57 Ranchero based on Fairlane?

[Jeff Norwell]

Looking great John.

[jvo]

Okay, summer is past, time to get busy.  Got the quarter panels from Alvin some time ago, and I sure wish I had that whole car to start this with.  Would have saved me a lot of work. 
So, this post is about the quarter panel patches I decided to do.  I have new EMS panels, but the quarters from Alvin are so nice that I am using them.  It will save me a four foot long weld in the middle of the body lengthwise.  Also, another big reason is that the only part of these that are bad is the extreme bottom, and the EMS panels don't come with the little flange on the bottom anyway.  So regardless of which quarter I use, I have to make that.

You can see the bottom flange of the old panel that has the spot welds drilled out is sorta okay, but its pretty easy to make, so I think I might replace that. 
You can also see the new EMS panel doesn't have that flange to put the spot welds in.  The panel stops short of going there, and there isn't enough material to bend a flange.  Has to be added on to a brand new panel.  Doesn't make any sense to me.

[jvo]

Most of this panel is in really nice shape, but the top of the wheel well is perforated some, and pitted heavily in some areas. 
This is how I made the patch.  I didn't want to cut the new EMS panel up just for this little patch. 
Made a paper pattern the way Peter Tommasini taught us in his metal shaping class.  Use magnets to hold butcher paper in place, and a neat little trick he does.  Cut the wood off the side of a carpentry pencil to expose a couple inches of the lead.  Then you can rub that over the creases in the panel to show the body lines.

After that, use a sharp scribe to cut through the paper and make little scribe marks about an eighth of an inch long, leave an eight of an inch of paper, then another mark.  Once you remove the paper, you have the body line.

I used the tipping wheel in my bead roller to tip the body lines, and hand hammered the roll or curvature into the panel, over a post dolly. This pic is the roughed out patch, lots of work to do to it yet.

[jvo]

My lines with the tipping wheel were not perfectly symmetrical to the original panel, so I made another pattern from the paper pattern to some scrap 20 gauge sheet metal.  ( Only reason I keep 20 gauge around is to make profile gauges and such.)

Once I got a perfect pattern sheet metal gauge, I transferred the better lines to my roughed out patch.  Then I hand hammered the lines over another post dolly, (sorry didn't take a pic of the sharp edged dolly, but I probably should have) and the lines were much nicer, and in the right places.
After the patch panel was made to my satisfaction, I proceeded to clamp it to the original so as to scribe it and cut the old piece out.  I marked the front and rear, and left a little of the old panel on the rear end, just so I could match the body lines up in the proper place.  That piece will be cut off afterwards.
Also, in some of these pics, you might notice that after I did an initial marking, I cut the fender flange out so I could match the new flange with the old flange front and rear.  With the old flange in place, you can't get the patch to move up high enough to properly scribe it in the proper place.  Hope that makes sense.

[jvo]

I don't normally have to put this many clamps on, but the shape of this patch necessitated that, as it wouldn't sit down on the old panel without a bunch of clamps.  Hard shape to make so it fits perfectly without any clamps.
I guess I didn't take any pics of cutting the old stuff out, but that's pretty straightforward.  I use a combination of .045 cutting discs on my 4 1/2 angle grinder to get rid of most of it, then use aviation snips to get really close, then I sand with a 3 inch sanding disc, to get an almost perfect zero gap for tig welding.
The spots you see here are mig.  I always spot weld panels in with mig, as I can use one hand to help fit, and its much easier.

[jvo]

After its spot welded in place, its time to grind the tops off the mig spot welds.  I used to tig weld right over top of them and melt them in, but found it was a bad idea, as I had to stop at each spot weld a little longer, to melt in the extra metal of the spot weld.  That caused a big lump of material on the backside of the panel as well as much more warpage. 
So now I do it like I was taught.  Yeah, I got lazy.  Grind the tops off the mig spots, then tig weld the whole thing in one pass, then deal with whatever warpage I get.
This particular panel was almost zero warpage, as its on a high crown area.  It turned out very nice.
Patch fully tig welded in place, a little grinding of the weld bead, down to flush with the rest of the panel.  I use those 3M green wheels that are 3/16 inch wide.  They don't cut into the parent metal if you get off the weld bead like the skinny little ones do.
Then the backside of the panel gets the weld ground flush so I can metal finish it.

