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

I'm replaceing the inner and outer lower panels on my 59 drivers door. The inner panel went well and so did the outer until I got carried away with grinding the welds and warped it. I have about a 1/2 inch belly about 7 inchs up from the bottom, and 3 inchs in from each side. Did I ruin this door or can I save it somehow? Heat shrinking does not seem to help much. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike

Did you buy this door and patched it? Or is the door off the truck and fit before you did the work?

It's the original door. I replaced the outer skin with a 7 inch patch panel. It fits fine, but now I have that bow in it.

Contrary to popular belief, metal doesn’t stretch or expand when it is heated or welded, it shrinks.
When the metal shrinks it loses surface area which is why you have a huge low spot.
Farther heat shrinking is only shrinking that metal even farther and taking you away from where you want to be.
The ONLY repair for this damage is to stretch it back out. You need to get a hammer and dolly or some type of metal bar or spoon and get it behind the seam. From the topside you hit the dolly (which is underneath the weld seam from the inside of the door) with the hammer which will stretch the metal back out, thus removing all your warpage.
Since the ONLY physical change you made to the metal was at the weld seem that is the ONLY area you need to address. All the surrounding warpage is a DIRECT result of you welding and the metal shrinking. You focus on stretching the shrunken metal back out and the warpage disappears. The warpage around the weld is simply there because the shrunken weld has placed tension on the panel and the metal has to give somewhere, thus the creation of warpage. Remove the tension, the panel relaxes and the warpage goes away.
You stretch out ONLY the weld seem and the HAZ or Heat Affected Zone, which is the area surrounding the weld on both sides which turned blue. This metal is the shrunken metal and the ONLY metal you need to focus on.
Use the hammer and dolly and hit the dolly directly sandwiching the metal between the two effectively stretching the metal back out to its original contours.

Now if you heat shrunk other areas then all bets are off.

Not the best video in the world but its what I found quickly.

Notice the guy placing the dolly from underneath and hitting it with a hammer from the topside.

Once again they are doing this to stretch the metal back out because welding and heat SHRINKS METAL!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=WRqbdKZAzoU&feature=related

svet's right... if you ever saw hammer welding done you'd know what he's talking about. I once saw two guys hammer weld right down the center of a quarter panel with an oxy-acetelene torch and when they were done all they needed was a little primer and putty.