re-skinning doors

Morning all,

In the middle of trying to re-skin my defender doors. When battering the tabs over the door frame, I'm finding that they are rounding, rather than making a sharp (or flat) seal onto the door.

Any advice?

I've not done a job such as re-skinning doors, but from my very early metalwork classes in school, there are a couple of things which I would check first.
What are you trying to bend the new skins against? You need a firm "anvil" to hammer against to form good edges, there's probably too much give in the door frame on its own to act as an anvil.
Secondly, aluminium if I remember "work hardens" which in effect means that the more you work it by hammering the harder the metal becomes which will contribute to the metal becoming more difficult to form a good straight, sharp bend.

I will need to do this in the near future. My thoughts were to bond the skin to the door using Tiger Seal and let it cure before I attempt to fold the edge. This will, I hope, give a firmer edge to work with, and also form a barrier to stop corrosion between the metal and aly surfaces.

Anvil got me thinking - bigger hammer and as you say, more solid anvil. Beat the crap out of the tabs and they started going down a lot better!

Meego; I purchased zinc plated skins, blasted and painted the door frame after some welded repairs. I also painted the skin on the inside (extra extra protection!). I then bonded with tiger seal (and a LOT of clamps) and left it for a few hours before taking the hammer to the skins tabs. Tiger seal will not set hard though, so there will still be a bit of 'squeeze' while you batter the skin into shape, but seems to be working well enough.

The zinc plated, steel skins are a lot harder to bend. I bought new doors, peeled the skins off, had the frames shot blasted and plastic coated (should have got them galvanised) painted the inside of the skin, used tiger seal to bond them to the frames, then bent the seams back over, sprayed the inside of the frames with Dinitrol. That was about 3 years ago. The rear door is starting to blister along the bottom edge.

Al2O3 said:

The zinc plated, steel skins are a lot harder to bend. I bought new doors, peeled the skins off, had the frames shot blasted and plastic coated (should have got them galvanised) painted the inside of the skin, used tiger seal to bond them to the frames, then bent the seams back over, sprayed the inside of the frames with Dinitrol. That was about 3 years ago. The rear door is starting to blister along the bottom edge.

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I havnt done any of that and mine are as well. I think we made the same mistake. T o y o t a.

Thats not what i want to be hearing!

But i wonder why. The zinc plating isn't nearly as good as galvanising, but it should be more than sufficient to do the job. With a good paint coating on top too, i don't see why it should have any issues. Did you guys etch prime the zinc first? If this wasn't done then it could explain why the water is getting in behind the paint.

And regarding galvanising the doors - wouldnt bother! The shape and form of these doors will result in significant warping when it comes out the bath, so you'd have to spend a fair bit of time re-shaping the door, it its at all possible. But its very hit or miss. I didn't bother with my doors as it has had a couple weld repairs which will have put stresses into the main frame - these stresses soon release when heated to 600 degrees!

No, I didn't make myself clear. My skins are aluminium. I'm confident the plastic coating will still be ok, so the aluminium must be oxidising on its own. Your zinc plated steel doors should fair better.
You can buy doors with galvanised frames no bother. Should have got mine galved instead of the industrial plastic coating as the plastic does not go internally.