Corners redone!

When I made the frame for the backrest I messed up the corners! As I wanted to proceed with the build I decided to make a temporary solution.

Before!

 Now I finally got around to remake those corners. 

Still not pretty but better than the original version.

 

Finished of with some epoxy primer.

 

Status update / spinnoff project no 3.

The previous year has been slow on the couch project. One cause was motorizing the bead roller with the help of an ATV winch motor. As the project was extensive I decided to make an own blog for it. The bead roller motorization project is now ready and from the link below you can  see what modifications were made to the roller.

https://mybeadroller.blogspot.com/

 

Before:

After (Sorry about the messy picture):

Bead roller is operated by a foot switch and powered by 12Volt battery

So what about progress on the couch?

When the bead roller was ready I made panels to cover the back side of the sofa. 

The big piece I made alone which would not have been possible with the hand crank version, also I dare to claim result is better than anything similar made before the motorization.

Bead design for back side of backrest. Supposed to imitate the beads on the back side of the backrest of a 1965 Dart STW. 

First beads made! 

'

Mock up!

A new "sand plate" has been made with a brake but I got the radius too small so some adjustments will be needed before being able to weld in place! The piece is much simpler than the original car part but I hope it wont show to much on the ready product.

 

In bondo we trust...

Mix it...

Apply it...

Sand it...

Mix it...

Apply it...

Sand it...

Mix it...

Apply it...

Sand it...

Mix it...

Apply it...

Sand it...

To be continued...

Semi gloss black.

Only some small progress lately. The sofa has been painted semi gloss black underneath with rattle can spray. Also the wheels and adjustable feet where reassembled.

First mock up

Was finally able to find rear lights and a bumper for the sofa. They are from a 1965 Dart. As the parts where quite far from where I live I had them shipped to me. Pictures I received from seller indicated that parts where not in mint condition. Unfortunately the bumper was even worse than I expected, it is dented, rusty, and worst of all not straight.

Mock up with lights, trim and bumper in place.

 As the lights were very dirty and one them had a loose part I dismantled the rear light bezels for cleaning and repairs. 

I had to make new bolt holes for the rear lights. I don't know if this has to do with  that the car is from 1966 and the rear lights are from a 1965 car or if it is due to the fact that the light bezels I got hold of are actually from the trunk lid and not the car.

 I also had to cut away material from the lower part to make enough room fort the light bezel. This is surely due to the fact that the bezels are installed up side down as the part was for trunk lid originally.

The bumper fits poorly. It hits the body on one side and the gaps between left and right side are not he same.

 

Spring has not been all about building the sofa. The Dart GT has been taken to some local events for example the local vintage car club arranged a swap meet where I got the chance to park next to another Mopar A-Body. 

And as we are in 2021 even the interior "decoration" of car is affected.

Spinn off project No.2 Bead roller stand.

The bead roller is meant to be fastened to a vise. The problem in my case is that the vise is fastened to a wall mounted table so it was limiting how one could use the roller, either the handle was touching the table or the piece being worked on was to big causing it to hit the wall. 

The plan was to make a simple stand for it. Mostly out of left over scrap iron I had laying around.

Preparing for paint.

As the optimist I am everything was welded and painted before mounting the bead roller on the stand....

I deliberately made the stand quite high so that I would not have to bend over so much when working with the roller. It is important to see where the roll is touching the piece being worked on especially if one needs to make several passes over the same place. If you miss your last pass it leaves traces on the metal.

As the stands main vertical beam is of an L profile and the roller is quite heavy the rolling support was really lousy. The hole thing was "wobbling" so bad it felt un usable. Tried to show this in the video.

There was enough L bar left so I welded that to the stand making the vertical profile square.

Remounted and repainted. Now it feels study enough. 

 

You tube has several videos of how to improve these kind of bead rollers and in the future I would also like to apply at least a couple of the mods shown there. 

There are two main issues.

One is the stiffness of the body of the bead roller, the upper and lower roll have a tendency to move in horizontal direction away from each other if much pressure is applied on the rolls. Most common fix for this seems to be to weld square profile tubing on the back side of the roller stiffening the construction. For the beads I have made so far I don't feel this has been a big issue but every time one uses the roller the lack of stiffness is noticeable.

The second issue and in my view the more severe issue is the hand crank. It is difficult to use  the bead roller alone with the crank. Manual even says one should not use it alone. Best would of course be to motorize it and have a foot pedal for changing direction of rotation. But I believe a  hand wheel would also be a big improvement compared to the crank. Usually it goes fine until the crank is the furthest away from you then it is almost impossible to both see what you are doing and crank at the same time. With a hand wheel this would be improved. 

 

Back from sandblasting.

The couch is back from sandblasting where it was also sprayed with epoxy primer. 

 

There are some places that will require additional attention.