EMS Patch Panels

[RICH MUISE]

Bama, in my humble opinion I really don't think there is a problem to be straightened out. If it were me, I'd order the ems quarter without worrying about it. There may be some minor adjustments to be made, but if you have the skills to replace the quarter, any adjustments that need to be made are just part of the project.
when you're talking 50 year old cars, isolated problems,  legitimate or not, are not necessarily indicative of the norm, and I think that is the situation here. As I mentioned earlier...too many positive results from too many users to think otherwise.   just mho Rich

[RICH MUISE]

ems...welcome aboard..you were posting yours while I was typing my last one. GLAD TO SEE i WAS WRONG ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT THEY'D LET YOU ON... and might you be Alexander?  Rich

[suede57ford]

The EMS is such a great improvement over what we had to work with.   It has helped my brother and I get many '57 Fords solid again.

I have a some perfect rust free original fenders examples and other items that I would be willing to loan to EMS to help perfect some of the detail items, especially the front fender inner brace panel.   I use my originals as examples to modify the stuff I have had to buy from the sheet metal vendors.  I also have access to a few NOS panels and other perfect rust free panels that could be used as patterns for other parts considered in the future. They are for loaning only as I am saving those parts for my other '57s.

The inner fenderwell battery tray area repair that EMS is considering would be a real help, as good inner fenderwells are impossible to find.

The new taillamp panel was a great item that we really needed.  I do have a NOS one saved, but I plan to use an EMS one instead.

I did have a problems with the front quarter patches with no lower lip to attach to the lower rocker, but i added a strip like IAMFLASHMAN did.

I like the coating that EMS put on the panels.   It really helps prevent future rust.

Thank you EMS for your effort in making improvments in our parts that we really needed.

[canadian_ranchero]

the fords and meteors are the same except for grill and trim changes.if your car has the 118 inch wheel base you need to use parts off the 118 w/b fords.the rear panels are different between the 116 and 118 inch cars.i test fitted a ems rear quarter [rear half] on my ranchero looks like a good fit. 

[ems customer service]

I did have a problems with the front quarter patches with no lower lip to attach to the lower rocker, but i added a strip like IAMFLASHMAN did.


the issue is when we designed the tooling the public opinion at that time was   "the  spot weld flange did not matter" and guys would not spend more money for it ( it does cost tooling dollers and material dollers).  we know better now, but since the tooling is made it would have to wait until the tooling needs to be redone if that ever happens. so we are left with a panel that is good, but missing a minor feature

the ems guy

[BAMA_57]

EMS, thanks for the update and all the great parts. In regard to the full 1/4s I was just hoping, I know they have them for the Chevy's and they manage to ship them, but I guess there is less demand for ours. Thanks for addressing it.
Ron

I hope this problem gets straitened out, I need to replace the right 1/4 for my 500 but not from rust (body damage). I wonder if EMS will ever produce a full 1/4 panel? Most of my damage is down low and I can make it work with the patches but I would LOVE a full piece. 
Ron

[JimNolan]

Guys and EMS,
     The idea that the expense of manufactoring better parts would somehow diminish the ability to make a part profitable doesn't make sense. ( This is in reference to the one piece rear quarters and the front quarter lip ). I figure there's about three different types of people that restore cars to begin with.
    The first guy researches the internet, finds out who will restore his car to perfection and sends his car to Jerry's Classic Cars to get a 60K restoration. Now we know Jerry's Classic cars will use your product because it's the best.
    The second guy doesn't have as much money as the first so he wants a little more input into the decision making when it comes to the restoration of his car. He researches the internet finds out who makes the best parts and works with his chosen local bodyshop and orders the best parts. He'll come away with about a 30K restoration, happy with the outcome although it isn't a restoration by Jerry's Classic Cars.
     The third guy has little money, limited ability but the desire to restore a car. He researches the internet looking for parts his little 110 welder won't blow holes thru everytime he touches them and parts that fit so he doesn't have to have the ability of the people at Jerry's Classic Cars to produce a good result. He looks at the price of panels and discovers theres one company with an impecable history but the price of the product is twice that of the other manufactors. He says to himself, why is one product so high and the others so low. ( This is exactly what I thought ) The answer is obvious, these people wouldn't still be in business if they didn't have twice the product. (And Lord knows I need all the help I can get). This is why the third guy with limited funds decides to use your higher priced panel. Not because of price but because what little money he has won't be wasted because of his limited talent. Jim
PS I figure most of the sales of panels are to the third guy listed above. In his research on the internet to find the best panel to fit his needs he'll find us. That's what you want.

