You may recall that I went on a Contour Autocraft bodywork course a while ago: very, very good, and even having messed around with classic car bodywork for nearly eighteen years, I learned loads. The two things that it became clear that you need to do really top bodywork are a TIG welder and a wheeling machine (obviously I'm talking in terms of making up good quality repair panels, rather than simply buying in replacements).
The TIG welder was easily sorted: a small (150 amp) Kemmpi DC only (welds all but aluminium) became available at a very fair price. It's not new, but all reconditioned with new cables, torch, pipes and regulator. It's a dream to use although I am doing at least half an hour of 'formal' practice each day to really master it. One thing that the course taught us was the desirability of 'fusion' welding: where the joint has been cut acurately enough to be welded without additional filler (e.i. welding rod). Anyway: spot the weld ...
It's actually about 1 1/2 inches from the left of the panel as you see it (in fact you can see the odd pin hole in the weld). It doesn't really show, but that panel has over an inch of crown, although it is only about 9 inches square.
As for the wheel, I could not justify the £2000 for a 'proper wheel', and the cheap (£800 -1200) ones really look pretty poor, and flex quite badly. Therefore I decided I would build my own. The materials are as follows:
All bearings are surplus stock, I was lucky enough to find twelve matching ones for the six lower wheels (£1.70 each).
Caravan jockey wheel jack (£20 new)
3 mm mild steel sheet (£72 delivered)
3 inch free turning mild steel bar, eighteen inches of (£55)
Assorted steel (£20)
4 Inch 4mm wall box section, one metre of (£19)
An old engine stand also made the ultimate sacrifice: it was heading to the tip anyway. Paint I already had.
The shape was nicked from a design on the web: tip for web retailers: don't put the actual working drawing, with dimensions, up there for all to see if you're trying to sell the finished article (
). The top wheel posed a problem, until I realised that my original MIG gas bottle (which had long since dropped off the radar) was the perfect diameter (9 1/5 inches before turning)Not much more to say, other than the plate is trebled up around the inside of the curve, giving a total of 18mm of steel at that point.
In operation the wheel works very well (see above panel, made from two pieces, tigged together). It has just enough flex to be forgiving, but is plenty stiff enough to planish the TIG welds, and to crown 20 gauge steel: in fact is feels just the same as the 'real' wheels we used on the course. The top wheel is adustable for side to side angle, to allow it to be accurately aligned with the lower wheels. Both wheel carriers can be removed, and replaced after turning through 90 degrees, so that long panels can be run through. The whole thing can also be dismantled, and either stored, or should fit in the back of a fairly average car.
So there we are, it's probably taken 100 hours or so, but owes me under £250: happy days
Materials:
General shot:
Wheel arrangement:
BTW, the lathe in the background is what all of the turning was done upon. It dates from 1954, and is a previous project: absolutely fantastic machine, and far, far better than the brand new (£2000) Warco lathe it replaces (I rejected that one because it was so inaccurate).
and I don't have the time to learn the art of metal shaping 
.
