Meet The Players

This 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 came from a client who bought it over the internet. On the computer it looked like a solid hardtop being sold by a reputable dealer. He bought it with the intent of making it his own with the addition of a 351 Windsor motor and a five speed stick. But when the car arrived from Texas, he began to get curious about was was under the paint. Turns out there was a lot of bondo and a lot of rust.

He stripped the paint off the worst areas, and started buying patch panels. All told, we are going to replace both quarter panels, both rocker panels, the tail, one floor, two large sections of roof skin, two large sections of roof brace, the spare tire well, both lower front fenders and a good portion of the trunk floor. This thing had a lost of rust.

Here's a few pics and some progress.

He had already done a lot of the grunt work.

He stripped both quarter panels and the tail looking for rust, and he found lots of it.

The tail section had about a pound of bondo in it.

I started with the passenger side roof skin. It looked like it had plenty of rust.

When I removed the skin, I found a four foot section of the roof rail was also rotted and ready to go. I could not leave thsi in there with the roof skin on top, it would rust all over again.

I cut the rusted section out completely, then I made patch panels in two sections, each section from two pieces. Here's the cross section.

This is the rear section tacked in place.

And here's the front section tacked in.

This is the whole thing ready to be stitch welded.

I stitch weld sheet metal by welding small sections and cooling them with compressed air. This helps keep the panels straight by not heating the whole thing all to hell. Some guys like to cool with a wet rag but I think the air cooling is easier on the metal.

And this is the whole 49" welded up and ready to be fitted with a roof skin and new drip rail. This whole project took 9 hours.