[JPotter57]

That's a good observation Jim.  I fall into this third group myself.  I have to makeevery dollar count because of family obligations etc.  Given an unlimited budget, yes, I would send the car to Jerry or Steve.  Until I win the lottery though, I will have tobudget, restore good used parts, and do all of the work myself.  This is a good thread.

[Rideau 500]

Time to jump back in here. I am sure EMS has been waiting for the other shoe to fall.

Some of you may have seen that I do not have many posts on this site and may think I do not have much experience. This is my first 57 but I have been playing with cars since 1958 so I am not exactly a beginner.

First I want to clear one thing up. EMS keeps referring to my car as a Mercury Meteor. There was no such thing in 1957. Meteors were made by Ford of Canada from 1949 to 1961. The only difference in the panels between a Ford and Meteor was the holes for the trim, grille and trunk hardware.

There has not been much response to rear quarters for the 118 cars. Jim Nolan said his body man could not get his to fit properly. Several have said the ones for the 116 cars fit fairly well.

EMS says "the inner fender will not locate the 1/4, it is not designed to" and "a bad comparison to an unknown panel is unfair". I assume he refers to the inner quarter. I have yet to see a car where the rear quarter was not spot welded to the inner and the wheelwell all the way around. As to the comparison, in the member reviews I explained that I took the unknown panel and the EMS panel to a friends and tried them on two of his untouched cars. The unknown lined up well, the EMS did not.

There are a lot of remarks about how lucky we are to have EMS and how much better their stuff is. I have no other experience with 57 panels but going through other post there seems to be problems with rockers and by EMS own admission the front fenders and front quarters. Just weld a strip on the quarters and drill 1/4 inch hole in the rockers cause it would cost to much to make the dies to do that. Seems like they want to throw something out there and if it is not right let the customer fix it.

I was impressed when he said they had those pristine cars in a climate controlled building. I would have been more impressed if they had taken them apart so the had individual panels to copy when they wanted to reproduce another one. I do not think it is possible to make good copies of some of the panels without doing this. Example, the trunk panels. The back where it should attach to the tailpan does not fit. They made it straight and most of you will remember without even looking that the tailpan curves at the end. On top of that they have the flange bent upwards when it should go down. If they had the panels all apart I do not think they would have made that mistake. Is it fixable? Yes. Should the customer have to do that? I do not think so given that we are paying top dollar for them. I cut their flange off and made another so it now fits. I think we all expect to do some massaging but not to that extent.

I am not one to do the old cut off my nose to spite my face so I will continue to buy panels that work but I will not buy the problem ones. Hopefully if they get enough negative feedback they will try to become as good as they think they are. So that is my challenge to EMS, you say you have the best equipment and the best people so make panels we would be proud to put on our cars.

[RICH MUISE]

wow...where to start...first off..Rideau, I'm not sure what you're showing us with those 4 pics..are they ems's panels compared to someone else's? And which is which?
I'm trying to look at this whole issue as neutral as posible, drawing on my limited body panel experience, and my heavy background in machine shop manufacturing...even though it was 30 years ago and my retail experience.
I totally agree with Rideau on several things..the rear quarters not lining up on 3 different vehicles seems to substantiate what he is saying, and the flanges on the floor panels bent the oposite way seems strange. I had made a statement earlier in this post that I thought it was posible to have a bad panel because I suspected the panels were produced not in one shot, but multiple hits with multiple tooling. The ems rep sort of confimed this when he talked about secondary operations on a panel. How those secondary ops are performed may or may not lead to posible problems depending on how the parts are relocated in the tooling, or equiptment after the process has begun. are they foolproof locating dies/fixtures, or are they sight locating, depending on the skill of the operator to position them correctly?? Extensive tooling such as would be made for initial production runs for thousands upon thousands of parts would be more complicated and have foolproofing built in to make it imposible to mislocate a part. Short run production tooling would be the minimum necessary to produce acceptable parts. This is a simple expense factor..and we are not talking a few dollars, but major costs which don't just trickle down to the consumer, but muliply at each marketing stage. I don't know how many of each panels ems sells over an extended period of time, but think about it...how many '57 fords are going to be restored over say, the next ten years, How many of the new tailpans do they expect to sell? I'm pulling numbers out of the air, but if the tooling costs 30,000 to make, and they sell 200 panels, that's adding 150. in tooling costs alone for each panel at the manufacturing level..If the markup in auto supplies is the same as most retail businesses, that'll translate to 300. at retail level,and we're still just talking tooling costs. To be continued..

