I am going to school to be an aircraft mechanic and we're doing sheetmetal right now. I love the IROC turbo hood, but it's expensive to buy one. Would it be cheaper/how hard would it be to get an IROC hood from a junkyard, cut out a section of it, use that section and some sheetmetal and make it into an IROC turbo hood? Opinions welcome and greatly appreciated.

 

much better to keep looking in junk yards . i suppose it is possible , but lots and lots of work to get it right . good luck in your school , hope you enjoy acft. maint. as much as i did . uncle tom , ret. A.F. and civilian acft. mech. .
[ 40 + years bending wrench's on all kinds of planes , also 89 rs ]

 

I think he's talking about a Daytona hood.

 

It depends on your welding a thin shetmetal, and bodywork skills.

For the basic, you are merely looking at slicing down the two sides, leaving the front attached, and fabbing the wedge sides.

I' know I'm over simplifying it, but basically, that's all it is. I plan on turning my GTA hood into a Jongbloe-style hood, by just cutting the top down the creases, leaving the front attached, and raising the rear by about 2". Easier said than done!

 

What you just said is exactly how I have envisioned it. Around here you can't find sweet stuff in junk yards....it's up in the sticks and everyone drives jacked up pickups, not F-bodies. I'll show my instructor pictures now and see what he thinks.

 

Instructor said it could be done, but would be difficult with the curves where those holes are. Does anyone think that the metal will warp a lot or other insight?

 

Warpage on sheetmetal will be your biggest enemy, and will depend on your skills with sheetmetal. It's not hard to warp sheetmetal until it waves at you from every direction.

Body filler afterwards is a must....Unless you wanna learn old school (ool though!) and lead it.

 

There is NO WAY that you’re going to run 2 weld beads that long that you’re not going to warp a big, almost flat panel all to hell… the metal working still will come in with getting it flat enough again to get it to look right without putting 6lbs of mud on it.

 

To trick to minimizing warping, is to not to run one continuos bead, but rather make spot welds like 6" apart, using a wet rag to cool them immediately, and working slowly. One continuous bead would certainly ruin the panel. Patience pays off.

Look at Neil's quarter panel widening. The whole rear quarter was stretched out, and the car was painted black. It take ***** of steel to paint a car black after doing such extensive panel modification, but it looks great, and no warping evident.

 

Spot welds… yes…

6” apart, usually not unless you’re working on a huge piece (which this nearly is) and you have tons of time. Usually we’re talking an inch or 2 apart

Cooling it with a rag immediately, no, not unless you’ve already stretched the metal out and are trying to get it to shrink. Otherwise, if you cool it with a rag immediately it will shrink/pinch around where you run the welds.

 

I agree a "quick cool" will cause it to pull together more........How good are you with TIG ? I was thinking about doing something similar to build a cowl hood as I have a flat hood that was given to me......we will see.
Good Luck,
Mike

 

Heh, you’d have to be a sadist to do >20’ of welds (the length of the hood 4x + a little), skipping around to dissipate heat/prevent warping with a tig torch. I mean yea, it can be done but holy crap it would take forever. I supposed that you’d be REALLY GOOD at light gauge steel by the time you finished, but I’d bet that you’d go through a couple of bottles of argon also.

I’m not sure what I think about using a TIG for this kind of work. A TIG arc is slightly cooler then mig, but it takes 3-5x as long to make the same weld with a TIG, so you’re putting A LOT more heat into the panel. Still more localized then with a Oxy/fuel, but I suspect that for at least most people you’d end up with more distortion and a greater HAZ. I suspect that the reason that some people like it for body repair is that you have much more control of filler wire deposition (like I’ll use a piece of .030 or .035” mig wire that I clamp in a vice and twist with a drill to a single “rod” for this kind of work, yea, I know I can just buy thinner filler wire but if I have it sitting around…) so you can get away with less grinding before you get to the hammer and dolly work and I suspect that a lot of people get themselves in to close to as much trouble with a grinder than with a welder…

I’d rather use the MIG usually… I’m like a surgeon with a grinder…

 

If Vintage Rest can pull it off on Neil's quarter widening, and paint it a dark blue with no warpage showing the length of the welds on the quarters, it couldn't be any worse than the lengths of them on the hood.

 

Apples and oranges…

The quarters have a big curve and are fairly rigid… the hood is almost flat and without the bracing would flap around, even with the bracing many you can get to oil can and pop back and forth. Secondly, the hood is a big flat area that attracts a lot of attention, the quarters, especially where they’re making changes attract little attention most of the time unless someone is looking for damage/crappy body work, and even when you are scrutinizing it you rarely get lighting at an angle that would show off where his seam is.

Basically, neil’s fender widening is mostly child’s play to get perfect compared to doing this to a hood (neil’s setup would take more planning, thought and probably work but the actual getting whatever you come up with right is MUCH easier), and if the quarters don’t come out absolutely perfectly they still won’t show like the hood would. Quarters wave at you if you have imperfections in them length wise (so you can see them sighting down the side of the car), but even most monkeys can get horizontal problems to disappear in them.

Now I’m not saying that the hood can’t be done, of course it can. I am saying that it’s one hell of a tough first project for someone without experience. In a lot of ways, this would be much easier to build up the detail that he’s looking for on a flat hood (either completely from scratch or by cutting it out of a second hood) then it would be to make it all out of one hood, just because the complete hood would still have it’s structure to keep it flat and the same basic size/shape. If that’s not an option, I would heavily brace the hood, protect the engine, reinstall it on the car, shim all the gaps so there is no room for it to move and then finally start cutting/welding