Custom Metal Work

Welcome to trucks. You know, I get a lot of requests from viewers wanting to know more about how to do custom metal work, like shaving door handles and chopping tops and French and tail lights, things like that.

And the reason is, is because not just everybody knows how to do this kind of stuff and even fewer are willing to show you how to do it.

So we're gonna fix that because the whole purpose of truck

is to show you how to do stuff. So today

it's all about the tips, the tools, the techniques that you're gonna need

to do some custom metal work on your truck. The first thing we're gonna look at today is some of the tools you're gonna need to pull off some quality metal work. First and foremost, a welder. Now we've got three styles here. This is a gas welder, also known as Oxygen

acetylene.

This is a tig welder also known as Heli Arching.

And then of course, I've got a couple of different mig welders, which is also known as a wire feed welder. Now of these three styles, the meg is what I'm gonna use the most today because

this is what most of you have in your shop. It's very quick, very versatile and great for welding thin sheet metal, especially this little 110 machine.

But it doesn't mean that in some situations, the tig is not a better choice, but we'll talk about that a little later on.

You'll also need a good selection of body hammers and dollies and this is not what I'm talking about. So don't even think about it.

This is for banging nails in your porch or something,

not for bending and shaping metal. All you'll do is make a mess with something like this for work metal.

That is what you need. We got these at Cove

Creative Metal Works.

Now you'll also need some snips and some files, a contour gauge. Don't forget your grinder and all of this can be picked up at a local hardware store.

The first modification we're gonna look at is shaving door handles and filling holes in a fender or door.

Now, the reason you want to do this is to slick everything down, get rid of those door handles, make it as smooth as glass.

This kind of modification has been around for a long time and it still looks good whether you do it on a newer vehicle or an older one.

This particular door is a brand new reproduction from Good Mark Industries for a 67 through 72 Chevy, but it doesn't matter what you're working on.

Techniques are gonna be the same. This is how to shave it

first, make sure you strip the area you're going to be working on down to bare metal. So you get good wells.

Now you're ready to make your patch panels. Now, an easy way to do this is to take some masking tape, lay it over the openings,

then just outline around the outer perimeter of the hole. Now, this will give you a perfect template to

transfer to your sheet metal.

Then just cut it out of the sheet metal,

believe it or not, there are some companies out there that can help you out with this step. If you don't want to mess with it. For example, Turner Enterprises has this complete smoothing kit for the 67 through 72 Chevy truck and it includes all these metal blanks. So you can literally fill every hole

in the truck including where the heater and the master cylinder come through the firewall. Now, if you use these, you'll also wanna get from Turner, this special brake pedal and booster assembly which mounts down on the frame, this pulls your master cylinder and your brake lines out of the engine compartment. Very slick.

All right, with your patch panels made. This is where a lot of people make a big mistake. They just weld them in.

The problem is you have got a contour door here and a flat repair piece. So to make up the difference.

They just put a big old glob of body filler across there. No, no, no, no. That is not the way to do it. The idea here is to not use any body filler at all. So

we're gonna take this contour gauge,

mash it down on there

that will give us the exact contour that we're gonna be working with.

Take the filler piece, set it in a vice and lightly tap it until you get the proper curve.

Be prepared to spend a little time here making it right

once that's done, hold it in place with a couple of magnets. This makes sure that the filler piece and the door edges all stay flush with each other,

then

just tack it in place,

make sure to space your welds out and go slow. So you don't warp the metal,

just keep tacking until all the tack wells are joined together into one continuous bee.

Now, move on to the next patch

with the filler pieces welded in a neat trick to fill these holes is to take a steel rivet,

reverse the shaft on it,

take a steel washer, slide it on.

And now you not only have a filler piece,

you also have a handle to hold on to it while you weld it in.

Grinding is next and you need to be careful here because you can still overheat this metal and warp it. Now, I like to use these flap wheels because they last longer. They run cooler and they've got just enough cushion to them to where you don't dig into the metal and put any gouges in there.

And also you'll be surprised how, well you can smooth things out with these.

Ok. The reality of welding on sheet metal means that you are gonna get just a little bit of distortion. Can't help it. It's just the nature of the beast.

The trick is to keep it to a minimum by going slow with your welding

and knowing how to get rid of it.

That's where the hammer and dolly come in.

We're gonna use these to get rid of any of those little high and low spots.

Well, that's it. The door is totally smooth. All the holes are gone and heck, you can't even hardly tell where they once were.

And our contour gauge tells us

we can probably skip using any kind of fillers and go right to primer surface and then to paint that is cool.

