Sometimes it's convenient to replace parts. It's certainly easier and sometimes even cheaper. So why not cave in? Well, maybe the car has a history. Perhaps the reproduction parts aren't exactly the same. Sometimes it's both. This is one of those cases.
Chuck and Mike Longley have a knack for finding impossible treasure. Probably their most recognizable one was Pete Henderson's Deuce roadster. Christened one of the 75 Most Significant 1932 Ford Hot Rods and displayed at the 57th Grand National Roadster Show's special exhibit bearing the same name, one of the car's claims to fame was beating a quarter horse campaigned by a traveling huckster. That was 1946, and the car seemed to only get more famous over the years. It achieved likely its height of fame by appearing in B-grade flicks, most notably Hot Rod Gang.
Once Mike and Chuck melted...
Once Mike and Chuck melted the lead off the doors, this is what they found. As the story goes, Jerry Stroner sold the car to Leroy Holmes, who extended the headers down the sides of the car. The headers interfered with the doors, so he did what came naturally to a kid in the '40s: he cut off their bottoms. A subsequent owner then raced it on dirt tracks. Ostensibly to shrink the doorskin, someone haphazardly applied incredible amounts of torch heat to it, causing it to dimple dramatically. As Mike Longley put it, "It looked like everybody took a whack at it with a ball-peen hammer."
The duo also has a knack for resurrecting lost causes. Even in today's market, when beat-down Deuce roadster bodies still command five figures, that car would've been a hard sell when they found it. Channeled by a subsequent owner and rolled end-over-end four times on a production set, the car was a goner. But they brought it back to such a high level of quality that the car was asked to compete in the '07 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance. Sadly, the car was practically totaled by the carrier on the way there, but that's another story.
Recently the Longleys stumbled upon another car with a hot rod history. Jerry Stroner and his fellow Road Runners club members Ken Crawford and Pete Henderson--yes, the guy with the other roadster--built and raced it at the lakes immediately after the war. Probably its most significant cultural achievement was appearing in an article that Look magazine published to showcase the positive side of hot rods. That was in 1947, and many consider Jerry's car to be the first hot rod ever featured in a national publication.
But every silver lining has a cloud. Through a succession of sales, a vet returning from service in Korea ended up buying the car and taking it back with him to the Midwest, ostensibly thinking that a hot lakes car would tear up the tracks. Only the tracks tore up the car. And of all the parts on the car, the doors took probably the hardest knocks. In fact, most restorers would have written them off as dead and bought reproductions.
There's only one problem: the replacements are different. Sure, they're high quality and more than passable as the real article; however, they don't have a few telltale things, like the flares around the inner-door access holes or the specific shape at the top of the door. To most people those are moot points, but to highly idealistic and uncompromised builders they're signs of caving in. And to the Longleys, the whole point is to restore as much as possible. After all, it would be easier to just start with a die-perfect body, right?
Before we launch into what they did to resurrect these doors, we feel it's important to reveal one of the elements that distinguishes their work: for the most part they limit themselves to the tools available to a kid building a hot rod half a century ago. For example, as far as they're concerned, plasma cutters and TIG and MIG welders don't exist. If a kid couldn't have welded it with acetylene or a buzz box in 1949, the Longleys won't do it in 2009. They make a few concessions for air tools and abrasives, as the work they do requires a lot of restoration; however, they draw the line on anything that would reveal itself in the final product. So instead of finding miniscule TIG beads, you'll see laboriously planished gas welds.
What emerges are cars that are not only faithful to their original shape but accurate in their construction. Each is a rolling testimony to our past. Here's how they do it.
The extent of the damage dictates...
The extent of the damage dictates the location of the splice line--some need only a few inches at the bottom, but this one was irreparable up to the beltline. Roadster doors' upper hinge is just below the beltline, making a beltline splice appropriate.
Before cutting, ensure that...
Before cutting, ensure that the portion of door that will remain won't separate from the door structure. This one had stress cracks at the leading edge that required welding. Mike suggested noting details during the panel's disassembly, as patterns or photos will help you duplicate them during reassembly.
For an example of those details,...
For an example of those details, Jerry Stroner did something novel for the time when he built this car: he faired the hinges to the doorskin. So when Mike removed the skin, he had to split the fairing from the hinge itself--no great loss, as the heat required to weld the fairing to the hinge played hell with the doorskin.
Once Mike peeled away the...
Once Mike peeled away the skin, he took advantage of the access and went at the damage in the door top with a dolly and hammer. He then ground away what remained of the brass and lead that Jerry Stroner used to fair the hinges to the door more than 60 years ago.
The original door structure...
The original door structure differs from the reproduction in some areas, but from the lowermost bead downward they're pretty much identical. So Mike followed a character bead and trimmed away only the badly damaged section.
Brookville sells complete...
Brookville sells complete doors, but Mike advised buying the inner and outer skins unassembled. Using the section he cut away from the original door structure as a template, Mike marked the Brookville donor door.
At this point, you can see...
At this point, you can see how much of the door Leroy cut off for header clearance. After considerable measurement and comparisons to other doors, Chuck merged the two. Just as a panel beater would've done half a century ago, he welded them with acetylene and plain steel rod.
With the door structure's...
With the door structure's integrity resolved, Mike slid a replacement Brookville doorskin in place and trimmed it to match at the beltline. Once it fit around the hinges and lined up with the remainder of the door, he tacked it at the beltline seam and began folding the skin over the structure. He recommended folding over the flange a little bit at a time using a dolly on the outer skin and by tapping the flange.
Mike noted that the doorskin...
Mike noted that the doorskin must roll over the inner door structure and fold down flat. "This duplicates the factory fold," he emphasized. "This is a critical part ...take your time and fold all along a seam in small increments." He recommended rough-folding on the first pass and cleaning up the line with subsequent passes.
Without a doubt MIG and TIG...
Without a doubt MIG and TIG welding have their benefits, like a very small heat-affected zone (HAZ) that keeps distortion to a minimum. But that doesn't make gas welds irrelevant. The greater heat that gas welding transmits to steel can shrink and warp a panel for sure, but that's nothing a few careful hammer-on-dolly blows can't fix. The gas-welded bead remains soft and pliable, which is something that can't be said for a more conventional MIG bead (MIG beads are notoriously hard and often crack when worked).
Rather than fairing the hinge...
Rather than fairing the hinge to the door by piling on brass, Mike and Chuck duplicated the shape by using a section of the exhaust tubing for the radius and flat stock for the sides. In the spirit of the original construction, they brazed the door wedges to the hinge and skin. Brazing has gotten a bad rap for poor adhesion, but it's largely unwarranted. The complaint was that paint wouldn't stick to brass, but the problem was really with the flux that remained. Naturally grinding or sanding will remove the flux from flat and peaked surfaces, but to get it out of any crevices and pits, panel beaters like Kent White (www.tinmantech.com) recommend scouring the area with steam or boiling water followed by a phosphoric-acid rinse like Must for Rust.
Upon brazing and prepping...
Upon brazing and prepping the hinge fairings, Chuck and Mike leaded the panel. With that done, the door resembles the way it would've been done half a century ago. And once filed, sanded, and primed, you'd never know it once looked like a gunnysack full of walnuts.