Week #16

Finished the other backlight, lower corner 'rebuild'. Even after all my self inflicted back patting, it was just as time consuming and just as tedious as the other side. It did turn out comparable to the first effort so I was satisfied. Some preliminary cutting on the car at these areas allowed me to position these patches in place for tracing their outline for the official "surgery". Everything looked pretty good sitting in place but as I cut more out of the way for the repair it was clear that when it comes to the hidden support areas underneath, I could not keep to my goal of replacing that I removed with the same pieces from another car. The pieces are not visible and will be easier to replace with what's on hand than exact replacements... you'd have to be there!

Just for a change of scenery I grabbed up the trunk floor sections and did a little test fitting. I scraped all the remaining seam sealer from the entire perimeter of the trunk. There were a few remaining welds from the old floor removal that needed grinding down and some existing panel edges that needed hammer/dollying. The left panel fell into place so well that you'd a thunk it was NOS. The right side would have no part of that and made up for it by fitting a good 3/4" too far to the left. After a little trimming on two corners and some bending the lips where the panel meets the wheelhouse, I picked up about a half an inch in the right direction. One thing about this "B" body trunk... It's BIG. My previous "from scratch" trunk replacement was an "E" body...hell, those panels are half this size. Taking those panels in and out of the trunk for tweaking was no problem compared to these "quarter-panel" sized monsters. Couldn't quite put my finger on where the last quarter inch was gonna come from but I'll find it.

The trunk floor panels picked up some splotchy surface rust from sittin' around so I pulled out the Oxy-Solve and treated all pieces, including the
extensions and tank brace. Next I pulled out the hole saw(s) to tackle that chore. There are several 1.75" holes, a few 1" holes, one .75"er and one 15/16". The saws I used the last time just wouldn't "cut it" this time around. A trip to the hardware store got me what I needed for metal. The 15/16" hole is going to be 1"... hey, they don't give those saws away! The .75' hole has to be... some kind tank vent goes through it. Never got to actually cutting the holes... after paying for the saws, I was afraid I'd scratch 'em!

After reading a post on some advise on quarter panel replacement, I'm going to install the trunk extensions in conjunction with the quarters... it made sense that any major misfitting between quarters and trunk could be made up there.