Respite from the welding - day off today. Time for some fun.
Back in time - way back when in the days of yore - I had a go with HTS 2000 aluminium welding sticks as a potential hole filling material for Birmabright
https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/1965-series-2a-station-wagon-in-holland.298002/page-21
It didn't work out very well - that thickly applied HTS 2000 stuff warped the panel =>
There's little way of adding a similar thickness of HTS 2000 in the holes - so there's no way I can see how to use this stuff (or the many others like it) as a hole filler on sheet aluminium with out getting some distortion
Thicker new material contracts when cooling to make this kind of a cock up =>
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So I suppose I have to make a new quarter panel (after messing that one up even more). Buying a new one is possible but they seem to be retailing at about 70 quid a side...
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Having also bought a load of 5251 aluminium (way way back in time too) I'm good to go
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Using a bit of 1.2mm thick sheet I marked out the basic shape
I didn't fancy digging out the jig saw (as it turned out I needed to do this anyway) but decided to dedicate a small cutting disc to "aluminium only" because you don't want to push steel fragments into aluminium and start off that white powdery corrosion before you fit it to the Land Rover!
As usual rough cuts made around the shape - then trimmed with tin snips (and yes they ought to be specially reserved for "aluminium only" too)
Remember this distraction?
Well it has already been used for Land Rover things! Wow!
The bottom of the panel has a joggled edge that fits behind the sill side skirts
I forgot to take a picture of that bit being made - sorry - you can see it later (below)
The tipping wheel was put back on and used to try and make the curved flip bit
Unfortunately the bloke using the tipping wheel isn't very experienced yet and he managed to put a curve in the bit that was meant to be flat...
...nuts...
...so he then wrapped the edge in botch tape and stuck it in the stretching jaws =>
(Shrinking and stretching jaws shown above - you can see how by squeezing these things together you can apply a sideways pulling or pushing motion to either stretch or shrink metal - simple geometry - no rocket science - no voodoo)
It kind of helped a bit but despite the padding from the botch tape the jaws started to mark the aluminium (no great surprise) so I decided to stop
So plan C came into force - hammer form (Plan A was tipping wheel - Plan B was correcting tipping wheel error with stretching jaws)
(You can see in the picture above I've done the bendy bits on the side of the panel and you can also the joggled edge I forgot to show at the bottom of the panel)
So cutting out some scrap plywood and using a router to make a depression in the end for the joggle step =>
Firmly clamped =>
Tapping with hammer at the edge - turns out the crease made by the tipping wheel in the metal helps direction - so all of plan A wasn't lost...
...also turns out I should have spent more time trying to find a plastic faced hammer as the metal one did leave a few marks...
...still the panel is now flat where it should be and curved where it should be...
There's a little bit of fettling to be done and some holes to be punched as well as a reinforcing strip to be spot welded in place so...
...to be continued (but don't be surprised if I end up getting distracted by the welding again)