[jvo]

Still a bunch of hammer and dolly work to do before we are done.  So far I haven't had to use a shrinking disc to take down any highs yet.  Because the weld is on a fairly high crown area, it held its shape quite nicely.  The last couple pics show it done.  It is about 95 per cent metal finished, and shouldn't need any bondo, if the rest of the repair goes this good. 
I did run a vixen file over the weld to cut any remaining highs off the weld bead. 
Then had to run orbital sander over the panel so it would photograph nicely. 

That's all folks.  I need to do the other side, but there isn't any need to document that unless I run into some unforeseen issue that someone might find of interest. 
As I stated earlier, I'm not sure if I will replace the weld flange on the bottom of the panel yet.  Its not really that rusty, just ugly as sin from drilling out all the spot welds.  But its an easy repair, and I probably won't be happy till I do it. 

[Limey57]

Excellent work, I love to see repairs metal finished where hardly any bondo is used.  I did the same repairs on my Ranchero but managed to score a pair of repair panels from the early 1960's for the wheel arches and formed the inner arch repair using a shrinker/stretcher tool, but I didn't have quite as much rust as you're dealing with.

Keep posting, I love to see metalwork!

[rmk57]

Very nice work!

[57 imposter]

Holy cow! and I thought I had a project. Great idea and should provide almost endless hours of head scratching. I know On my project that really proved to be one of the fun parts. To take an idea and figure out how to get it done so that when you stand back and look at, it looks like something that could have come out of the factory. Loved the picture of the streched cab and the four door was awesome. Good luck and keep posting pictures.

[jvo]

I think I mentioned somewhere else on the site that I did something sacrilegious.  My brother gave me a GM 12 bolt rearend with 3.42 ratio and an almost brand new Auburn posi unit.  I was going to narrow my 57 rearend so as to be able to put larger tires on the back with ease, but its the perfect width for my 40 Ford pickup project that is down the road a ways.  If I have to narrow a rearend and buy axles, I chose to do it to this FREE 12 bolt GM rearend.  Sorry to the purists, can't help it, I am cheap and broke.

In doing this swap, I have been reading you other guys' posts on now the disc brake rears make it slightly easier to change tires as well, so I figured I would do that while I am at it.  I do a lot of reading and research and came up with my own low buck plan.
I went with Ford axle ends on the GM rear end and did away with the c clip axles. The Mustang rear disc brake swap looked fairly easy, so I went with a variant of that. 
In reading and research on the internet, I wanted rear calipers with good e brakes, and I read a lot of comments on the old Cadillac style calipers that everyone has used for decades but there were a lot of negative comments on how well the e brake mechanism worked.
I stumbled across a few articles on these "varga" style of calliper, as I think they are called.  The Mustang guys seem to like them, and I read somewhere that the early 90's Merkurs and Sables had them as standard equipment.  That led me to the Merkur site, where I read everything I could find on them. 
Then I read there that someone posted the varga calipers were the same as the early 2000's Lincoln LS calipers, except that the Lincoln caliper had a more conventional style of emergency brake cable in that it went straight forward the same way our 57 Ford cables are routed.  The Mustang and Merkur and Sable calipers have the e brake cables coming out of the caliper at a right angle to what I wanted it to go, as in, not towards the front of the car.
So now, I was onto the Lincoln LS calipers.  They seemed to be what I wanted.  I found a set really cheap on ebay, and bought them.  I was working away on the project, making brackets and such, and one of my friends asked me why I had one aluminum caliper and one cast iron one.  I hadn't noticed that up until that particular moment and now I'm quite disgusted.
Back to Ebay, and doing more research on what had these aluminum calipers.  After a couple more sleepless nights and some late night reading, I found that the Jaguar cars that are built on somewhat the same platform as the Lincoln LS have these aluminum calipers. 
Did a search for rear calipers for those Jaguar cars, and came up with another pair of calipers for 45 bucks, that were both aluminum.  They came and were in very nice shape, and lightweight as well. 

