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Old 03-01-2018, 09:03 PM
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pplace pplace is offline
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Default 1950 Mercury

This 1950 Mercury project was a past project. The customer had initially built the car many many years ago and had racked up a lot of miles using it. He decided it was time to tear it back down and rebuild it again.

I was tasked with bringing the metalwork back up to shape. As mentioned this project was done by me years ago, and I wasn't always as good as documenting my work with pictures etc. as I try to be today.

Overall there was plenty of rust repair to complete. Fabricated a new trunk floor, fabricated new inner rocker structures & outer skins, fabricated lower quarter panel sections, lower fender sections, etc.

I'll start this post off with pictures of re-doing the roof chop since frankly it's the most interesting part of the project to me The chop and look of the vehicle was spot on, but the desire to have better quality metalwork as a foundation was important to me and the customer.

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Here is a good profile picture of the chop and metal work as it started. It was a lot of patchwork, slice and dice previously. You can also see a large swale / low spot several inches in front of the rear window.

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Initially I had the silly idea to try and shape the entire width of the roof in a single panel. It didn't take me much time to cut it in half as it would have been impossible and a big hassle for me to try and manhandle that big panel in the English wheel, shrinker / stretcher, etc. all by myself!

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With the panel cut in half it was much easier for me to handle by myself! Here is a test fit of the panel, clecos holding the front in place and some clamps at the back while doing initial shaping and fitting.

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Once I was happy with the shape of the first panel, I trimmed out the previous patchwork and weld seams. (Remember we weren't changing the overall shape of the chop, but instead just cleaning and refining the metalwork)

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First half of the rear roof was welded into position

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Now I could start working my way around the rear window. I did this in smaller sections.

1. It was easier to shape smaller panels
2. This helped the roof maintain it's shape, rather than cutting out larger sections at a time.

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Here the previous section around the rear corner of the quarter window was shaped and welded into position.

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Now a larger portion of the sail panel was removed (I would have previously shaped the actual replacement panel first, but I obviously don't have a picture of that I guess)

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New sail panel section welded into position. I rough worked the welds and metalwork as I progressed and revisited it all once the entire roof was completed.

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Shaped a new lower corner section for the rear window and have cut out the previous one in preparation to weld in the new section.

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Rear window corner section set into place (not welded yet)

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Rear window corner section now welded into position.

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Removed the decklid filler panel (took this opportunity to clean up and correct some of the inner structure at this point as well)

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Panel welded into positon

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All the same work was performed on the driver's side of the vehicle as well. Overall the chop and metalwork cleaned up really well.
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  #2  
Old 03-01-2018, 09:36 PM
cliffrod cliffrod is offline
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Great pics and work- seeing the progress of the work around the perimeter of the rear window is much appreciated.

Congratulations on MSOTM.
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  #3  
Old 03-02-2018, 07:42 AM
rustreapers rustreapers is offline
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Default Shaped lower corner section

When you shaped the lower corner section why did you curve the panel at the deck lid to the quarter panel?
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  #4  
Old 03-02-2018, 08:35 AM
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pplace pplace is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rustreapers View Post
When you shaped the lower corner section why did you curve the panel at the deck lid to the quarter panel?
I don't recall for sure as this was a project from the past. Looking at pictures jogs my memory of two possibilities or a combination of the two.

1. A curved patch is better to weld into rather than a square corner
2. The trunk jamb / corner had previously been radiused by someone in the past and there were areas of brazing, so I probably figured why dig into it and reconstruct it if it wasn't totally necessary.
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Old 03-02-2018, 10:33 AM
AWM AWM is offline
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very nice
I have a 50 thats been waiting patiently for a couple decades in my shop
please post some side shot pics, that roof has a very nice flow
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  #6  
Old 03-02-2018, 06:09 PM
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In this post I'll briefly highlight some of the rust repair areas I dealt with. Again, sorry for the lack of real quality photos. I feel for the most part I'm a bit better keeping record of my work today.

