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Old 08-04-2011, 10:11 PM
fbrown fbrown is offline
Senior Chief
 
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Marietta GA
Posts: 387
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Quote:
You don't have to have severe vision problems to have trouble aligning sheet metal.
I line panels OK if there are no problems with them, I removed the whole front end from my 77 CAD. It took about an hour to align the Cadillac and I even had to determine where the shims went since the ink on my bagged and marked shims had faded too much to read. The Cadillac however had no issues when I took it apart. The Lemans on the other hand is a Frankenstein collection of parts that don't fit together very well.

I really think I should have been able to tell there was more of a problem with front corner being to low before I got to this stage. I think my sight failed me.


Tonight I tried to push the corner up with my 10 ton body jack placed between the floor and the corner of the fender. This was a totally useless exercise. I all ended up doing was to lift the corner of the car off the ground. Didn't push anything back into shape.

While looking at the bulge and bend measurements, I marked force vectors on the fender to predict where I thought the start of the bend is. At this point I remembered I had pictures of the fender when I first received it. Here is a picture of the fender as received, the pink arrow is where I predicted the start of the bend is.

Looks like I need to take the fender off and beat it some more in the area of the pink arrow with a BFH. Looks like I stopped beating a little too soon.



Well I'm about to go pull the fender and see if I can beat it into shape.

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68 Lemans - GTO appearance LS3
68 Eldorado - waiting for restoration
96 Roadmaster Wagon
2014 Infiniti Q50S Hybrid
Marietta GA