1950'ish Caddillac Coupe De Ville

[smeden]

A friend of mine is in to Amarican autos. Apparentley they rot too!

It's a Caddy with a 350 chevy engine in it. (He has the original engine on the shelf)

It's a Cruiser not a Bruiser...

This is a thread about the rot, and what we are trying to do about it.. You gotta live with that I'm beat right now having worked on the boat for the last 3 days.. (bad spelling and worse grammer) Be warned!

First a picture of the car from last summer! We rent units on the same farm!



The vw is me and my girl's camper.. The big guy in the pic is Jesper good for lifting...

Martin the owner of the car, has lifted the chassis from the frame. Mounted it on a home made frame. And then lava blasted in the critical areas.



Here you can se it on it's side.. Kind of like a strandet whale...





You can se there is a lot of small holes in the flors. And some old repairs. I gotta do the whole car, but this is where I started.



Cut cut cut..



New plate...

And our new tool! Great when you work on rotten cars..



Time to put it to use!





Another tool that is good to have is this pice of kit:





So that you kan make these:



First mark where you want them, and then:



I will work on the welds later on with my grinder..

That's all for today.. Plenty to do! ;-)

[smeden]

Spent som more quality time with the Caddy...

Did the shifter hole:



When Martin fitted the 350 engine and auto box he had do a makeshift hole to get room.

I cut it out and did a new plate.



I put it in without an owerlap.



To get a nice even floor. Later on we vill do a console for the shifter.



Having done this, I started up on the right hand side floor. Same job as on the left side.
on this Picture you can see the small self tapping screws that I use to keep the plate in the right spot.



When I'm done with the front, it's time to start fabricating some new pannels for the old girl. I'm looking forward to this. I havent done panels myself before. Usually you can buy some. But not in this case.

What do you think shall i keep doing the Photos in Black and White or switch to collor? Cheers :-)

[foxy99]

Great stuff

[vantastic]

Love it, top work

[grifterkid]

Awesome...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[madmatttcustoms]

look forward to more pics

[smeden]

Thank you for the nice Words! I'm going to the workshop in the morning.. Will remember to bring my camera! If Martin has cut the steel for the panels then I'l start on them. It's going to be a challenge but I look forward to it. We got hold of another nice Tool! I'l take some pic's tomorrow!

Cheers ;-)

[madmatttcustoms]

also i vote air ride (i know there's no vote) suspension real easy to get bags and brackets for yank cars

[johnd]

Colour photos please?

Wtf is a lava blaster?

[smeden]

Ok will try to do some collor shot's..

When you blast a car to remowe pain, undersealing and rot the media you use is important. If you use ordenary sand on thin panels they will warp and be more or les ruined. You can however use other medias like: Ise, wallnut shells, and dust from Lava.

There is a complete air bag system for the Car. But Martin i considdering selling it (If anybody is interested feel free to incuire) (not cheap) The Danish state is indeed rotten when it comes to midifying cars and the hassel with getting air ride through MOT is really not worth it unles you are Building show cars! This is a car that's meant to be used.

Will be leaving for the workshop now. Must try to rememeber both the camera and the memory Card today ;-/

[smeden]

A Couple of Pictures from last Winter..



No.. It's not a fire but a burn out from a doner car ;-)



It's rolling on Black steels now!

[smeden]

I know i wrote about doing the panels but... Well I wanted to finish with this part before i move on.

Did some patches.. I did it in two slightly different ways. I tried to take som Pictures to show the difference.

First i big patch with a bit of overlap:



There was a lot of anoying pin holes in the plate i cut out.
Agian I had use of my Zigge machine. Could you tell me what you call a thingy like that in English?



You can se I have changed the whels for this. I'm making an offset on the patch so that it will be level with the floor of the car.

The finnished patch:



And redy to blue glue:



Should have taken a bit more care when making the hole! The les air between the edges the better!



The next patch is done without the overlap more about that tomorrow :-)

[smeden]

Did some more on the Caddy today:

Patch: No overlap!'



Had to shape the patch because of the shape of the floor!



I did this with a hammer with a round head.



Put it in place, so that i could mark out from the inside of the car. Then it's easy tu cut the surplus of and weld it in place.

The Next repair was a Little bit more of a challenge:



When Martin changed the rear Axel he had to hit the panle with a hammer. There was not room for the diff. Now that there is room for it it's time to fix that. It's a Work in Progress but here is how I started out.

First I took a 15 mm plywood plate and transferd the shape i wanted on to it:



I took one more plate and sandwiched them together:



Then I cut out some 1.2 mm Steel. 0.9 would have been ok too! Easyer to Work with..



Now it's just a quistion of putting it all together, fitting it in the wice and start hitting it with a plastic og wodden hammer!



This is ok for making shapes like that if you don't have a shrinker / stretcher.. (on my vishing list for x-mas) You can do Wheel arches too!



That's all for today! Welding it in tomorrow :-)

[flyingphil]

Good work!

[markgenesis]

Mar 5, 2014 15:25:31 GMT smeden said:

I a]

There was a lot of anoying pin holes in the plate i cut out.
Agian I had use of my Zigge machine. Could you tell me what you call a thingy like that in English?

That's known as a Joggler, what you have crafted there is a Joggled joint

Excellent work BTW

[smeden]

Joggled Joint... Hmm sounds like something they sell at Chrstiania... :-)

[Canerbiz]

It's my car!!
Keep on the good work Christian...

Today we have pre-clean the frame before the media blasting > Hopefully this week<

Martin

[10mpg]

Never heard that called a joggler, to me that's a 'swager' or a 'bead roller' the joggelrs to me are the little hand held unites for just doing the overlaps, usually hand powered but sometimes air..

that said AWESOME car dude, looking forward to some updates, and more before/action shots..

[andyw]

Great fabricating skills

[smeden]

Welcome Martin ;-) I'll be leaving for the workshop later.. Just have to do some laundry..

Thank's for the nice words guys! Having the right tools helps a lot! I love what guys on this site can do just with a hammer and a vice! That takes real skill!

I have a few pictures from the strip down! Enjoy! Cheers Chrstian :-)