Making a pair of mudguards

[Custom Metalshapers Ltd]

Hi Guys,

I recently made a pair of new guards for an old WW2 Steyr 1500A. The sample guard came from my 1944 Auto Union built lorry that was abandoned by the Wehrmacht in France around the Falaise area. It was used by a French garage after the war and salvaged as a barn find in the late 1980s.

Anyway, this is the first large project to test out all the new gear I imported last year. I used a lot of ideas for buck construction from True Metalshaping's Facebook page. I copied the guard and cut out a LH and RH buck. I made paper templates as usual and used the Kurtis Kraft thumbnail dies in the Yoder and 24" and 12" dies in the #2 Pettingell. I used the radius gauge a lot during this build to correctly select the correct die for the power hammers and the Clay Cook CP hammer.

the front and rear panel had the outer edge shrunk and the inside shoulder stretched with the 12" die. the inner edge of the guard had practically no stretching and the return formed nicely with only minor tweaking needed. I did some isolated blocking to get the panel over the buck here and there and smoothed the lumps fast in the hammer.

the 2 wheel arch sections were largely formed with the shrinking dies. I found I needed to block these panels over a sandbag to get them sitting over the buck right though- more practise needed on the thumbnail dies! The radius of the outer wheel arch was 3" so Joe Andrews new lower anvils I had just imported for the Ranalahs worked well to smooth this shape.

I used the CP hammer for general smoothing but I reverted to the wheel to final finish and smooth out across the return sections. I cant say I tried to smooth across a return with the hammers yet. The welding was straight forward and I smoothed each weld in the hammer or wheel before putting the whole assembly together. The outer edge was scribed, turned up in the jenny and the wired edge hand finished. Minimal hammer and filing was needed. I had a go with the hand held CP but there is a steep learning curve with that tool. Most of the blending required around the weld areas was off dolly work so again Im not sure what the machine method is for that work.

I have some more work on the shop's facebook page under Custom Metalshapers Ltd
If anyone could ID some of the cars in the NZ roadtrip album I'd be grateful.

Oh- If the emblem on the mudguard offends anyone I'll have a go at editing the picture. The truck represents a vehicle in Rommel's Afrika Korps for its relevance to NZ war history and therefore has the palm tree insignia.

Ill post a few more pics later.

[RockHillWill]

VERY nice. I am no expert, but that sure is a nice looking panel with excellent welds. Thanks for sharing. Nice wooden buck as well.

[Kerry Pinkerton]

Wow Tony!

You sir, are one of the best. Beautiful work. Please post more photos if you have them.

[Irrational Metalworks]

Awesome work!

[HEATNBEAT]

FANTASTIC ! I think that pretty much sums it up!

[redoxide]

another excellent piece of work.

do you have any "in progress" pics during the shrinking stage on the inner side ..

Its always good to see how out of shape stuff sometimes gets before it reaches the flawless finnished item...

keep em comming..

[ekdave1962]

wow and wow makes my effort on my chev guards look like scrap metal :-)

[Dave Deyton]

Super nice, great welds. You do great work. Good job of saving history.
Thanks for posting.

Dave

[ozi jim]

That is awesome.

so clean.

Jim

[Custom Metalshapers Ltd]

Thanks for the comments.
A few more pics including a buck I made for my guards a few years ago. that got sent to the tip.

I usually use a set of Knipex pliers to close the wire super tight. they have flat jaws and don't mark the work.