Replicating Factory Spot Weld Appearance

[m22mike]

The vice grip tool I made works well, and you can control the depth of the divet as well.
The punch thing would be alot of trouble IMO, unless you used heat and had a helper back up with a dolly.
I will post some pics later today of a Nova I did it on.
The lips gad been cut slightly for tire clearance and some of the original spots were gone.
Also the vice grip tool upsets the metal on the inside and it fells alot like the originals.
I have noticed on differant cars that sometimes the welds are shallow and somewhat smooth, others are vwry deep and even tend to distort the metal. These were not robot welds as far as I know. So they will verry from car to car.

Later Mike

[68bird400HO]

Thanks Mike. On your vice grip it looks like you layered up 5 pieces of something to make the dimple side of your die. What did you use for that?

[YENKO DEUCE REGISTRY]

Looks like a piece of threaded bolt to me,

[m22mike]

Yea, piece of a bolt !

Mike

[m22mike]

68bird400HO
Here are a couple of shots of the wheel well lips I did with the tool pictured in the previous post.







Today I made another tool that I like even better, the fe male bushing i used has a tighter ID and the male part of the tool is the end cut off a car door hinge pin.
I also put a nut into the bushing to control the squish out on the back side. Check it out.









Hope this helps, have fun.
Mike

[Nova Jed]

Wow! That looks really good! I like it! Nice car too!

[Mr70]

Factory details are the Mother of invention.