Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion Erie 71 class project - door problems

I thought I'd post an update on the progress of the Erie 71 pump that my class and I are working on. We have all the outer skins in primer and have wet sanded everything except the ad glass holders.

However, the two main door are another story. We've shrunk, slap filed, filled, shrunk again, filled, hammer and dollied, shrunk, etc. and we can't get the waves out of the doors. I'm attaching some pictures of our 6th attempt at these things and they still aren't right.

At this point, I'm wondering if it would be better to start over with a couple of doors that aren't as far gone as these were. I'm pretty sure that this pump got hit by something on both sides while it was still bolted down. There is a large horizontal crease across the bottom of both doors that is causing us some real problems.

I'm such a perfectionist that having waves in the doors really bugs me and I don't want the kids to think that leaving them there is ok. Are most restored pumps razor straight, or am I being overly anal about it?

We are getting so close to having this thing done. It has been a long time in coming and I don't want to do a half-way job. Does anyone out there have any suggestions for me?

Thanks!
Chris

Chris, These doors can be a real pain. They have always been the one thing I send out to a cousin who is a great body guy. He has achieved wonders although I don't know how? I finally sold off all of these so I wouldn't have to deal with them...LOL. As for straightness....It is very important that the pumps be true and correct. If you are teaching, you need to teach it right. Cutting corners here is an example that kids probably don't need. Simply my opinion which was free. Good luck, Paul www.severngaspumps.com

gasmansgp IS CORRECT, THESE ERIE DOORS are some of the WORST to work on. VERY CHALLENGING & FRUSTRATING!

I totally agree with you guys. The most important part of this project for me is to get my students to understand that doing a quality job is absolutely critical when you are building something for someone else. The kids have really bought into this project and I know they wouldn't be happy throwing paint on the doors the way they are.

We welded a pipe to the back side of the door in the middle of the scalloped area and it flattened out the waves there, but then it created them out in the flats. So then we shrunk the waves in the flats with a torch and it pulled the edges in and made them curved.

We then took the pipe off the back and the waves came back to the scalloped area. I think that when the pump got hit, it stretched the metal farther than we can shrink it back. I'm getting concerned that the more we work them over the more brittle and worse off they are going to get.

Should we try and round up some better doors?

"Should we try and round up some better doors?"
You'll have a Different Problem w/ Different Doors! It'll be a Toss-up or a Pig N A Poke what ya receive AFTER they have been Shipped [look at recent FedX & UPS YouTube clips!].

Chris, I have a suggestion. LLLC classes start Jan 10 when they do call Rob Benning the auto body instructor and see if you can bring them in and see if he has any solutions. Explain what you are doing and for the kids. He's pretty sharp and knows what he is doing (no insult to you). I'm going to guess that you already know him but if you don't tell him Mitch out of the night classes suggested it. He used to be a instuctor at Wyo tech plus 20 yrs. experience. Mitch

That's a good idea -- do you think he'll be there over Christmas break?

I talked to him just before going on break and was kidding him about having a month off. He said he only got two weeks so he might be back after the first, so you might try callng there then. If he doen't know Mitch say Frank Mitchell I've had him in several classes. Nice guy. Mitch

Well, we took little pieces of advice from a whole bunch of people and we've now got one door to our Erie 71 pretty much perfect and ready for primer!

After deciding that our old doors were way to far gone, Mr. Charles Buckles helped us out with a couple replacements. The first thing we had to do was swap out the closure mechanism (pic 1 & 2)

The new door felt really straight to start with, but once we went over it with a fine tooth comb, you can see how much work it took to get it perfect. We laid a 5 foot straight edge on it vertically, and there was about a 3/8" sag to it. Horizontally, it was pretty good. We ended up welding several brace pieces in the back to take the sag out (pic 3), and then filled a bunch of the little nicks and dings on the surface (pic 4 & 5). She's pretty much flat as a pancake now!

I just wanted to let everyone know how we are coming and thanks for all the input!
Chris

I think we may have found a way to conquer ripples in an Erie door! The kids and I came up with this jig to work on getting the scalloped area in the middle of our Erie 71 doors flat again. The ripples are nearly gone, and will only require a small amount of filler in just a couple of areas.

We took 6 pieces of 1/8" x 1 flat bar and first ground one edge to a somewhat sharp point to fit down in the grooves of the door. We then welded them together and spaced them just right to fit inside all the grooves on the door. We also made the jig long enough to fit the whole length of the door.

We then built a "dolly" out of 5/8" diameter rod. We put five short pieces of rod together at the right spacing and welded them together.

We were then able to apply some heat directly to the spot that had the ripples and then hammered and dollied it out, and then shrunk it with some water. I think things turned out pretty well.

A couple of kids that have been working on this pump just graduated and were really unhappy that it didn't get done before they left school. So, I am meeting them out at the shop a couple times a week this summer and we are going to get this thing done!

Chris

Wow! What an effort! I have to commend you on your specialized tool making! A lot of people would have just left that part as "the way it is" and gone on. Not the proper way to do things though and I'm sure your students will benefit from the lesson.
Can't wait to see the end result!

Super awesome idea guys! Good luck and dont ever give up...
Goober

Wow! I need to make one of those for my nozzle receiver on the same pump!

Excelent idea!!!

somebody was paying attention in class!!!!

Students are very fortunate to have you as an instructor!

Indeed

Thanks for all the nice comments guys!

We are going to get some filler on it Wednesday night and hopefully be able to "sculpt" it back into shape.

We built a special sanding block out of maple that matches the curve of the scallops in the door so hopefully we can get them all uniform and straight.

I think we will mask each scallop individually, apply filler, remove the masking tape, sand it until it is right, then move on to the next one. That is the only way I can think of to get the peaks and valleys the same all the way across the door.

Any suggestions?

Chris

Chris, I just looked at the pump tonight. It's looking good. Sorry I'm in the Monday and Tuesday night classes. I'll come out some night and introduce myself to you guys. Mitch

Well, we are making some progress - slowly but surely. I thought I'd share these pictures for anyone trying to restore one of these pumps.

The biggest problem we've had was trying to get the "scalloped" area in the middle of the doors straight. The door had a horizontal crease about a foot up from the bottom and it really put a bunch of waves in the door. The flat parts on the outer edges of the door are easy to flatten out, but we were really fighting the scallops.

The autobody teacher at the college gave me a great suggestion that worked perfectly. We masked off every other scallop and then filled them individually. In order to fill them correctly we custom made a spreader that exaggerated the curvature of the scallop to lay in the right amount of filler. Then I built a custom sanding block that matched the curvature of the scallops exactly. I first roughed each one down with a long board and then went back in with the custom sanding block and fine tuned them.

It is a real hassle, but that is about the only way we could come up with to get those things back to perfect. Thanks for the input.
Chris

I once made a sanding block like the one in the 3rd pic
out of foam pipe insulation. It worked well.

It has taken many, many hours of summertime work, but we finally have all of the panels for our Erie 71 in primer except for one door. Everything is really straight and we shouldn't have too much trouble blocking out the primer.

The other door has most of the body work done, but it isn't quite ready for primer yet.

Hopefully the next time you see pictures of this thing it will have paint on it!