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All internal rocker structure panels removed and the foot print is media blasted

1960 Ferrari 250 GT Pininfarina Cabriolet: Part 4 – Original rocker panel dismantle

This is part four of the automotive restoration series on this 1960 Ferrari PF Cab. For Part One, which describes the creation of a ‘measuring box’ to check the car body symmetry, click here. For Part Two, which describes the creation of a new rear light housing, click here. For Part Three, which covers patterning up the rocker panels, click here.

Moving on from the previous posts, we now look at dismantling the inner rocker structure of this vintage car. These panels add extra strength to the central part of the Ferrari PF Cab eliminating any flex. We have the outer rocker skin removed to reveal a great deal of decay and heavy rust issues, resulting in ineffective rocker structure panels. The next task is to remove the whole rocker, keeping it as complete as possible, to enable ‘patterning up’ to create a new structure. Once the structural rocker panels were removed, the body area was media blasted and ready for a rebuild.

Once the structure panels were removed, we then concentrated on removing the sill, as the sheet metal area under the hinge was weak and decayed with an ample amount of lead. To remove the sill, the lower hinge also had to be removed to enable access. Before I undertook the removal of the hinge, I built a small simple jig to aid locating back in the exact same location on this Ferrari PF Cab. The photos below show the jig set up to accomplish this.

The final pictures take us to making simple tooling to create the plunge holes. The plunge holes are made for strengthening and giving structure to an otherwise flat panel. The jig simply consisted of a flat piece of 1/4″ plate with holes drilled in with reference from our patterns. Sheet metal was then laid over the jig, followed by ‘jig chasing’ of the sheet metal into the drilled holes to form the plunged hole.