Always in pursuit of an adventure in learning! Seems there are no commercially available patch panels for the lower cowl for these vehicles. Oh there are some crappy attempts using flat bar welded on the sheet metal, but that's not a decent fix. I've seen them on restored vehicles, and the body filler cracks around where the flat bar meets the sheet metal. So we decided to make these much needed parts.

The first order of business was to draw the metal shape up in SolidWorks, a 3D CAD program. Here is the passenger side patch panel we wish to make. Due to the shape it was decided to make the RH and LH together and then saw the part in half. The CAD drawing was mirrored and provisions for the saw cut made. Here is the combination patch panel we want to make.

These forming tools were made. The left is for coining the external body feature and the right one is for making the door jamb recess.

First the coining die was tried. We tried small pieces of metal and large ones....too much wrinkling of the metal :-(

We beat the metal flat anyway and tried the second operation. Not too good either.

Next we tried loading smaller pieces of metal into just one side of the dies. That didn't work much better.

Back to the drawing board more modification.....