Earlier this month, we re-skinned an aluminum racing door for one of the top E-Type racing teams in the US. We’ve perfected the fabrication of the door skins – and door restoration in general – to the point where we were ready to try it in aluminum. This job gave us a good excuse to give that a shot!
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- Here, we’ve curved the skin in the rollr, and are now putting the bottom edge on in our ancient but tried and true leaf brake.
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- Next, we roll in the scallop at the top of the door, and fold over the top edge. This door looks a little out of whack in this photo because the skin “fights itself” until it is attached to the shell.
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- Here is a shot of our completed aluminum skin next to an original E-Type OTS door with it’s original skin (that’s MY RH door – oh the stories it (and the people who passed through it!) can tell!
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- In addition to forming up the skin for this job, we also made a pair of Series 1 OTS aluminum skins. Need them? – they’re still here – call me!
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- Another shot of the Series 1 E-Type OTS aluminum door skins.
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- Here is the back side…
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- And the details of the upper corner.
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- This is the internal aluminu shell of the damaged racing door. Note that it is a Series 2 – weird…
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- Things are a little mashed up in the front…
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- And in the back as well…
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- Even the bottom edge was folded up a bit. But the aluminum was thin and soft – and vrigin, so we wre able to shift everything back into the proper shape without too much trouble.
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- rAcing parts aren’t always the prettiest – and this big glod of weld made this door no exception to that rule!
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- This front upper corner has been stretched out of shape.
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- More damage here…
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- We have accumulated contour gauges for nearly every part of the E-Type’s shape. This one clearly shows that the shell is out of whack…
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- A little hammer and dolly work, and we’re back on target to attach the skin.
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- MUCH better!
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- Even the drip tray was twisted up!
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- Nothing a little patience can’t fix!
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- The shell is restored and we are now ready to attach the new skin.
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- The owner told us that the door did not fit very well before, and to go ahead and make it identical to a stock E-type door using our patterns. And so, we had to make a few adjustments to get the correctly shaped skins on.
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- Here’ we have spot-welded the aluminum skin to the aluminum shell – thanks to a little trick I picked up a few years ago!
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- Another aluminum spot-weld along the bottom edge.
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- Next, it’s time to fold the edges over.
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- This upper edge can be tricky on the steel doors, but aluminum turned out to be a little more forgiving…
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- Fast forward – all of the edges are folded, and we’ve welded up the top sections. This was my solution here – we used the stock trim attachment block to tie everything together with great success – AND strength!
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- This turned out pretty well, and was dressed up a little further after this. The shape of this corner was dead on too!
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- Look at how nice this bottom edge folded over!
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- The sides turned out nicely as well, and our soft aluminum had enough give not to crack in the process! We also tacked the lower corners together.
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- Voila! One completed E-Type door – in ALUMINUM!
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- This was so cool in person – and LIGHT!
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- Every curve and angle is correct.
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- After the final dressing and sanding, it looks like it just came out of the factory racing shop in the 60’s!
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- The back edge of the top section will be trimmed to fit the body shell.
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- Another piece I was proud of in the end! Soon, we’ll have a go at doing the whole door in aluminum – we sure do have the skins nailed down!
