My Hellhole Repair Options

[Tenner]

As I have written before in Superhawk996 thread, I build the inner longitudinal myself. However, it took more than 6 months for me to come to a useful conclusion and 3-4 attempts with different approaches. The aim was to form the longitudinal from one piece of sheet metal to have as few welds as possible at the end. The starting point was, except for the first attempt, a 1000x500mm large, 1.2mm thick steel sheet. At the first attempt, I first put down the lower edge and then brought the rounding into the metal sheet with a stretching and compression device. At the end of the procedure, the lower edge lay flat on the repair panel of the inner wheelhouse.






In the next step, the second "edge" had to be bent. Since this edge is less an edge than a curve, I built a tool to bend the sheet.





The top edge / rounding and the first attempt was done ...



basically quite good, but unfortunately I had to realize that the part was a bit short. When fitting, I noticed that the sheet metal at the longitudinal in the passenger compartment was very thin. I had to cut much more out of the longitudinal. In addition, my repair sheet was 1.5mm and not as original 1.2mm.

The second attempt was a single failure, too short at the front, too long at the back and too little material in the width.

For the 3rd attempt, I ordered 1.2mm sheet metal and started again. Since the 1st edge already has a rather complex shape and the forming with the stretching and compression tool was a pita, I made a knocking mold out of a 1m long angle iron.






The sheet metal is clamped in between and the sheet has its profile. Then the edge is shaped with a hammer.