The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Door repair

Can someone give me pointers on repairing a rustout on the lower outside skin of a '40 door? This is about 2-3" above the bottom. I do have a mig but am a newbie there.
Dennis

I skinned both my doors for my 39 due to the same problem. Bought skins from Jim Carter. I wish I had just made a patch that would lip the frames. The replacement skins fit like %^*&. It was a complete waste of money. It took way longer to fit them and smooth them out than a patch would have.

That's what I'm thinking of doing. Just cut the bottom of the skin off and replace it. Would the best way be to butt weld?
Dennis

I replaced the bottom 3 inches of the doors on my 39, I clamped the new metal to a piece of angle to begin forming the edges that wrap around the door structure and finished bending them around with light blows slowly working untill i had a nice lip. I then cut the old section of door skin out smaller than the new patch, placed the patch in place and marked the exact cut line using the patch as the template. Butt welded them up they came out great. I am at no means a bodyman, however this was fairly easy. The one thing i would do different in the future would be to make the patch a little bigger to make hammer and dolly work easier. Good luck..........Dale

Hey Dale, where do you get the metal and what do you ask for?
Dennis

Two towns over there is a metal stamping business which lets us route through their dumpster. I have not had to pay for any steel yet, we even find stuff that bent, channel, even louvered so unfortunately i cannot answer your questions. However, there are plenty of people here that can, and probably will, answer your questions. Maybe you can cut a section out,check the yellow pages and find a source that you can bring it to and they might be able to tell you what you need.If you get lucky,they will have a dumpster also ................Dale