Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeke
The moldings you have will be a thicker gauge malleable AL alloy. Modern AL bodied cars or exterior components are thin and AL has no memory like steel. Using a hammer and dolly on AL is not recommended unless it is of sufficient gauge and can be heated to anneal it while working it.
Actually the smaller more shaped pieces can be more easily repaired than a large door or hood skin. The way you've straightened out the air cooled deck lid grilles tells me you can do this. There is a lot of YT info on annealing with a carburizing flame using your air/fuel torch.
You can do a lot with wallpaper and window screen rollers. Wood blocks, etc. A metal shop just about needs a wood shop to make bucks, forms and the like.
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Thanks Milt. The 68.5-73 decklid grille ribs are surprisingly easy to reform because:
1. You have an extremely controlled environment in the tooling
2. You can use a shocking amount of force
The combination of the two allows for perfect reforming. But carrying into SWB grilles up to early 68, that recipe can't be applied for a variety of reasons, namely they are solid and don't have continuous curve throughout the widths. So you have to create a modular jig to capture the ends and different lenghts of the inside, then most like heat and apply force, evenly, which is a major issue.
But for a 1964 F series grille, if any portion of the grille has been pressed in or twisted or hit lightly or gashed, because it's a truck, correcting those flaws is a serious job with an open environment. Same with the new stuff that has just come in. I would love to just give an aluminum body guy a dented piece and have it come back straight. I don't have the time nor the bandwidth to do it myself.
The gauge is very thin btw, same as early 911 quarter window deco strips.
