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Old 12-07-2016, 11:19 PM
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MetalShaper of the month Feb.-11, July - 2018, Sept. 2020
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Leonardtown, MD
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We headed over to John's this evening to see if we could figure out what to do with the 47 Biederman and its poor hood fitment.
The truck is a 1947 and still had the original composite cab when he bought it, which means a wood subframe structure covered in steel sheet, including the doors. Similar to the early 30's cars with wood and steel, the wood holds the moisture, the steel rots away. So John's original cab would have required EXTENSIVE repairs of the wood structure and nearly all of the steel panels. He did find a 1950 Oshgosh donor truck that had the same manufacturer cab, but by 1950 it was now completely steel construction, and thus much more solid. He was initially looking for the doors, but as nice as the cab was, it only made sense to use it as well. The hood was already gone, so he used the original 47 hood with the 50 cab. Unfortunately, the first time the hood was test fit to the new cab was after paint was complete, and we find that the dimensions changed slightly. So, now that you're caught up to speed, what we have is a hood that fits the grille shell fine, but sits up too high on the back side by about an inch on each side and the radius doesn't match...







I had originally told John we could slice down through the radius from the back to just shy of the front and add a pie wedge to add the inch needed at the back. So we pulled the hood loose this evening to see where we would have to make the cuts to install the wedge and also fit the radius of the cab....





Now using a true pie wedge would also give us compounding shrinking effects where the HAZ of each crossed at the front of the hood. As a possible remedy, we looked at making a wider slice, radius on the front end, widen to what was needed, and cut the filler to fit...



The more we looked at this and all the welds, trimming, etc that would be needed, it became clear that a totally new hood could be made in about the same amount of time and give a much nicer job in the end. So it looks like we're ordering more 16 gauge steel and have a hood to make in addition to all the fender work..
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