While I had hoped to start cutting the boot off the car I got hung up on making the front fit better… guess you could say I wasn’t too happy with the fitment. I also started a punch list for the body work so I hopefully don’t miss anything. I am happy to say the list is pretty short and I knocked quite a bit off already. So heres a screen shot of my list it will grow a little when I see things I need to deal with.
Now that I have a list to work towards the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to get brighter. Anyways so since the last post I have got a bit done, hoped for more but sometimes plans don’t work out.
So I had to repair the bonnet hinge mounts and needed to fill the holes on the top of the inner wing where the front end bolts too. I also attempted to fill the hole on the front end that pulled through but that didn’t work out too well but it still holds well and can’t be see when the bolt is on so I’m leaving it for now, pretty sure my tub of bondo glass has gone bad, at least the hinge mount hardened up pretty well.
I sanded the bonnet repair the best I could but it was kind of hard to sand with the rivnuts sticking out. Once the bracket is on though you can’t see the repair and it feels solid so I’m ok with it.
Next up I wanted to clean up the lines for the front end, the scuttle lines were bothering me and the bonnet lines as well. I knew if I left it as it was it was going to eat at me so I set out to tweak things a bit.
It was starting to look ok but not good enough yet, the LH scuttle side was still standing off quite a bit and I really wanted to know why. The hinge mount was lined up with the door really well and the profile looked correct. So why did it seem like the front end was being held out by the hinge panel? I finally figured it out, it came down to the layer of fiberglass where the A panel was bonded to the front end. On the LH side it stood out a little more. So I hit it with the angle grinder to smooth the back side out. I also smoothed out the curves of the front end by hand with some 80 grit sandpaper and then hit it with some 1500 to make it smooth. I was very happy with the results after.
Next up I needed to bond some big washers to the back side of the A panels to help spread the load of the allen bolts. I used some gorilla glue to hold them on. hopefully it doesn’t add too much thickness to the front.
Finally I welded up the area of the A post and scuttle seam where I ground some of the lip off. I also filled the hole where the antenna wire came through as I don’t plan on having an antenna for the radio (not sure what kind of radio I will even have at this point lol).
Because I couldn’t fully commit to not having fresh air vents I made up some blanking plates and bolted them on. I will have them painted the body color and will put them on with some sealant. This way nothing gets in and if I find not having the vents makes a noticeable difference I can easily take the plates out.
Next up it was time to clean up the inside of the car. I decided to grind back the plug welds on the crossmember, I originally was going to leave it as it was but I think I was just being lazy then. Once I did that I cleaned up all the grinding dust and hit the bare metal areas with primer. Amazing how tiding up can make things look that much better.
Things are really moving along, next up is to start on the boot repairs. I would like to really finish the front by mounting the lights etc but I somehow lost my bumper brackets and figure I may as well wait and do them all at the same time. I will close with the current status of the body work punch list.
The Rust chronicles 