How Thick Sheet Metal For Automotive

When doing old car restorations sometimes its simpler to replace an entire panel instead of trying to straighten it or repair rust spots.

How thick sheet metal for automotive.

Whether you re working on a classic american car from 1957 or a truck made as recently as 2007 eastwood has sheet metal to help you fix it. Rivets come in a variety of head and shaft sizes. Sheet metal used on older car bodies typically ranges from a gauge of 16 to 18. 20 gauge became common in more recent times and this meant 0 0359 inch thick metal still a lot to work with in bumping and metal finishing.

A gauge conversion chart can be used to determine the actual thickness of sheet metal in inches or millimeters. For pricing and availability. You can get pop rivets down to 1 16 inch shaft size up to 3 16 inch at your local hardware store. The equivalent thicknesses differ for each gauge size standard which were developed based on the weight of the sheet for a given material.

The reason i say this is that i have rebuilt two older vehicles a 55 chevy and a 67 el camino and have found the sheet metal to be in the 22 ga. Brianstick with all due respect i find it hard to believe that sheet metal from a 1974 american made automobile has 18 ga. 0299 and 24 ga. Extend blade life by keeping the saw s speed slow.

Choose a blade with 20 to 24 tpi teeth per inch for thin metal 10 to 18 tpi for medium thickness metal and about 8 tpi for thick metal. If you re riveting a thick sheet to a piece of angle iron you need a deeper rivet. 0239 range depending on the. The gauge number 18 holds no relevance to the actual measurements.

Hillman 24 in x 24 in cold rolled steel solid sheet metal. Sheet metal used on the auto body of new vehicles and when aftermarket body work is performed tends to be between 20. Automotive sheet metal once ran in the range of 18 gauge which was 48 thousandths of an inch thick actually 0 0478 inch. Set your saw to straight rather than oscillating if there s a choice.

Sheet metal gauge size chart gauge or gage sizes are numbers that indicate the thickness of a piece of sheet metal with a higher number referring to a thinner sheet. You can also choose a depth for the rivet if you re just joining two sheets of metal a shallow depth works best.