1962 Ferrari 250 GTO scratch build

[C5GTO]

I’m now making the door skin for the drivers door. It’s 105 F here in sunny California today so I decided to take shelter in the air-conditioned house for the afternoon and give a progress update.

The first step was to add some bracing inside the door frame to prevent frame flex. The bracing for the bottom was easy but the bracing for back took some ingenuity. I had to make sure I could remove the bracing through door card opening once the skin is attached so that added a bit head scratching to the design effort.



I didn’t show the door skin shaping for the passenger side, so I thought I’d show it here. Here’s the flat sheet laid on the door frame showing how much shape is required.



The door skin has only a simple curve to it so I use an ewheel with go-kart slick to form bends. I like to use guide lines drawn with a Sharpie as I work through the bending. When using the go-kart slick, I push the skin all the way through and then pull it all the way back holding it on the sides. I slowly add the bend checking the fit often on the door frame.



When the skin starts getting close, it hits the window frame and I can no longer check the fit on the door frame. I use cardboard templates to check bending progress after that. This now fits the template close enough for this stage.



Next up is adding about 1/8” crown into the skin. It’s easy to add too much crown so I go about this very methodically and carefully. I draw on a grid of tracking lines on the top side so I can keep my anvil tracking lines close and even. I do passes at a 90 degree angle thus the grid. I start the pass in the middle, work over to the edge of wheeling area, back across the middle over to the other edge, and then back to the middle. This way for each pass, the middle gets twice the wheeling as the outsides. The wheeling is done at very low pressure.



After the first 2 passes, I draw a box about half the size of the grid and do 2 more passes within the box still at light pressure. Using this approach and wheeling plan, the middle of the skin gets wheeled at least 8 times more than the outsides. The skin now has a nice low crown and the work hardening makes it nice and tight.

[Don]

Brilliant work Joel.

Please keep posting. We are all really enjoying the updates.

Awesome work.

Don

[TDW]

Amazing project.

Many thanks for taking the time to document and share what you are doing, and how you're doing it.

This one will be another one of those threads that serves not only to enlighten about what's possible, entertain those who can only "watch", and teach those who would like to know how to do something similar.

Fantastic record and thread!

Keep the updates and pics coming, please.

[wbnemo1]

No idea how this metal curving thing works, but it looks wheely awesome 😊

[RCR]

Great stuff, Joel. I love what you're doing.

You originally started with a fiberglass body. Was it always your intention to redo the panels in aluminum, are you doing only certain spots, or was it a "game time" decision?

Bob

[AdrianBurton]

Amazing work!!!!!

I wish I could do half of that

[C5GTO]

Brilliant work Joel.

Please keep posting. We are all really enjoying the updates.

Awesome work.

Don

Amazing project.

Many thanks for taking the time to document and share what you are doing, and how you're doing it.

This one will be another one of those threads that serves not only to enlighten about what's possible, entertain those who can only "watch", and teach those who would like to know how to do something similar.

Fantastic record and thread!

Keep the updates and pics coming, please.

No idea how this metal curving thing works, but it looks wheely awesome 

Amazing work!!!!!

I wish I could do half of that

Don, TDW, wbnemo1, and Adrian: thanks for following and the kind words.

[C5GTO]

Great stuff, Joel. I love what you're doing.

You originally started with a fiberglass body. Was it always your intention to redo the panels in aluminum, are you doing only certain spots, or was it a "game time" decision?

Bob

Bob: When I started with down the fiberglass path, it was my intention to do all body parts in fiberglass. In fact, I do have fiberglass door skins and trunk lid. I decided to do these parts in aluminum as a later decision. If I were to start the GTO project over again, I'd do the whole body in aluminum. It's faster, lighter, and puts the resulting car in a whole new class in my and other people's minds.

The deciding factors in my changing paths to aluminum midway through the project are: 1) I took an interest in metal shaping after the GTO project was underway and found metal shaping wasn't beyond my abilities and not really that hard; 2) the fiberglass door skins are very heavy (mostly because the fiberglass was laid up too thick) and still needed an inner door frame to seal the wind/water out. It was either build the inner door frame with fiberglass or metal. I choose aluminum and now the doors are about as lightweight as a door can be; 3) the fiberglass trunk lid doesn't fit all that well so I might as well make one from aluminum.

I might also make the hood/bonnet from aluminum but I'll make that decision later. The fiberglass hood isn't all that heavy, it has a great shape and looks good, but it does have some fit issues that will require some body filler if I use it. So I'm torn on making one from aluminum and it will most likely come down to a decision involving time.

Given what I know now, would I ever use fiberglass for a car body again? I would use fiberglass again for a project if either of the following applied: 1) The intention was to make more than 2 or 3 units. I think the time and cost for making a mold crosses a threshold at about that point. 2) I had access to an existing body that was straight enough for splashing a mold. It was a lot of work to make the buck for the GTO that I used to make the mold. Very likely more work than just making the body from aluminum to start with.

Long answer to a short question, but hopefully I can pass along some experience gained knowledge.

[TRcrazy]

Its coming along nicely Joel, -Vinny

[C5GTO]

I finally had a chance to get the driver’s side door skin attached. Given what I’d learned from the passenger door, I had to put quite a bit more work into the upper front and back portions of the inner door frame prior to putting on the skin. These areas needed to be re-enforced and more solid in order to provide a good clamping surface for the hem that holds the door skin in place. Next time I build inner door frames, I’ll know to do this from the start.

Once the door frame preparation was completed, attaching the skin was pretty much the same experience as for the passenger door. The result however, was better. Prior to putting on the car, I measured the door skin for crown. The crown looks even and good.



The main improvement is that the door gap is an even 3/16” all the way around. The temporary bracing did the trick to keep the inner frame from flexing while I was hammering the skin over it. Here’s the door mounted in place.



I did find two other clearance issues when opening the door. The door front edge rubs on the front fender door pocket as the door is being opened and the door stop within the hinge doesn’t engage until after the door skin contacts the fender edge on full open. For the first issue, I ground away some door pocket fiberglass until no more rub. For the second, I needed to weld a ¼” tab on the door stop so the door wouldn’t open quite so far. Luckily, I noticed this before opening door all the way as it could have put a vertical crease in the nice new door skin. Both issues fixed.

I had to make some adjustments for matching the body surface surrounding the door. Like passenger door, the upper front corner needed to be raised and in addition, about half the bottom edge needed to be raised about 1/16”. Once these adjustments were done, the door now looks good in profile.



Every so often, I like to get the GTO out of the garage so I can step back and see how is it looks from more than 5 feet back. Now that the doors are in place, I decided to push the GTO outside to check out the body flow. Wow, gotta love those flowing lines!



Next up, I plan to tackle the trunk lid.