Metal Finishing

   This Jaguar MK II front fender has a welded and finished seam from the factory, which already thins out the metal. After an accident someone poorly hammered out the damaged area. After cleaning off all their plastic I was able to metal finish out this heavily worked area but thought it best to put lead over the factory seam to add strength back to the panel. The worst thing that can be done to a metal panel is to use a pick hammer and file, or worse, a grinder too aggressively which only serves to thin out the metal and lose its strength....... and I see this having been done, all too often on many a car.

**** A grinder is a car bodies worst enemy! If you see someone taking a grinder to the surface of your car body for anything other than cutting down ONLY a weld, their lack of talent and finesse is ruining your car. Find the quickest  EXIT.

Collision Reconstruction

   Luckily Joe and Mike received only bruises, but the '32 didn't fare as well. It being Joe's first car back in 1955 and this was now 2001 he wanted to see it saved......... and not with plastic!

   The first thing was to get an original roof section on it's way to my shop from New Hampshire, 3000 miles away. The roof was rusted out over the front header, but fortunately that was the ONLY usable section on the original roof! It was the last section to cut out and replace after the entire new roof was grafted onto the straightened body so as to maintain the original dimensions and contours overall.

   At some point in the past, Joe had the cowl vent welded over and smoothed over with plastic (visible in first picture), something he later regretted doing as all the fiberglass bodies had no cowl vent and now instead of looking custom it looked like a newer fiberglass body. Fortunately the complete vent door and mechanism were still in the car. After cutting out the spot welded door and finishing out with lead all the damage done, he was back just where he wanted to be..... a "naturally COOL dude" while running down the highways.

   The most interesting part was the near total removal and straightening of both the windshield pillars and the driver door window frame. These had to be deconstructed to first straighten the inner structures, weld them back on and then straighten and attach the outer skins.

   Unfortunately I lost all the photos other than what's here ..... it was done back in the day of film. We do have a video that Joe shot of the process and are currently trying to get pictures off of it..... or possibly have the video on here at a later date.

   Here's the finished car back on the road. Joe has gone on to put over 100,000 miles on it. He took a trip with Mike to 48 states!!!

Resizing and Reshaping

   These were a very, VERY poorly made set of reproduction running boards, the owner had bought these years before so we used them. These are a example of why I hate using anything but original parts on a project. Not only did the stampings lack consistency and definition, but the contours were off by as much as 3/4" where they mated to a pair of perfectly contoured original rear fenders.

   While I was at it, the filler panels were modified to better fit between the fenders and body. Before I received the project, someone had welded replacement cab corners in which also had a higher crown. There is no plastic in the cab corners only the steel patches and some leading I did over the seams. The filler panels are a thin 22 gauge and were badly beat up and bent. After re-arching the panels, re-forming and shrinking the ends, the panels were metal finished out to < .015".