Rockers

I'll be posting pictures of the '58 Varitone on our website sometime in the very near future. We have kept this one mostly off the map until now. ;)

We are going to need patches to the rockers. Any chance that someone may have one or two they didn't use?

-BMC.

Brian, I'm very excited to see what you've been up to with that Varitone. I have two outer rockers that the previous owner of my Magnette made himself on a brake. They didn't have the nice details that the panels from Shortens have (front and rear contours and the inward widening strip at the rear) but seemed to be decent reproductions otherwise. I can dig them out and take measurements if you have any interest. Here is a photo:

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the offer. What we are going to try for: Replace the front section of the rocker and leave the majority of it.

We may need to cut the bad section out and have the rest media blast before making this decision. My thought on teh panel is if we can find something with the exact profile, it would be an easy fix. So far, its just the right front corner, about the first 12" that needs replacement.

Do you know how close those follow the original profile? I can't quite tell from that angle.

-BMC.

I'll take a profile shot in the next few days. If nothing else, you can see them in person at the BMTA conference.

Ed,

Your killing me! I'm not able to make it this year. You can't believe how much it means to me to miss this. Find me a HUGE reason to attend PLEASE- I'm begging you!!! I already have relatives and clients in your area, parts that you have, people I would like to meet and other shops like yours I would love to visit. I'm dyin' here!

-BMC.

This is a picture of the original sill endcap profile against a new reproduction rocker from the UK. I salvaged as much of the original sills as I could, mostly so someone with more talent than I could reprocuce them if needed. I can take more pictures next time I'm near the car.

Have you media blasted or wire brushed the outer sills yet? I had some small rust pinholes in the front areas of my sills as well, and I was also hoping that I could just replace the front section of the outer sill. Unfortunately, I think you may find that if you have any rust-through at all you may have issues with your inner sills as well, and at the very least the rest of the rockers are not far behind.

I am in the same boat. I have some perforation in the L/F sill and am hoping that I can get away with just replacing the front half on that side.
The inner shouldn't be a big deal to fabricate. I am just hoping that the profile of the new sill matches the original, or is at least close enough to get away with.
Worst case, I have to replace the whole sill.

Rich

Hey Ed, you just need to make sure your at the shop during the next big snowstorm so your snowed in, not out, and then you can get more done! I think rust pin holes on the outside are almost always the tip of the ice burg. Enough of the snow and ice! Ed

Rich, I don't think you're going to get away with matching the profiles of your new and old sills. It might not be clear from the picture I posted, but the profile of the repro sills is very different from the original. The dimensions work out fine, and they will fit the inner sills very well and look great, but the height of the curved portion is different as is the radius. I would guess that if you only replaced the sill on one side of the car, only .1% of the people who looked at it would notice that the passenger and driver side sills were slightly different. While I am rooting for you and hope that you only have to do the minimum amount of work, you should probably prepare to replace the whole sill on that side.

On a side note, I'm finding it a bit more difficult than I thought to fabricate the end caps of the sills properly. I was trying to get fancy, but I think what I'm going to settle for is cutting the profile out of sheet metal and then bending and welding the tabs to the edges to hold it to the sills.

Is this what you had in mind Mark? Fortunately I don't need to replace my sills (rockers), Just tidy up the job done by the DPO.

Andy

This is how he left it!

I welded the patch to the bulkhead and along just the top edge of the sill, the curved part is sealed against the inside face of the sill end with dumdum putty. The putty melted a bit with the heat!