffered many of your classic parking lots. Numerous dings all along the moldings,and on the RR where I am currently doing some body work, they have been damged in what looks to have been a brush up against something. Pretty scratched up and a little distorted. I certainly don't want to put them back on what will be a nicely refinshed panel, but so far two metal reworkers I have been to say they can't be repaired. The metal is so thin that by the time they hammer them out,grind and repolish there won't be much left and they will come out wavy. Does anyone have good ones,is anyone reproducing them, are there ones from another make that will work? This is a 54 Special 2dr sedan which I have been told had Wasp trim. I know the regular Hornets had more trim,but have no idea if the strips that run the length of the car are any different. Thoughts or comments?

Thanks

PaulButler

This is a good question as I have much the same issue my 1939 112. Some of the mouldings are missing and some are in bad condition.

If there is someone out there who does do reproductions I'd be interested in learning more.

Park_W

464, there ought to be some parts cars and/or trim pieces out there somewhere. Do as you're doing, and "work the network." I'm going to steer you to a possible source by private message.

[Deleted User]

464Saloon wrote:

For those of you with nice and restored cars, what are you doing for body mouldings? My car has suffered many of your classic parking lots. Numerous dings all along the moldings,and on the RR where I am currently doing some body work, they have been damged in what looks to have been a brush up against something. Pretty scratched up and a little distorted. I certainly don't want to put them back on what will be a nicely refinshed panel, but so far two metal reworkers I have been to say they can't be repaired. The metal is so thin that by the time they hammer them out,grind and repolish there won't be much left and they will come out wavy. Does anyone have good ones,is anyone reproducing them, are there ones from another make that will work? This is a 54 Special 2dr sedan which I have been told had Wasp trim. I know the regular Hornets had more trim,but have no idea if the strips that run the length of the car are any different. Thoughts or comments?



Thanks

The trim on your car is shared with the Wasp. It was difficult to find the new parts I used on the last 54 Wasp I restored and that was in the 80s. The straightening and polishing process is actually something you can do. It takes lots of time and patience. If the piece is torn that will require the skills of a repair person who can weld stainless steel. The tools include small hammers, picks, hardwood blocks and a leather shot bag as well as a buffer to polish the finished pieces. The tools are available from Eastwood... they have an on line catalog and others. All of the stainless I could not replace on the 54 was examined and imperfections were removed and all was polished. Another dirty and tedious job.



Recommend you take the pieces you have and try to refinish. Driver quality repair can be obtained with patience. Who knows, you might find a craft skill that can be sold to other Hudsonite's.



Good Luck

nick s

464Saloon wrote:

For those of you with nice and restored cars, what are you doing for body mouldings? My car has suffered many of your classic parking lots. Numerous dings all along the moldings,and on the RR where I am currently doing some body work, they have been damged in what looks to have been a brush up against something. Pretty scratched up and a little distorted. I certainly don't want to put them back on what will be a nicely refinshed panel, but so far two metal reworkers I have been to say they can't be repaired. The metal is so thin that by the time they hammer them out,grind and repolish there won't be much left and they will come out wavy. Does anyone have good ones,is anyone reproducing them, are there ones from another make that will work? This is a 54 Special 2dr sedan which I have been told had Wasp trim. I know the regular Hornets had more trim,but have no idea if the strips that run the length of the car are any different. Thoughts or comments?

Thanks

given the time and care stainless mouldings can generally be salvaged (at home with a few tools. many shops are used to doing 55 chevys, mustangs and the such where the slightest scratch warrants a call for a repro piece. with hudson pieces, you may have some that warrant replacement rather than the effort to restore but save the bad one as next time the replacement won't be available it will suddenly be very savable. kinda like a cracked manifold just remember trim does not take up much room to store away hang onto it, you may even need to weld two pieces together and make one good later or a short piece out of a mangled longer piece.

but as to your comments on replacements there are not sources for reproductions. the trim of your car does mimic that of a super wasp the exception being the front fender trim which will be about 5" longer and is a hornet special piece only but I believe will be nearly isentical to a super wasp or special 4 sedan. the side mouldings of a hornet are wider than that of the super wasp and special which is flat where the hornet is stepped. the two pieces of trim that run from the side trim to the skirt opening is the same across the three models but is body dependent i.e. there are two and four door variations. the piece above the skirt is the same for all three.

barrysweet52

I have collected bits & pieces from 2 parts cars. What do you need? Regards



Barry



hudsonsa@sa.chariot.net.au

SuperDave

You have gotten some very good information from the above posts. One other thing I did is to make a short piece from a long one. Example.... The door trim on a 54 tudor is almost always dinged up. I found a rear quarter piece that had severe flattening and scratches on the very end. it was beyond help. I cut the damaged part off and made a really nice door piece out of it. I had to have two small tig welds done to make the edge look right.



There is also a torch that can be used to actually gas weld stainless. it's called a Henrob. http://www.cut-like-plasma.com/img-header/dhc2000-henrob-logo.gif It takes a very fine tip and very low gas pressure. I have not been able to find the time to try it yet. I have seen some gorgeous work done on Model A Ford stainless radiator shells by a restoration shop in Tennessee. That's what they use. They use old scrap pieces of stainless shells for the "rod" or filler. That way the alloy is exactly the same. I hope to duplicate the process on some Hudson stainless soon. Anyone else tried it yet?

Davew

464Saloon

Well I guess it is a matter of how perfect you can get them. The one metal worker I spoke to specializes in stuff like this and he said because the metal is so thin, that once it is hammered out then polished, it will come out wavy. Maybe that is OK but I was quoted $250.00 to do the long one across the RR 1/4 which may not be bad considering the time involved but I hate to spend it if is not going to look much better. I get around paint and body OK but trickier stuff I try and turn over to an expert. Unless I had someone show me the process of repairing these, I don't want to take the chance of making them worse.

hudsonguy

464Saloon,



I agree that you can restore just about ANY stainless strip used on a Hudson. They're not THAT thin. Ken Cates clearly spells out the basics above. There are also books available on the subject of metal restoration that really help.



At one point I was of the same mind as you on this. I had the original pieces from my '49 that were not only painted over initially, but removed incorrectly at one time that left them shaped in big reverse arcs! After searching for a long time for replacements, although I did find some of the missing pieces I needed at the '03 Nationals, I realized I had no choice but to at least try to restore the originals.



I'm not a body man at all, although I've done some along the way. More of a 'jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none'. I read a couple books, used basic tools to hammer, file, sand and buff and spent lots and lots of time on them, but they came out great and look fantastic on the car! It's actually an extremely satisfying thing to do in the garage. The piece you're working on just continues to look better and better. You'll be surprised what you can do. The investment in dollars for tools was not that much, although I luckily had an old motor I'm using for the buffing wheel. Time is the thing. You've got to be able to spend a day working on a single part sometimes! 'Course, looking back, it wasn't so bad. Good Luck.