L-120 grill problems..

Hey just going to start working on the grill for the truck and having a hard time coming up with a good way to fix under headlight where they rust out. I want to keep all the style lines and bends prefect and were it steps down into the turn signal. Also the grill bars I'm not sure what they are really called are beyond fixing I think. Any where to find them?? If I could get some good tips of pictures of what other people have done that would be helpful.

One of the members in Europe fixed his rotted out park lights by cutting out and welding in just strait metal and installing bullet style lights. It looked really good. I know that wasn't what you wanted to hear but thought I would mention it. MM

no help on the metal work, other than find a donor, even rotten donor grills are hard to find

grill bars are tough to find too,

keep an eye out on craigslist the top two bars on big farm trucks are the same two as on your truck.

I do nationwide searches with statewidelist.com or searchtempest.com

find someone selling or parting an old farm truck and they may sell the bars to you,

other than that a few people have made bars to go there, not exact but something.

If you are talking about the "mustache" bars and they are made of Stainless steel, They can be straightened, just takes lots of patience and a eye to detail. Pictures of yours would help. One of the members had a set of steel ones, do not know if he still does, that was a year ago and have not seen him on for a long time. As was stated, if you want "like" original for the park lens area, you will have these two options: Find a grill, if in better shape than yours just put it in, if mashed on top and good on bottom, cut and paste; the other option is to cut out the bad stuff and form new metal to match, and weld in. Pictures really help for us to give, perhaps, better advice.
My thoughts
Lloyd

I'm just suggesting here, since I'm more of a welder and less of a body man...but...seems to me that if you could make a form or a "buck" out of hardwood [maple, etc], you could hammer out the basic shape for the headlight/park lamp recess. Might have to seek out a high-quality woodworker to make the form, but once you had it, I'm sure that when you're done with it you could sell it/rent it out to the next guy with an L-series that has a rust problem.

I'm basing that idea on a project from junior high shop class, when we all made a metal ashtray by hammering out a piece of sheet metal over a hardwood form.

Just a suggestion...but I'm also guessing that you could maybe make a replacement "INTERNATIONAL" panel for a tailgate the same way. Might even be able to make the whole tailgate, if you do it in sections and then weld it together.

As mentioned above pictures would be a great help. I am a body man and i work in a restoration shop and do this kind of thing daily. It is normally not as hard as it looks.

Instead of forming an entire patch that you weld in, in one piece you need to break it down into sections. It takes a lot of skill and tooling to actually hammer out an entire section of metal like that as the different bends and what not will fight each other and you are more likely to end up with a twisted up piece of scrap metal! You just need to break it down till you are comfortable making the smaller pieces that when welded in will form the complete repair, focus on one hard aspect per section, so where you have those body lines for the indent around the park light running in 3 directions with the soft corners, try to split that area into 3 pieces, this way you only need to worry about forming one line per piece and if you mess up one piece of the patch it is less work to make another vs. reforming that entire section.

The basic tools you should have are a body hammer, dolly, a bench mounted vise and square nose pliers, aviation snips (tin snips, I use the green handled Wiss brand) I have a little MAPP gas torch (propane works too, just slower) I use at times to warm up the metal for tight bends or areas where I need to stretch the metal a little.

Also another tip, throw down your Sharpie for these kinds of repairs, it isn't doing you any favours as the the line it makes is too thick to be accurate and by the time you make 3 or 4 lines with it on a single patch you could be out 3/16" just due to the line thickness... I use a mechanical pencil (0.7mm lead) to make markings or you can use a sharp awl to scribe the lines. Sharpie lines also burn off if you apply heat to them and if any traces are left on the panel it can bleed right thru paint!

I always draw out my patch on the metal (perimeter and body lines, holes or other details) but cut outside the lines a bit on the perimeter line to allow for errors, do the final cut when your mostly done forming. I run a pencil line down the apex of any corners I need to bend or hammer into the panel, this will ensure you get a straight an uniform bend.

I hope this helps and if I haven't described it well please ask for clarification.

Also there are places that specialize in restoring stainless trim for vehicles, even if it is badly bent, dented, scuffed they can often make it look like new again. Maybe your's is really too far gone to be restored but you should search online and find a shop that does this and send them some pics of your grill bars and ask if they are able to restore them.

forgot to add above to my post:: the big farm truck grill sheet metal is also the same as pickum up from bottom of parking light on up,

it is just taller on the bottom to top height, if you can find a donor farm truck grill easier to cut off & shape the bottom than try to do all those compound curves,

for some reason the farmers didn't go for the option of carrying around a few pounds of mud in the special IHC designed mud trough on the back of L and R grills,

ther are a lot more big trucks with nice grills on them, put your search engine to use.

I to use a hole saw and put several holes in the "special IHC designed mud trough". This turns it into a flush and dry area. Another area that needs attention is the lower corners of the L&R windshields. In time the rubber pulls away from the body and allows water inside where it will eventually corrode a hole through and leak rain and was h water onto the cab floor.
Ford Flathead V8 front motor mount isolators make good rear cab mounts. ENERGY SUSPENSION have an online chart that makes it easy to measure and replace the original hardened bushings. BOB DRAKE REPRODUSTIONS have those fender welting for FORD and they adapt nicely to IHC.