After languishing untouched for a month or so (I blew out one of my knees recently, my excuse de jour), it was time to get back into the garage to commence work on the Homebuilt Hot Rod. Being that I have to take it easy on the bending and kneeling for a while, I figured I'd switch over to another of the myriad of chores left to address-namely something that would require a little less kneeling and stooping than chassis work. That led me to some sheetmetal patchwork on the roadster body.
The body itself is actually very solid. The previous owner had converted it from a closed-cab pickup to a roadster, and repaired any and all of the rust while he was at it. But, he also proceeded to cut a few more holes in the body to accommodate a cowl-mounted side-steer box and outside exhaust pipe-mounting holes that weren't going to be used in my particular case. The body also had a bolt-on cover over the original cowl vent that I wanted to fill. So, though it's not rocket science (not a lot of what I do really is), I figured I'd shoot some images of my afternoon's escapade to share.
Sheetmetal work in one form...
Sheetmetal work in one form or another is nearly always an integral part of any steel vehicle rodstoration, and patching holes is actually metalwork in its simplest form. Whether it's rot repair, or as in this instance, filling man-made voids, the process is similar-forming a "flush" patch that will fill the opening and permanently fuse that patch to the existing surface.