[RICH MUISE]

So, my first point is it seems rideau has a legitamite promblem, but so far, it also seems that it is one that is an isolated incident, and it would be interesting to compare his problem panel to another ems panel.
My second point is all the talk about "fixing" problems is not so easily done, especially in this economic climate and in most cases at much higher expense than we would figure. I think we should continue to let ems know about problems we are having, and at the same time appreciate the fact we have a company willing to invest in the expensive tooling and inventory necessary and wait the years it probably takes to recoup those expenses.  just my humble opinion   Rich

[Rideau 500]

Rich, those are both EMS panel, left and right, for the trunk floor. The one I modified is narrowed because I did not need the full width.

[JimNolan]

Rich,
  You placed an emphisis on the cost of retooling. That's understandable but I think it's over emphisized. ( EMS should jump in here ). Case in point: I worked on CNC machinery as an Elect. Tech for over 30 years. Some of these machines could cost 750K. When we couldn't get a part ( example, Hitachi Seiki going out of business) we would retrofit another motor, control or part that it needed to function properly and press on. We didn't go out and buy another 750K machine. EMS surely wouldn't have to start from scratch. Besides that ( correct me if I'm wrong ) Apple computers was one of the first home computer companys to come out. They didn't invest in software, and while they are still in business, I don't think they do as good as Microsoft. I wonder how they'd look at software investment if they had a chance to do it all over again. Cripes, I know we're talking about a small amount of sales but it might be more if you produce a more perfect product. Jim

[ems customer service]

ok it is time for me to comment,  i do not comment right away as i do not think it is not our place to overwhelm a post. 

1. the inner 1/4 is spot welded to the outer 1/4 but the inner rides on the backside and has only one flange touching the rear wheel tub. this is not enough to locate the inner and then locate the outer to the inner,  a part that is a locating part should have at least 2 preferably 3 independent points to locate the part.

2. the flange on the trunk floor piece is up instead of down, that is the way ems designed it and it was done on purpose. and we do it often for alot of parts. just copying a part is not enough you must understand the procedure for instillation. and i mean the proceedure
"average joe" will use. average joe is our target customer. having the tab up makes for easier welding while fitting the part with the trunk lid open vs crawling under the car every moment. so often things are changed to accomadate issues what ever they are. and in the hobby there are various factions of owners all taking the hobby towards their views  from high end resto like this group, to rat rodders, custom guys, resto rods,  each group has different views and needs for there cars we have to accomidate all of them.

3> as far as the flange on the 1/4 as i said at the time it was design our customers did not want the flange, customer desires have changed, but we are stuck with the tooling that we will have for sometime.

4. lower fender sections, we try to make the best part possible at that time using the best part we can find, sometimes we can not find a nos or a+ part so we make the best model we can of it and go from there an then improve from there. this does not minimize  our ability but reflects a fact of life in finding good parts.

5 i know  the old panel you show, i am not worried about fit up of our panel, i would be concerned about the so called untouched cars, there are very few of them all cars of the late 50's were rust buckets so i would bet that they also have had there panels replaced.

i think the issue with rideau 500 is that you are confused and a easy absolute answer is not forthcoming further compounding the confusion. part of they hobby is to make the car the way you want it to look. so i am not sure if you are unhappy with the parts or unhappy with the situation and ems will continue to get beat up in many forums over many topics, but we are here as part of the hobby.

[Rideau 500]

I would like to apoligise to everyone, I had not realized how confused I was until EMS pointed it out to me. Lets go point by point.

1 Not sure what you are saying here. The outer 1/4 joins the inner 1/4, wheel tub and tail pan. The inner 1/4 joins the outer 1/4, wheel tub, trunk floor and tail pan. They are all tied together and if one piece is screwed up it will all be out of whack.

2 I guess I got confused here because I have my body on a rotisserie. If I understand you correctly you are going to weld your flange to the bottom of the tail pan in a T. That would mean lying under the body and welding over your head. If the part was made as original you would be welding sideways which is easier and IMHO I do not think any of your groups would have any issues with doing it as original.

3 and 4 Two quotes. "we are stuck with the tooling that we have for sometime" and "an then improve from there". I am confused again, which one is it?

5 Now you are really starting to insult my intelligence. There really are untouched cars out there. I suppose there are some that are done so well you could not tell if a panel was replaced but if that was the case it would not matter.

6 The easy absolute answer is do not try to reinvent the wheel. Make the panels the way Ford made them and everyone will be happy.