But don't misunderstand me about fillers. Now, they are not bad. You shouldn't feel bad about using them. They're actually an awesome tool if you use them, right, you don't try

it on too thick. Remember a filler is made to help you work out the final contours of a piece or to help you feel small little dancer imperfections, not take the place of metal work.

Now, after the break, we're gonna show you how to French a license plate into this tailgate. Oh, yeah, you're gonna wanna see that.

Welcome back to trucks where today we are taking a look at how to do some custom body modifications to your truck. Now, we've already shown you how to shave door handles, fill holes in the door and defender. And before we get too far away from that,

wanna show you what else you're gonna need to completely shave those door handles. Now, if you're thinking about doing some custom work, you need to call a place called Watson

Street works, they've got all the cool stuff, the power window kits and the wiring harnesses and pigtails, plugins, relays, all that cool stuff you can't find just anywhere. Now, this is some of the stuff they've got to help you open those shave doors

and you can get these new bear claw latches. If you don't want to reuse your old ones, it's the latch, the strikers,

the striker plates, everything

you also have solenoids. These mount in the doors have 34 pounds of pole. This plunger pulls the cable and that opens the latch.

Then you've got the triggering system with the remote. That's what triggers the

solenoid.

Then you

have these door poppers. These are spring loaded, the door shuts against those. It's under tension. Then when you pop the latch pushes the door open.

As you can see, these parts are very simple, very easy to install. The hard work is done. Now, back to metal working.

One modification that is really popular is recessing or fringing a license plate into a tailgate or a roll pan.

Now, one drawback to this project in the past though has been, you had to make the box that actually sank the part down into the body. This took a lot of time and some special tools sometimes.

Well, Watson's street works has come out with his French license plate kit

and it supplies the box for you. This saves you a ton of work doing this kind of project and this is how to put it in. Now, the first thing you wanna decide

is where you're gonna put your license plate. You literally can put it anywhere.

Some people like it here and

some people put it out here.

So I put it on top.

So I'm turn it to the side right to the body lines. This is entirely up to you and your good

or bad taste for this project. I'm gonna put it right here in the middle centered up under the latch.

That way it'll be nice and symmetrical. We'll go ahead and measure it out

and make our cut lines,

then cut down the line using a cut off wheel.

Now check the fit of the box. This is the time to make any adjustments

if you need to,

then cut off the excess metal.

Now you're ready to weld the box in place and once again, take your time, go slow space, your welds out, keeping them short. This will keep warping a distortion to a minimum.

Once the welding is done, get out the grinder

and go to work

since you're grinding on a corner. Be careful not to take off too much and change the shape.

If you do this,

you're gonna have to weld more metal back on or make up for it with body filler.

Well, there it is a French license plate

that looks like it came from the factory this way. And once again,

no

filler is gonna be needed. And everybody's gonna wonder where you got your custom tailgate.

Now, as you saw, this is not that difficult if you take your time. Now after the break, exhaust tips through the body, stay with us.

Just can't get enough of trucks. Check us out online at trucks, tv.com.

Welcome back if you're just getting here.

Well,

that is a shame because you have missed some really cool stuff because today's show is all about body modifications

and working metal. Now, we've already showed you how to shave door handles and fill holes. Then

we showed you how to French a license plate

into a tailgate.

Now, we're gonna show you a modification that is extremely popular, pretty easy to do

and makes a incredible difference in the look of your truck and that is how to bring an exhaust tip out through the body or a roll pan.

The piece that I'm gonna be working on is this reproduction bedside from Good Mark Industries. And the reason this modification is so good on a truck is that it keeps your exhaust tips from hanging down below the body, which can be a problem on a lowered vehicle.

Ok. Now, you need to decide what kind of tips you're gonna use.

We got a lot of choices out there, a lot of different styles on this particular project. I'm gonna use these big polish stainless steel, oval shaped guys from course of performance because they are huge

and they're gonna look really cool. Now, with that decided

now you need to figure out where these tips are gonna stick through the body

and right here in front of the rear tire down low on the fender is the perfect place because it's gonna be subtle, but it's still gonna look mean much better than hanging down here below.

Use the tip to make the mark for your hole, make sure it is big enough. So you have at least a quarter inch of clearance all the way around the tip.

Now, cut it out a

jigsaw and air nibbler work fast here because they'll cause the least amount of distortion.

Finally

use a hammer and dolly to smooth out any wrinkles.

You can slide on a piece of edging to finish out the cut and

take a look at this

and that looks awesome. Now you can stop right here. A lot of people do this looks really good,

but I want more of a finished look than this. So I'm gonna make a trim ring that goes all the way around it.

