49 Trunk Pan Nearing Completion

rambos_ride

Wow - That ended up being a whole lot more work than I anticipated!



All the rust patches are welded in now - I tackled the wheel wells today after finishing another 3 hours of grinding spot welds and the butt-welded seams in the rear of the new trunk pan (about 8ft total) - I still figure I got another 2-3 hours to finish grinding what I welded on today and that's not counting the time spent grinding the patches on the roll pan. Many of the patches were actually 2 part - and chasing the rust on the roll pan was nothing short of fun!



Bigger Pics are up on the website http://www.49C8.com









I won't do the exterior lead work on the roll pan until it comes back from the blasters.



I am also re-creating the interior corner braces and should have those installed tomorrow - weather permitting.



The only thing left to do then is to install the automatic trunk pulldown which should be just a few mounting brackets.

hudsontech

rambo - you need to put these photos into "book" form with descriptive text with each photo. A resto handbook, to be more accurate. Then this could probably be made available thru the club store.



Hudsonly,

Alex B

rambos_ride

hudsontech wrote:

rambo - you need to put these photos into "book" form with descriptive text with each photo. A resto handbook, to be more accurate. Then this could probably be made available thru the club store.



Hudsonly,

Alex B

Hi Alex - good ideas. Although by the time I get done there will be probably be too many pictures to publish in book form. (I'm estimating somewhere between 1.5-2 Gigabytes)



It would have been nice for some of the fabrication work If I had someone taking pictures of actually making the pieces to show that you don't need the best and most expensive tools to do decent work. 99.9% percent of the fabrication work shown on 49C8.Com was done in my poorly lit 8x6 workshop or underneath my carport!



The pictures located @ 49C8.Com->Picture Galleries->Restoration all have some descriptive text included that displays when you left-mouse-click on the smaller pictures it fires up a new window with the bigger picture and desription detail - You need to allow popup windows or use IE 5.5 or above (I don't have time to test and code the site on multiple browser config - especially since IE still owns 95% of the browser market)



Most descriptions are pretty sparse right now and eventually I plan on making them more detailed - but at least there are placeholders for now... It takes a bit time to massage the pictures and build the file structure so I try not to get to far behind in keeping the pictures updated (inital pics are 2048x1536 high color - morphed to 800x600 for the 'large' pictures and 256x192 for the 'thumbnails' - someday I might expose the really big pictures when I get better bandwidth)



I'll also expand the Custom How To... section to include the trunk lift shocks, trunk pan repair, rear view camera system and trunk pull down assembly (like a Cadillac) , etc...



Someday If I - or someone else that lives close to me does a real #1 or #2 Restoration I would donate my time to help them with taking pictures and organizing them so we could properly show reference pictures and repairs on a nice restoration candidate.



Even though I am resto-rodding my car - and especially because it was in such poor shape (#5-#6) I can't tell how many times I have looked at something on the car and thought "I wish I knew what was supposed to be there or how it went together originally"



I know there is some restoration software out there that I have seen on ebay and in the trade rags for keeping track of your restoration, pictures, parts, etc. - But as a programmer I would have a hard time wanting to buy something when I could, with enough time - build it better!



Thanks for the encouragement Alex! Weather permitting I'm going to try and complete the trunk area and get the pictures up tonight!

hudsontech

There's always DVD - those hold up to 4.7 gig's of info. Of course, you do have to have a newer computer, like mine, that will handle DVD's.



Hudsonly,

Alex B

Unknown

Your work is super! Working within the confines of your shop and a carport makes the results even more impressive. I would think you would be able to contract restore other Stepdown Hudsons for those who do not have your skills. I know there are several folks who make their livings restoring Hudsons. Your skills are obvious and should bring restoration requests to your door.



Enjoying your how to do and progression website.



Cheers

rambos_ride

Heart Of Texas wrote:

Your work is super! Working within the confines of your shop and a carport makes the results even more impressive. I would think you would be able to contract restore other Stepdown Hudsons for those who do not have your skills. I know there are several folks who make their livings restoring Hudsons. Your skills are obvious and should bring restoration requests to your door.



Enjoying your how to do and progression website.



Cheers

Ken - thanks so much for the compliments!



I decided to leave the custom inner braces off until after the inside trunk area is media blasted - but I just got done spending about 6 hours today bending and shaping the pieces. I then took them to the body shop and massaged them a little and then glass beaded and primed them with weld-thru primer.



More pictures at http://www.49C8.com - but here's what the braces ended up looking like = not perfect and not an original emulation but I had to form these by hand so the circle and oval shapes worked better for rolling the beads on the edges - plus I can get my hand through the circle!



OLD C_RUSTY BRACE + NEW ROUGHED OUT METAL





NEW BRACES 'MASSAGED' and BEAD BLASTED





NEW BRACES PRIMERED







I tell you what I LOVE WORKING on these Hudsons! It's funny you mention contracting restoration work...one of my best friends owns a body shop near me and I can take things down there anytime to work on - but out of respect for his need to make money (sq. ft. space = $$) and the time it takes to do mock-up and fabrication work I'm doing the major metal fab here and will only take up space in his shop for doing the body work and paint.



It's funny because I often talk with him about getting myself into doing restoration work (I did body work and painting for almost 10 years in my earlier life...) but the reality is that I couldn't or wouldn't even think about doing restoration work for hire at anything less than $55.00 an hour plus materials.



Restoration work and certain custom fabrication is just not easily estimated - you just don't know what you are going to find on these old cars - and most folks just can't or aren't interested in spending that kind of money (most people don't realize just how much work it is - and how expensive materials have gotten!)

HOWEVER... If someone were interested I am currently between programming contracts - AND REALLY NEED TO MAKE SOME MONEY!!! -and could sub-out space at my friends body shop for any length of time - so I wouldn't be working on your stuff in my driveway



...just a thought to those who don't like that kind of work.... Contact me anytime!

Unknown

Rambo.



Thanks for the inspiration! I have a '51 Hornet with a "rusty" trunk and a '52 with a "solid" trunk. So, the thoughts are to combine the two. Ending up with a vertical spare in the '51. I haven't gotten into the frame rails yet. About a month or so. I'm a little afraid of what I will find.



HOWEVER! Thanks for the awesome photos and commentary. Your sharing is what it is all about.



Thank you.



George T.

rambos_ride

George T. wrote:

Rambo.



Thanks for the inspiration! I have a '51 Hornet with a "rusty" trunk and a '52 with a "solid" trunk. So, the thoughts are to combine the two. Ending up with a vertical spare in the '51. I haven't gotten into the frame rails yet. About a month or so. I'm a little afraid of what I will find.



HOWEVER! Thanks for the awesome photos and commentary. Your sharing is what it is all about.



Thank you.



George T.

Thank you George!



If I had known last year when I bought the car that the rear frame and trunk area of mine was so bad I would have seriously tried to find a donor car to take the entire rear section from.



Just some friendly advice before you tear into the trunk pan - double check those rear outer frame rails and rear roll pan on both cars hopefully yours is not as bad as mine was...!