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advice on door frame building

2K views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  gahi 
#1 ·
whats the best way to build a door frame. I have a 28 hupmobile and all the wood is gone or worthless, whats the best way to replace the wood with steel? I don't want to put wood back in. All I have left is the door skins so I need to make mounts for the door hinges and latches and glass and..... Any body know of any links to build ups or have any advice? thanks

Gary
 
#2 ·
I don't have anything specific for you but just some ideas where to start looking.

The most ideal situation would be if you had a set of the original wood framing pieces so you could use them as templates for bending and cutting your steel tubing pieces. I would guess someone makes these for a Humpmobile. Maybe Hemmings would have a source. But it would get awfully expensive to buy the wood pieces and then make the steel pieces. Better yet, maybe someone has actually put together CAD drawings of the wood pieces that you could buy and use as templates.

The less ideal avenue is to make the templates yourself based on the skins and body parts you have. Here you might get some good ideas from the fiberglass body industry. Many of these outfits are now putting steel rather than wood bracing into their bodies. You can usually get a pretty good look at how they do this at any of the major car shows where they have the big time vendors. You could also search around on the web to see if one of the glass body mfrs has some good pics on their website. But in the end you will still be ending up trying to make cardboard or dense hardboard templates on your own...which is no easy task.

Hopefully others here at HR.Com can offer up a little more experience for you.

Dewey
 
#3 ·
Thanks, thats kind of what I thought. I have one piece of wood from the pass side but its not all there and rotten. it would be hard to make a piece of metal that is C shaped and contours the door and has a flat surface for attaching door panels to. So maybe just an L shaped one with a bunch of little L brakets to attach the curved side to the door skin. Not looking forward to this part, but I guess once I get the hang of it, it should go pretty well.

Gary
 
#6 ·
i am planning on using those type of latches, they seem to be a nice setup. With the light wall tubing, would you still make a pattern, then cut the tubing to match and fill the open areas, also what would be a good way to attach that to the door skins? plug welds? I would like to repace all the wood in the whole car, like the roof supports and the main pillars. Thanks for the replys, the cogs are starting to turn a little faster.

Gary
 
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