Step one. Bought the van.
Hello Everybody, First post. I camp a lot in tents but after spending three days straight in a tent in the rain at Dolly Sods I swore I'd make a change. Here it is. Bought it Wednesday. Dro...
Forum Discussion
continued ...
With the front and the back plate in place the end needs to be closed off. If you have a Ford van you probably know that the way the body is built that there is a recess just forward of the rear wheel well where the front and back parts of the body are joined. This is a perfect place for water and road salt to collect and cause rust. If you look at enough older Ford vans you'll see several with rust problems in the exact same spot as mine.
This looks like a design flaw to me so I'm not going to bother replicating it. I'll close the end off and try to make it flush with the front and back. Do it in two parts. The first part will be the lower section. I'm making these out of 20 gauge.
Weld in place.
I had help as I worked.
The second piece was going to be more difficult. It had to transition from the recess at the upper part of the wheel well to the flush part on the bottom without leaving a flat spot for debris/water to collect. With the way the inner fender is constructed I couldn't bend it to it's final shape and and still get a tight fit. Bent it as much as I could and still get it to fit in there then used the pointy end of a chipping hammer to keep banging away on the metal till it was formed to fill in the gaps on the inner edges.
Weld it in place.
At this point I grabbed onto all this new metal added to the van and started pulling and pushing on it. It was rock solid. Only then did I start to think I might actually be able to fix this.
continued
With the front and the back plate in place the end needs to be closed off. If you have a Ford van you probably know that the way the body is built that there is a recess just forward of the rear wheel well where the front and back parts of the body are joined. This is a perfect place for water and road salt to collect and cause rust. If you look at enough older Ford vans you'll see several with rust problems in the exact same spot as mine.
This looks like a design flaw to me so I'm not going to bother replicating it. I'll close the end off and try to make it flush with the front and back. Do it in two parts. The first part will be the lower section. I'm making these out of 20 gauge.
Weld in place.
I had help as I worked.
The second piece was going to be more difficult. It had to transition from the recess at the upper part of the wheel well to the flush part on the bottom without leaving a flat spot for debris/water to collect. With the way the inner fender is constructed I couldn't bend it to it's final shape and and still get a tight fit. Bent it as much as I could and still get it to fit in there then used the pointy end of a chipping hammer to keep banging away on the metal till it was formed to fill in the gaps on the inner edges.
Weld it in place.
At this point I grabbed onto all this new metal added to the van and started pulling and pushing on it. It was rock solid. Only then did I start to think I might actually be able to fix this.
continued
