Re: Survival revisitted

Posted by HH56 On 2016/4/5 9:43:02

Thanks. I did know about the sedans having different door profiles but I was more curious about the lengthening of the hardtops in the area behind the door. O_D touched upon the process and we may have read the same article. I was hoping to get a bit more in depth info on exactly how it was done.

I remember vaguely the article said for some reason Packard didn't want to or maybe couldn't get new dies to make a new quarter panel stamping. They turned instead to some new process where the metal was "stretched" in some fashion that didn't require the use of stamping dies. IIRC, they said the Packard use was maybe not a first but definitely was a process not in common use in the industry. It may have also been the largest panel formed in this fashion. I sure don't remember seeing any signs of adding a piece to the existing quarter panels so it must have been a one piece panel.

There was a show not too long ago showing mfg of an aluminum bodied vehicle. Aluminum sheet was heated, grabbed by some huge jaws and pulled down over a form. A giant box like enclosure came down and the pulling along with high air pressure caused the panel to conform to a certain shape. I was wondering if that might have been the process except Packard managed it in harder steel rather than aluminum. The machine used for the aluminum was huge and I can't imagine something like that was available then.