1930 citroen C4 hot rod pickup. chopped and dropped.

day two.

started off with me massaging the door fit (with a lump hammer) to try to cure where theyd dropped a bit at the back corner. there is literally no adjustment, to correct this you have to bend the hinges. afte r85 years theres obviously going to be a few issues, but i got them not far off. to get them any better would imvolve repinning the hinges which is beyond the remit of this job.

then i tack welded the doors shut-


then marked out some cuts with the masking tape. its fairly conseravtive (by my standards!) 4" chop, done with a view to allow the same amount of chanelling at a later date rather than ging in heavier with the chop and there not being room inside later.


no messing around, straight in with the grinder. door tops first-


and then the rest of the roof-






then, trim off the excess and chuck it back on. much betterer.







then, spend pretty much the entire rest of the day grinding back the paint, welding, then grinding back the welds. only for the car to look more or less the same as it did in the pics above. some closeups show where the work has gone though-






i also added in the new peice of angle that acts as the bracing for the top of the cab back-


and extended these little roof channels across to meet it-


the cab feels really solid now, far more solid that it ever did before.

last thing for yesterday was remove this heath robinson setup off the bottom of both seats- it all weighs more than the seats do!


and chuck the seats back in in their new lower position.



todays job- onwards with the roof pancake and start the new roof insert.

I don't think Dez is changing the windows in his lockup, so it should be fine.

i was also slightly amused by the use of that word in a non-architectural context. lost in translation i guess?

day 3 progress was a lot slower.
it was spent bracing up the roof for the insert, and bashing the original sections of the roof back to shape, as someone had been here before and made a bit of a mess of them. i was also pancaking the roof down at the back at the same time, to flatten its profile. ive taken just over 2" out of the back end of the roof, giving it a much thinner, less wedgy appearance.


i spent quite a while bare metalling the original insert frame channel, removing all the old sealants and paint, so my new frame could sit into it flush. quite fortuitously, its just the right size that a bit of 1" box section will sit in there and hold the new insert at the right level compared to the roof skin. then i spent even longer with a hammer and dolly straightening up the mangled flanges. it looked as though someone had tried to remove the old ash frame with a crowbar, given up, and stuck it back down with ALL the tigerseal. i spent some time on this as the plan is to have no headlining like it had previously, just painted metalwork, so it needed to look good. but after a couple of hours i was ready to start laying in some box to frame it up-








you can see there is some (but not actually that many) piecuts going on to allow the roof to have a gentle CROWN rather than being dead flat. its only something like 10mm over its entire length, but its enough to make it look 'right'. you can also see the amount of clamps involved to pull everything into place before welding!

you should also be able to see where ive run a cut the full length of the roof just above the gutter, allowing me to press the roof skin down and under the gutter section for the minute to flatten the roof out. one the framing is in this will need reshaping a little, then piecutting to remove the excess and welding back up.

i then took off the side bows and jigged them on the bench by clamping them to a bit of heavy box section with a spacer between, to make sure they were both the same curvature-




then they went back in, where clamped and fully welded, as well as adding the front and rear bars. the rear bar is 6" in from the cab back, as this is where the roof insert will end. the rest will be a welded in panel to match the profile of the roof sides.








and here you can see how much flatter the roof is than before-


so all in all not as much progress for a days work, but its worth taking my time over this bit or any sheetmetal i lay over the top will never sit right. the cab is also even stronger and stiffer than it was before from adding this extra bracing, the doors shut with a real 'thunk' now.

to be honest this is the easiest roof chop ive ever done. in terms of actually dropping the roof height anways. everything is square and nothing tapers. its literally cut round twice then stick it back on. even modelAs are harder than this.

all the real work on this is down to reshaping the roof and cab corners to make it look like a proper pickup rather than a cut down sedan. worth the extra effort though as itll look so much better when done. i rolled it outside yesterday for a quick look and its totally transformed the look and attitude of the car.

That looks fantastic... the new panel to match the window and the chop are great.

Thanks.



which curve?

The main swage line. It looks spot on

i used a couple of different techniques, but its mostly hand beaten by eye. i'll grab some pics of how i formed it and update later.