Grand Willys Project

[WHHEMI]

Looking good Marcus, as always.

[oldon]

Going by the rest of your work Marcus, you could do the roof in your sleep. Regards oldon.

[Gojeep]

Another update this week! Making up for the other weeks when I had nothing to show with all the paint stripping and dipping. Got more hours in too getting some things done before the metalmeet.


Thought I would make up some profile templates to help as a guide when rolling the roof panel. Just used a shrinker to bend it to the curve I wanted. Did half then traced that so I could make the other half the same.


With reducing the profile at the back earlier, you can see it is pretty similar using the same gauge at the front.


Need a front to rear one as well.


Now you can see how much shape it actually needs


Left to right not as much.


Thought I would do the fill in pieces. I decided to add a inner tube of the top wheel so it would work more as a roller and only bend in one direction. If both the upper and lower are metal, it compresses the metal as it passes through creating a compound curve rather than just bending it in one direction over the lower anvil with the rubber in place.


With the back pretty straight, it worked out nicely just using the upper wheel with the rubber for the whole thing.
The 6mm-1/4" packers are there because the roof frame actually is not flat and is that much higher in the middle. So this makes sure all the shaping will suit the frame profile.


The front is more tricky as will need a compound curve right at the front. I first washed over the whole piece with the rubber upper and my shallowest lower anvil and can see the first part is already the right curve.


The used the next anvil wheel with some more radius and only ran over the bottom 2/3rds. More contact has been made.


Getting close to matching the bottom radius too on that second anvil. So will switch to the third anvil and concentrate at the top of the lower 1/3rd.


So only rolling with the rubber upper in the one direction for the whole thing, the curve is right in this direction.


But if you look along the very front edge you can see it needs more curve to match the panels each side of it.


I made a profile gauge to what flowed along the front of the roof panel. Can see how the middle needs to come forward.


What I did is remove the rubber and using the first lower anvil again, just washed over the first third front to rear, the opposite direction to before. That curved the front nicely to match the profile.


Can see now how it flows better along the front now. Probably not the way it is normally done, but it worked well for me. When I had tried doing the whole piece without using the rubber, I got too much curve left to right.


The two side pieces have also been done and did it a similar way to the front piece as it has curve as well but right across the panel. So the final wash over was done from one end to the other in the opposite direction to the forming with the rubber left to right.


So all ready to do the in fill panel now.

[bodgie]

Definitely looking good, I was thinking a while back the roof may be a little high and break the proportions. Looks like the extra width/length will work well.

Looking forward to seeing you stitch it all together.

[Gojeep]

Thanks for the likes and comments.
Was good to be shaping some metal again rather than just strip and dip all the time.

[Gojeep]

Well it was certainly worthwhile being able to attend the second ever Metal Meet here in Australia. Being only new to wheeling it was great having help to wheel such a big panel which can't be done on your own and to have the guidance of a master in the field while doing it!

With 50 years of metal shaping experience, it was a privilege to have Peter Tommasini give guidance on shaping my new roof skin. Here he is setting the right tension on John's almost finished English Wheel. He passed on tips like getting me to push by hand some shape into the panel before we even started. Placed the panel on its long edge on the floor and I got Nigel to hold some curve in it while I pushed the palm of my hand from top to bottom in a stoke to help hold the curve along it. Once it had some stiffness to it we put it up into the wheel. We still had to hold tension in the panel by twisting our hands to hold some curve while we wheeled at the start to stop it flopping around.


Can see now some shape starting to get into it. Peter would check how we were going every 10 minutes or so and sometimes have correct anything that needed fixing.


Getting some one on one myself with Peter now. Learned a lot about how holding the panel at what height and making sure it was level so it wouldn't get a twist in it.


A big thank you to Nigel too for hanging on the end of the panel with me for over 4 hours as we passed the sheet back and forth!


We stopped all the time to check the panel on the floor of the workshop using the profile gauges I had made beforehand. Also a lot of reading the panel by running a hand over it and checking it by eye. When we started to get close I setup the roof panels to see how the infill panel were blending into them.


Looking across the back on it. It doesn't look like it has changed much but there is a lot of shape into it now and no where near flat anymore even though it looks like it. Remember the profile gauges I made that showed just how much the edges had to come down.


One corner was still sitting up a bit but a slight amount of pressure would have it sitting perfectly. The weld shrink would pull it down as well.


Time to tip the flanges back into the edge of the original roof panels that I had pancaked. On the corners I first hammered the edges here as they needed to be stretched so it would not distort the corner as it was being tipped.


Used Dennis's powered bead roller to make the job a bit easier for me to tip the flange. Slowly increased the flange angle by lifting the panel a bit more each time. Took 3-4 passes to get the angle I needed. This flange is what sits in the gutter of the roof frame and gets spot welded in when the factory assembles it. I will be plug welding instead as don't own a spot welder.

[SeaComms]

I cannot explain in words how much I appreciate the detail you are giving us. This whole thread could end up part of body building course!!