and another..................furgone

[lancianut666]

Looks amazing, it is a place I will be at when I start on mine. if the mould works the Appia Spares consortium would be interested in the production of further repair panels as I guess by looking at your pictures and my own car the area is a definite problem.
Clarkey

[Dikappa]

@david: I used a 'home made' bending tool (see pictures below) and a good (important) vise.  The mould is mainly made of 15x15mm steel bar, as this fits nicely in the channel by the door.
I will try to do some more testing this week, maybe by trying to get the paneel more or less into shape before driving the door side chandel.  (as on the test panel yesterday I made a small rupture in the panel by stretching it too much.)

@clarkey: well I hope to get it right, but this will take some experimenting and material loss.  But I can already confirm this mould will not fit 3rd series cars (I have one here) but I do hope it will fit 1st series cars (as I have one awaiting restoration, but did not yet persent the mould to it (will be difficult as wings and doors still attached)

But it's an interesting exercise, as indeed most appias and even aurelias suffer in that area.

[Dikappa]

some progres on the panel, it fits the mould, still have to do some planishing and the edges, but it looks promising.
I thought I could do most of the stretching and shrinking with the eckold, but ended up hamering the panel into shape on the mould, sometimes doing some corrective stretching and shrinking as the edged more and more deformed.
I used the eckold for planishing, but feel there must be better solutions for that.  Now as most of the panel will be covered with a good coat of underbody seal in the end this is maybe not so important, but still it's a nice excercise to make a properly finished panel.

[frankxhv773t]

Returning to a couple of earlier points;

I believe heavy commercials have a white stripe so there seems to be a graded system in there somewhere.

[DavidLaver]

Its looking good.

Just looked on Google and it says that eckold do a hand former.  All the same I assume you mean their air hammer. 

David

[frankxhv773t]

I also meant to say that surely Lancia built commercials because they profitable. Discerning hauliers want well made durable vehicles and Lancias were some of the finest.

During WW11 in north Africa the 3RO was prized by all armies. See long range desert group below.

[Dikappa]

For David some info on the eckold.
The machine is indeed a schrinker/stretcher, not on air power but driven by an electric motor and a gigantic flywheel.  This results in enormous forces.  The one I was Lucky to get my hands on is build 1953 or 1954 and is called a 'fokker' eckold, as these machines where custom made for the Fokker airplane plant.  So the machine is even older then the appia I'm working on!
The advantage of this particular type is that it has a footpedal that can inmediately disrupt the schrinking or stretching, which is very convenient for less experienced users (like myself)
It's amazing how powerfull the schrinking or stretching works, and it needs very carefull 'tuning' or it will destroy the workpiece in a matter of seconds.  However if adjusted carefully it is a wonderfull piece of equipment.

Luckily spares for tools are still available from eckold (even for this 'aged' machine), and I recently ordered the necessary spares to get it fully operational. (quite an investment I must admit)
It will however take a lot of time (and sheet metal) to get to fully take advantage of it, so now I try to play with it every now and then..

[DavidLaver]

What a beast!!!   While you may have been lucky to have found it and to have the space, I have huge respect for having got it working, tooled up, and getting some proper work from it.  There are some period "aircraft sheet metal" books, I wonder if any of those have tips.  I expect like most such things it comes down to time hands on and being willing to waste some metal with experiments.  There are some books by Timothy Remus (just checked on Amazon that I had the name right) which boil down to photo stories of visits to people, I've half a memory of something like this in one of those.

David

[fay66]

David,
you could always make yourself one!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPTLwmxsWc


Brian
8227

[DavidLaver]

That's quite a machine...

With bodywork - at the end of the day - all these tools are "only" time savers and it can be as basic as "hit it with a stick".  Sand bag, dished block of wood, a bit of steel plate, some body hammers and some wooden hammers.  All the machine does is help you make a mess of it all the quicker!!!

Thinking about it the big lie above is that an Eckold will do a lot of shrinking...while "hitting it with a stick" will only stretch.  The basic, hand tool, shrinking method of twisiting crimps in and then flattening is really only an option very close to the edge.

David