Week #7

If there was a point in a project that would give you cause to scratch your head and ask "Can I possibly do this?", I'm at it. I've got a unibody on the dolly with the trunk cut out and the filler between the rear glass and deck lid "partially" cut off. Nothing cleaned up in the way of old spot welds ground down, nothing sandblasted...all the rusted areas that made it look like a basket case are still there. There's a pile of replacement panels on the shelf, there are boxes of removed parts, all sharing that same wonderful rusty hue, all needing restoring or replacing. In fact, the repair panel I'm gonna use for the first area to patch...HAS TO BE REPAIRED!

Had to work Saturday so time spent on the car was limited to Sunday, and even then my time was split between the task at hand and watchin' our Jaguars get beat :(.

On Wednesday I had received the piece of metal that I am going to use to repair the area at the foot of the rear glass. What I got was a large cutout that included the filler, the lower corners, which extend about 8" up the sides of the rear window, and about half of the package tray. My original plan was to separate the filler and install it as if it were one of those new replacements, and then just patch in what I needed after that. Well that's sounds real good, only after looking at what I would be patching in, I would just be welding everything right back together again. So I started trimming and prepping the "patch" to be put in as one big piece.

I must have spent an hour just trying to figure out what to leave on the patch and what to leave on the car. You see, the rust on the car extends to the back edge of the package tray area and the inner support "lips" in one corner. If you're familiar with the shape of the lower corners of the '68-'70 Bs, it gets pretty complex up under there with the shapes of the metal. There are several "layers" of metal that make up those areas.

Well, to make a long story longer, I pinned down what was what and got the patch trimmed up to the size I'll use. Now the attention will turn to the car and removing what will be replaced. The idea here is to cut out the bulk of what will be replaced, being careful not to cut outside the area the patch will replace, then fitting the patch in place and marking exactly what is to be removed, very critical as I will be butt welding most all splices.

As described at the beginning, It is not a pretty site right now in the ol' garage. Lucky for me the metal work, or the act of learning how to do it, is my most enjoyable part of this stuff....well maybe besides firein' up when they're done!