Also, in doing my research, I should mention that in the beginning, I noticed that the Mustang GT had these optional "anti moan brackets" and I bought a pair of them for 25 bucks.  They were a god send in that I was able to bolt them to the rear end housing, and used them for the bolt spacing for the manufacture of the caliper brackets.  I made up some 3/8 plate brackets that used 3 bolts on the axle ends, and then transfer punched the caliper mounting bolt holes from the anti moan brackets.  I also traced the outer dimensions of the anti moan brackets to the plate steel caliper brackets and cut them out on the band saw, then ground and filed the edges.  Real easy way to make the caliper brackets.
After that, it was just a matter of mounting the Mustang GT discs and measuring for a couple of spacers that I spot welded to the back end of the brackets to centre the discs in the calipers. 

[jvo]

It all seems to have worked out in the end.  I won't know how well it works till I get the car up and running, but I think it will be just fine.
Now, I have to say I was doing research on how to hook up the emergency brake cables.  Since these calipers were from a Jaguar car, 2003, if I remember, I started doing some research on the cables for those cars.  I do a lot of research on ebay, as I like the descriptions and pics.  In one of the ebay ads, they had the length of the cables listed, and it said they were 26" long if I remember correctly.  They had some pretty good pics in the ad, so I took the chance and bought them.  Cost me less than 40 bucks if I remember correctly for the pair of cables.  I got them home and turns out I think they are the perfect length.  They slipped right into the 57 Ford emergency brake cable brackets on the frame.  I got really lucky here, unless someone can tell me from the pics where I might have some problems with these.  I should be able to make up a couple of cable links to attach them to the stock 57 Ford cables, I am hoping.  We will see when the time comes for that, I guess.  For now, it looks like a winner, and I don't have much cash tied up in this rear brake project if it doesn't work. 

OH, and if anyone is wondering why I have washers on the outside of the discs, on the wheel studs, they are there so they don't get lost when I remove the discs.  The chassis is outside, so I take the discs off so they won't rust till I get this thing operational.  I put the washers on when the discs are removed, cause the wheel nuts bottom out without the discs in place on the mock up mag wheels I am using as rollers.  Those thick washers simulate the discs, so I can tighten up the wheel nuts.

[jvo]

Only problem so far, was when I mocked up the calipers and e brake cables after mounting the Tahoe sway bar, I found I had to rotate the sway bar ahead on the housing mounts slightly so the e brake cables had proper clearance to run under the sway bar without interference.  The last pic above shows the clearance after moving the sway bar.  I might end up running a totally different sway bar afterwards anyway, so that isn't written in stone, but I am hoping the e brake cable will be.
This last pic shows the best shot of the Mustang GT anti moan bracket that I used for making the pattern for the caliper mounting bracket.

[RICH MUISE]

Looks like a nice bit of engineering to make it all come together. I'm curious because of the late model of the disc brakes...what are the rotor dia's? Are they large enough to create a wheel size fitment problem?

[jvo]

The rotors are Mustang GT 10 1/2 inch diameter.  I didn't think I needed super large rear disc brakes. Only reason I went with discs, is to hopefully gain the easiest possible method to r&r wheels and tires without disassembling the back end of the car. A bunch of you guys have stated that discs make it easier to remove wheels, and I can see the reasoning behind that.  My mock up wheels are an old set of ET aluminum 5 spoke mags, and they clear the discs fine.  They are 15 x 7, with I "think" 3 1/2 inch back spacing.  I plan on running a set of steel wheels with the Ford dog dish hubcaps when done, but I don't want to buy a set till I get the body and wheel wells done, so I don't have to buy them twice.
The calipers just clear the inside "hat" of the Mustang rotors by about 3/16 of an inch.