DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

I did the last sentence 22 years ago and all is well.
This has made me dig out my old photo albums of the car in '88, and what a mess it was too.

More painfully slow progress, just not getting the time at present.

So, another snatched hour the other night and the start of the closing panels.



Must try harder to put some time in on this or it will never get done!

Once complete, and joined to the front section I'll make separately, this panel will be cut in flush to the surroundings and butt welded.

I've also added a joggle to the lowest point on the flange to act as a drain hole.

Once I've made this outer I'll make the inner reinforcing to match before welding it all up.

This is really hard work... Press tooling really is the only way!

Another couple of hours spent tonight battering a innocent bit of steel to shape, a few more required to get it closer before properly joining them together, adding an additional 20mm to the top and cutting the car to match.

Getting there Gary .

I guess the best bit of advice I can give with this type of area is to divide the outer radius into two: so you have the horizontal part (with flange) with half of the radius to it's outside edge, heading upwards, and the vertical part dropping down with it's own half-radius sweeping inwards.

Use self-gripping pliers (Mole / Vise grips) to hold the lower areas in place (flange to flange), and self-tappers for the upper. File down one of the edges smooth, and have that overlapping the un-filed one. Scribe all of the way along, plus a couple of vertical register marks going at 90d to the join.

After that you can remove these parts from the car and weld / dress them on the bench. Et voila, one 'pressing'. Well, that's the idea anyway.

BTW, it's generally accepted that for non-powered work, the biggest flange that you can really shrink or stretch is about 3/4 inch. After that the metal is getting so thick / thin / stressed, it's better to divide that area somehow.

I guess what this means, is that when you are creating some of these shapes, it's difficult because it's difficult . To put it another way, it's not particularly that someone is doing it wrong, and therefore struggling, it's just that even when you do it right it's still blinking tough .

Anyway, a lot of this comes down to:

1) Where you place the joins, so that you don't have a situation where you're putting a load of shrink / stretch into one part, and next to none in the next.
2) How heavily and rigidly (is that a word?) you can hold the work (i.e. so all of your energy is going into moving the metal, and not bouncing your vice / workbench / dolly etc around). Also how big / heavy the blows are. The difference between using a light vice on a light bench with a small hammer, compared to a massive vice on a solid bench with a large (but correctly profiled) hammer is quite incredible. Literally chalk and cheese.

Sorry, I didn't mean to turn your thread into a how-to .

Anyway, looking good and not far to go now then?

Hi Barry 'How to' is fine by me!

To make it hard for myself I have pretty much pushed the whole radius from the bottom up, then this upturned flange needs about 20 mm added to the top to complete the join back into the inner wing on the forward part. To be honest this is mainly because I cut out the template with plenty of spare, made the lower flange first then started to chase the metal up around the corner. There just happened to be enough metal to make the whole radius

Does this area 'buldge' out slightly from the front lower weldnut before coing back under horizontally? It looks like it should, although that doesn't really make sense! All my original reference was lost first time around!

You know when you are hitting it wrong trying to shape it as the hammer bounces back and the metal 'twangs' rather than a satisfying 'thud' as all off your energy sinks into the sheet.

Luckily I have big bench, big hammer and big vice!

Back on it tonight, and a full day tomorrow, so I hope to finish it then!

Gary71 wrote:You know when you are hitting it wrong trying to shape it as the hammer bounces back and the metal 'twangs' rather than a satisfying 'thud' as all off your energy sinks into the sheet.

That's exactly it!

I'll try to grab a picture of the current car today, and pop it up later, so you can confirm you're on the right track, but yes, it does bulge out where you describe .

Now finished the panel!

Those pressed bits you can buy look good value now



Final trial fit.


Now all painted up inside and out and drying off overnight before final welding tomorrow.

I need to make the bush backstop flange for inside the torsion tube and then get back to the jobs I should have been doing this winter...

Gary that looks like a really good repair. It looks like a difficult area to repair and going by the attempt somebody made on my car you have done significantly better, well done and keep the pictures coming.
Kind regards

Thanks John

Now welded in.



After days of panel bashing, trimming, bending, nibbling and grinding the ten minutes of welding at the end is bit of an anti climax

Now off to do some linishing and try and make it look factory (ish) again.

Very nice Gary, I'd be proud of that.

Impressive stuff Gary - well done

Thanks to both, however...

I've just realised the flange I made to support the back of the bush (and have already welded in...) is to small an ID to clear the trailing arm!

Whilst only the torsion bar has to go through it, the end of the trailing arm spline is awfully close to the end of the bush and as the bush deflects it needs to pass slightly through it or it will make lovely clunking noises.

So somehow I've got to get that out again...

You've done the hard bits - even cutting out and welding back in won't approach the level of effort you've put into the shaping so far