Hot Rod Restoration: Doing It Yourself vs. Hiring a Shop

Video Transcript

"The next piece of equipment I'm going to talk about is what's called a MIG welder. It stands for Metal Inert Gas. And this is an absolute must. If you're not going to have any other type of welder or automotive restoration, you need to have a MIG welder. The price on MIG welders has come down substantially, and they actually are pretty affordable for everybody now. You need to really decide on what thickness of material you're primarily going to be welding. For automotive restoration, you're primarily just going to be doing sheet metal, and so therefore a 110-volt machine will do anything that you guys need to do. It will probably weld up to a quarter of an inch, depending on what size wire you put in it. Whether it's a solid wire, or if you do a flux core wire, you can weld fairly thick material. I have a lot of different MIG welders, about three different ones that I use for various thicknesses. If you're going to be welding on your chassis, you need to probably step up to a 220-volt machine instead of a 110. But if you're working out of your garage and you're just trying to do rest repair panels and some basic fabrication, then a 110 volt machine is all that you would need. The next piece of equipment I'm going to talk about is a shop essential. If you're doing any kind of work on custom cars or anything that's rusty, that's old, you're definitely going to need to have a oxygen and acetylene torch set up. Now, this right here is primarily the only tip that we keep on this, and this is actual cutting tip. You can use it to heat up rusty nuts, rusty bolts, free up things. You can use it to cut rusty material off. You can use it to cut sheet metal. The down side of it is that you can tend to warp things. It is a less adequate substitution for a plasma butter, if it's far, far, far less money. A piece of shop equipment that I would also consider a necessity is a drill press. This drill press here is older than I am. My dad bought it when he was just starting out, and we've used it ever since. It is absolutely indispensable. You cannot--I cannot tell you how many times we've used this drill press to just drill holes and to fabricate certain plates, brackets or whatever. It's a very, very inexpensive alternative to a mill, and it's something that you definitely need to put into your garage if you're going to be doing custom car fabrication or restoration. Another essential piece of equipment is a bench grinder. I outfit my bench grinder with a grinding stone and a wire wheel. There's nothing more satisfying than walking up to the bench grinder with a rusty old bolt that you pulled off, and running the threads on the wire wheel and having it come out totally clean and being able to put it right back into service. You can also use this to sharpen and grind away any kind of material that you need. Absolute necessity for any shop. A piece of shop equipment that is extremely nice to have, but not absolutely necessary, is a recirculating blast cabinet. This one I use glass media, also called glass beads, to remove paint, scale, rust, anything on old parts that are needed to either be dipped, cad-plated, powder coated, painted--any kind of restoration process that has to start with clean steel. And to give you an example, this right here is a blasted hood release for a '65 Pontiac Tempest. And it comes out in completely bare steel. This is totally ready for any kind of process that you want to put on top of it. Paint, powder, coat, cad plating, anything, it's ready to go. You need to clean it with some de-greaser. Clean it with some kind of solvent and get some kind of protective material because it will flash rust instantaneously. The sand blaster is something that--boy, it is really, really nice to have, but you don't have to have it. You can do chemical dipping, you can contract it out for somebody else, you can use the wire wheels. There are a bunch of different ways to get parts cleaned and ready to be restored. We prefer the sand blast. Assuming you've bought a welder, you've taken on a restoration project, you've got some bulk sheet metal, you've cut pieces into certain sections for rust repair, but you don't have a way to bend it or form it in the shape that you need. To do that, you may want to invest in what's called a bending break. What you do is you put your sheet metal in here, you clamp it down, and then you bend it to whatever angle you want. Now, they make all kinds of different ones. Ones that you can clamp down to a bench, ones that are free standing like this, ones that are all one piece or a box and handbrake like mine. I would always recommend doing a box and handbrake because it's versatile. You can actually fold up four different sides and make a box out of it. Battery box, battery tray, drip trays, floor pans, you name it, you can probably bend it. You can put creases in pieces of sheet metal to add stiffness, and you can do any kind of ninety degree or any bend in between. In addition to that, you're always going to have to produce round or curved parts. And so, in order to do that you need to have what's called a roller. And the way the roller works is you put your piece of metal in here, you slip that down, clamp it down, and you literally just turn the crank and roll the sheet metal through, and it'll produce a nice, round curve to make wheel wells, fan shrouds, you name it. With some basic tools and the proper sheet metal equipment, you can reproduce almost anything you want. So now you should have an understanding of some of the basic and specialized equipment and tools that you're going to need to tackle your restoration project."