Week #81

Let's all use our imagination and pretend that this is just one week after my last update...ok? Let's face it, with world hunger and the fight against communism, not working on my car for 46 weeks straight seems pretty trivial!

I have been chompin' at the bit to get back into the '70 since the '68 is road worthy and being driven. A few weeks ago in preparation for jumping back into work on this car I completed building a beefier dollie for it. The older, wooden one did not work well at this new garage due to the fact that there are 3/4 inch lips, or drops, from the inside concrete floor to the outside of the garage. The old dollie, though sturdy, was not really as mobile as it could be and the casters just were not up to the task of taking the small "ledge" at the garage doors... After all, I would be needing to roll this car in and out of the garage regularly for blasting and such. The "new" dollie is of all steel construction with bigger casters. It utilizes two of the extension pieces from my rotisserie so I only had to weld up two other parts to have a full functioning dollie... and the whole contraption breaks down for easy storage.

I had stopped work at a critical point. I had cut the bulk of the quarters off of both sides, cut out most of the bad outer wheel house sections, and had actually gotten one wheel house area darn close to test fitting the new repop wheel house. This is where I picked it back up. By holding the WH (Wheel House) up close to it's in place position it was fairly clear that a bunch of the lip that mates to the car needed to be cut away along with a section at the top which would require the lip to be cut off completely. I marked the lip with a screwdriver and pulled out the cutoff wheel. The first cutting session was real close. It only took one more trimming to get the WH to fit fairly flush in it's spot. Just a little tweaking of it's overall shape and some cleaning up of the mating surface on the car and it looked like I had the WH in a good spot.

Next I grabbed up the trunk extension for this side. In my opinion these extensions are not the "crispest" stampings in the world. The lips and edges require a lot of shaping to mate cleanly. I spent a few minutes trimming portions of the lips that had way more material than necessary. I guess from storage and moving and whatever, this extension was bent a good bit outta shape. You couldn't tell by just holding it and looking at it but trying to fit it in place with the WH there it was clear. After giving the extension a few good twists it seemed to fit pretty good the initial try. The front edge of the trunk extensions is part of the last 4 or five inches of the rear wheel lip radius so it has to line up with the WH in this area. With my initial test fits this point between the two panels was a good inch off... this was reduced to less than a half an inch after a little "manual" adjustment. I can pretty much see where the extra half inch can come from so I'll be rebending some of the lips on the extension.

With the WH and trunk extension clamped into place I pulled the repop quarter panel off the shelf and laid it on some saw horses. After scribing a line about an inch in from the edges, I grabbed up the cutoff wheel again and went to it. Within a few minutes I had the front and top edges cut back. Without hesitation I held the trimmed quarter in it's place on the side of the car. It fell into place PERFECTLY! I was tickled to death. A quick couple of clamps at the wheel well and vole... the entire perimeter of the panel fit flush with the metal on the car... even the body line/crease lined up. I examined all the matting surfaces to look for big gaps between the quarter and the WH and/or trunk extensions. The gaps were minimal.

I went and got my wife and drug her out to the garage to see. Expecting a big ol' "Atta boy", I instead get..."That's great" murmured with no expression whatsoever.... "When's it gonna be finished?" When will I learn.