First decide what shape you want the piece to be. I'm gonna make it one inch thick and it's gonna go all the way around the tip, then just transfer the shape to some flat steel. This is eight inch thick and then cut it out

for metal. This thick, a plasma cutter works best, but a jigsaw will do it too, just slower.

Now, dress the cuts outside

and in

drill, some mounting holes

and bend the piece to match the contour of the fender.

The last thing to do is paint it or have it chrome plated. Heck, you could even build it out of aluminum and come in here and polish it all out.

Now, I'm holding it in place with these button head screws, but

you can mount it any way you want. You got a lot of different choices. It's entirely up to you. Check this out.

Oh, now we got a trim ring that completely finishes off our exhaust tip. That is awesome. Now, hopefully this gets your mind thinking about some of the cool stuff that you could do to your truck and you can do this if you have the right tools and you understand the techniques.

But one thing's for sure, you'll never do it. If you don't try,

we'll be back after this.

Welcome back. You know, it goes without saying that most automotive and truck enthusiasts

know that you are supposed to change your motor oil every 3000 miles or so

if you want your engine to last.

But did you also know that most manufacturers recommend

changing your trans

in gear oil every 30,000 miles? Yeah.

Now I know a lot of you are just staring at the screen right now going uh, I've never seen gear oil. I don't know anything about how to change it.

It's all right

because I'm gonna give you some tips on how to do that and

make those gears live a long happy life.

First up, draining the differentials, I've got some bad news for you guys. Very few stock covers have a drain plug, which means you're gonna have to pull the cover off to get the old oil out of there. Now, the main goal here

is to try not to take a bath in the old oil,

leaving the top bolts loosely in place will keep you from fighting the cover while it drains.

Ok, let's talk about oils. Now, we have all heard about the benefits of synthetic motor oils, more power, less friction, less drag, things like that.

Well, Royal Purple has this max Gear Synthetic Gear oil that can do exactly

the same thing for your gears because it also reduces friction, has a high shock load and it'll even handle water contamination.

Basically. It is the perfect oil to put into a four by four and you don't have to change it quite so often. We all like that

with the cover back on with a new gasket or silicone. So it doesn't leak, go ahead and fill the axle with oil. Now, this is also a good time to check your vents and extend them, especially if you play out in the water a lot because even as good as Royal Purple is one thing you do not want in your axle is water. Also, if you have a limited slip differential in there, you need to make sure that whatever oil you're using is compatible with it. Royal purple is.

Now we're gonna head back to the transmission and the transfer case.

One thing that you wanna watch with your gear oil is the viscosity

and this is a 7590 weight, which is a good all around oil.

But if you use something really thick like a 140 well,

you may have trouble shifting your gears on a cold morning

until everything warms up in the case.

Hopefully that shed some light on some really important maintenance. Now, I know it's easy to overlook this stuff, but you really need to be doing it

if you want your truck to last

since today's show is all about body modifications. I've got a kit here for you to allow you to do one of the most popular and that is suicide, your doors. Now, for those of you that don't know, that's where you take the hinges from the front of the door, move them to the rear. So the door hinges from the rear. Very trick. Very cool. Now, this kit is from auto lock and it features big heavy duty hinges and all the hardware to line these things up and make them work properly.

Then you can get these locks that will lock the door shut. So it won't accidentally come open on you while you're driving down the road and give you a firsthand look of why they call these suicide doors. Now, if this kind of modification is in your future, you need to call auto lock.

When you think of Flowmaster. What is the first thing that pops into your mind?

Awesome muffler's great sound, right.

Well, it might surprise you to find out that they've got more than just mufflers. They also got accessories

like these polished stainless steel tips

and the heat shrouds and H pipes and

check out this connector. This welds right on your headers has a ball style connection so you can disassemble it very easily, it will not leak and you've got some movement here. If you've got some misalignment, best part is you never have to replace a gasket. Again, this should show you.

Flow master is about more than just mufflers. They're about the whole exhaust system.

If you're gonna build a hot small block Chevy, everybody wants a four bolt main block. But what if you don't have one?

Well simple. You convert your factory to bolt main block to a four bolt main

with this kit from Milo Dawn. Now, this includes huge ductal iron, four bolt main caps that have a tinsel strength of 85,000 P si

but the biggest difference other than the size is in the design of these outer holes. Notice the mile

on caps go down at an angle

that puts the load on the outer wall of the block, which is a lot stronger than this inner main web. So this is considerably stronger than even a factory four bolt main cap. This is the best thing that you can do to strengthen the bottom end of your engine

and that's all we have time for today. I expect each and every one of you to get out and start working on some metal and I'll see you back here next week.