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This is the lower rear brace on the front fender.

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Fabricated up a new section of the brace. A pretty basic repair, but still a repair that needed to be completed.

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Lower portion of the fenders had significant rust as well. Here the panel has already been removed in preparation for a new panel to be shaped and welded in.

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Lower portion of fender was shaped up, welded in and metalworked.

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After we dug into the rocker panels you can see that some significant repairs were necessary.

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With everything "bad" trimmed away, it was time to start fabricating the new inner rocker structure and lower portion of the b-pillar.

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Unfortunately here I was lacking on good "in progress" pics. I've jumped past the fabrication of the inner structure and this picture only shows after the door sill and the outer rocker skin have been fabricated and installed.

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A portion of the wheel lip had to be shaped up and grafted into position. Here I'm holding the damaged / replaced section next to the already shaped and installed new section.

Note the lower portion of the quarter panel has also been trimmed away and will be replaced.

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New lower section of the quarter panel was shaped up and installed.
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  #7  
Old 03-03-2018, 08:43 AM
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This post will show the changes I did around the headlight area as well as the modifications to a Kaiser bumper guard to fit the rear Mercury bumper.

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Previously the parking light area was just cut and hammered flat and filled over.

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The customer had visions of doing a sloped forward looking transition into the headlight. So I blocked in some foam so I could start carving a rough mock up.

Note: Previously someone had added "hoods" to the headlights. The customer still wanted this feature, but I removed these and refabricated them a bit nicer.

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Here the foam was carved into the rough shape to see if his vision would look good in person.

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Shaping of the new transition piece is underway....

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Here is the best picture I have of the headlight transition and redone headlight hood.

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The customer had a Kaiser bumper guard that he wanted fit to the rear bumper of the Mercury.

Here the guard was rough trimmed to get it to set in the desired position and temporary tacked into position (Eventually it was bolted on from the back side of the bumper)

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Here is a view from the opposite side showing the initial fit. You can see it obviously doesn't fit the profile shape of the bumper, but also the bottom of the guard hung well below the bumper as well.

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This picture shows the guard after I reshaped and shortened the lower corner so it transitions into the bumper at the right height.

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All that was left to do was to close up the fit for the profile of the bumper nice and tight.

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View from the another angle of the fit to the profile of the bumper.
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  #8  
Old 03-03-2018, 09:29 AM
longyard longyard is offline
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Some very dramatic improvements of the original project. Nicely done.
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Old 03-03-2018, 02:25 PM
Mr fixit Mr fixit is offline
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All I can say as a beginner seeing this is WOW what a difference from before. Your work is like night and day better than the previous work, even if it was yours or someone else. I have to say you knocked it out of the park with the light hoods and the roof rework.
Appreciate you sharing a older project!

TX
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  #10  
Old 03-03-2018, 05:41 PM
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pplace pplace is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by longyard View Post
Some very dramatic improvements of the original project. Nicely done.
Thank you

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr fixit
All I can say as a beginner seeing this is WOW what a difference from before. Your work is like night and day better than the previous work, even if it was yours or someone else. I have to say you knocked it out of the park with the light hoods and the roof rework.
Appreciate you sharing a older project!

TX
Thank you, I'm not sure when the car was originally customized, but I imagine it was maybe even done before I was alive?! Not sure exactly.

Attached are several pictures of the car assembled after the major metalwork "phase" of the project was completed.

From here, the owner and his two sons continued on with the build mechanically as well as doing all the bodywork themselves.

Once they had their portion of the project ready, they did have another shop do the finish painting (To clarify, I did not do the paintwork on this Mercury)

Lastly, the owner and the two sons did all the final assembly on the vehicle to get it to a finished point.

It turned out to be an absolutely beautiful '50 Merc in my opinion!!

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__________________
Rush too much trying to get to the end when the end is closer when you take your time.

Dane

Last edited by pplace; 03-03-2018 at 05:45 PM.
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