This is a project that started to take shape sometime in the mid 2010s. I’m going to hold back some of the details and let the story unfold on its own. For now the goal is to add some overlay panels for a car project.
The first step is to define the shape of the car body that will receive the panels. This will be accomplished by sliding a reference frame along a baseline beam.
I’ll start with the beam. It needs to be 9 feet long and straight. The beam will not see a lot of force but it needs to stay straight. I’m choosing a box beam design made up of left over OSB. I cut some 5” wide strips from some pieces that are 4 and 5 feet long.
I make sure the splices provide a straight side. After I have the 2 sides built I can start to form the box.
Next I fasten a 3rd side to get the box started. The blocking is to connect the pieces to form the full 9 ft piece. I’m using glue and screws just on the blocking.
I’m adding some internal panels throughout the beams to keep everything square. I’m not sure this is necessary as they slid right into place.
Here’s a picture of the finished beam. It measures 5 inches wide by 6 inches tall by 9 feet long.
The next step is to place the beam such that it is parallel to the bottom of the car door. I use a block on each end cut to a thickness that sets the beam at the correct slope.
I also want the blocks to fit snugly between the tires so it is locked in place. I set a block on top of the beam and use an angled piece to get the fit dialed in. Here’s a view at the front.
And the back.
After the blocks are cut to size I fasten them to the beam.
I positioned the blocks spaced slightly farther apart than what I had marked. I want to make sure the fit was snug. If it is too tight I can file away some material. It turns out that the fit was just right.
Now I need a frame to slide along the beam. The frame needs to hold a piece that is at least as tall as the door. It needs to be perpendicular to the beam in all 3 rotational directions.
I have a box that is square on all sides. I use a thick plank to be the vertical wall. A second plank is cut with my miter saw.
The box keeps the vertical plank square to the one on the left. The cut in the center ensures the vertical plank is square against the side of the box.
I then use a panel of OSB to hold the pieces in plane and provide a wall to maintain alignment to the side of the beam.
Here’s a view of the frame resting on the beam. Hopefully that makes everything clear.
One of the details I missed is that the vertical wall interferes with the mirror. A trim cut takes care of that.
Now I can start to take measurements. I mark 10 positions on the beam to position the frame. The vertical plank has 8 positions marked out. I then take a scale and measure the distance from the vertical plank to the car.
It took about 10 hours to build the beam (including scrounging for materials), 2 hours to build the frame and almost 5 hours to take all the measurements.
The total time invested is 20.3 hours so far.
Even though I am very careful taking the measurements they are not perfect. I will spend a fair amount of time adjusting the measurements until they can be used to create a set of fair curves.
I’m not sure how much detail I can provide on this step of dialing the numbers. I expect the next blog part will cover cutting and mounting the forms.
steve ive had a beer and 3 glasses of vino tonight, and i got no f@#$kin clue too what the hell your doin buddy 🤣🤣🤣 but im sure it's gonna be fantastic as you always do my friend !
working with my hands is a joy,it gives me a sense of fulfillment,somthing so many seek and so few find.-SAM MALOOF.
Stay tuned it will become more clear :) The whole process will take several months. That piece of paper in the lower left of the last picture has about 100 measurements on it. Those numbers describe the shape of one side of the car
Being a bit of a gear head myself I too have no idea what you are doing Of course you got my attention. I've washed and detailed the Porsche and others but this is a bit more than that it seems.
Well done Steve - look forward tom seeing the rest of it. The closest I got was to put burl walnut veneer on a dashboard, radio surround and door cuppings on my TR6!! Happy days!!
No alcohol for me (it's 7:30 am) and I don't know what the goal is either. It looks like you have mapped out a rough shape of the side of the car but I have no idea what you are planning to do with it. If it was a woody, I could guess you are making new panels for it but unless you are doing a woody conversion...?
--Nathan, TX. Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.
Okay, I'm finally up. Man am I sore from spending 5 hours on the garage floor yesterday!
You guys are on the right track. The VW will undergo some heavy modifications (done by a pro) before I get to add my part. This project has spent a lot of years in the planning/dreaming stage so it is fun to get started.
The car is a 2003 Turbo S with just over 100k miles. I got it a year ago and have spent the last year getting it in shape and upgrading the suspension.
Steve... you have alot of ambition doing this. Lots of work. I wouldn't know where to begin. It will be interesting to see your progress. Good write up!
That’s very interesting. If I’m following you correctly, you’re sampling eight vertical points to form a curve, and repeating that ten times along the length of the car. That will let you model a mesh or curved surface representing the car’s side.
Did you consider buying (or renting, if that’s even possible) some sort of laser sampling device to generate the measurements? I guess that would be expensive, though.
Like everyone else, I’m curious to see what you end up doing. My first guess was Mad Mad/Road Warrior armored panels. If your avatar changes to you with a Mohawk and leather pants, I’ll know I was on the right track. 😀
Ken - I could start this until after the beer swap. I was booked solid all summer. Still I felt like I was really missing out. I'm trying to leave time to be a part of 2025. Ron - I had 2 friends offer their laser for a scan. Once the scan is done the cloud data needs to be converted to a cad model to make it useful for me. From what we could tell, it wasn't going to save much time - especially once we got everyone's schedule aligned. The manual scan project went much faster than I feared.
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