No I am not finished with the car… god I wish I was. But I am finished with my share of the body work and boy does it feel good. Been a little while since my last update, I had a punch list… its not completely checked off but thats ok… more on that later.. no I won’t have a screen shot of the list this time, it got too long to do in one photo.
So last time I finished the boot repairs and I had a punch of items left. little odds and ends… or so I thought… then I kept retouching things that were done cause… well I wasn’t happy… still not super happy… but I really don’t see a fix. So lets dive in shall we, just gonna work through the photos in the order they were taken, this should be fun… and show my inattentiveness towards some repairs, more like breaks that were needed.
First up, I needed to remove the tank tie down strap from the old floor cutout and weld it into the new floor. I quickly found out how flat my boot floor isn’t, wasn’t planning on sound deadening it but I might just incase it wants to move. I was surprised, shouldn’t have been, how rusty it was under the mount though.
Once that was done I decided to throw the wheels on and put it back on the ground. I wanted to see if the wheels were poking out funny etc. plus I just wanted to see it. So here we have it, I was shocked with how small the car looked on the ground.
Next up it was time to remove the rear subframe and start working on the rear seat base repairs. but before that I dropped in the new battery box… Magnum panels suck, and this thing took a bit of beating to fit… but that didn’t happen for a minute.
Now onto the boot floor/seat base repairs. I thought…. thought is the key word here… that this was going to be a quick cut patch and be done… boy was I so so wrong. This repair, and I know I have said this a lot, this repair suuuuuuuucked. more emphasis on the suck part. This repair had me laying under the car thinking I should have replaced the whole boot floor, and maybe the cost of a new shell would have been worth it. Either way here is what I was looking at… and where I got before I took a small weekend away and came home still not wanting to touch it.
Not gonna lie, this is probably some of my worst welding from when I started this thing, don’t care no one is gonna see it. Can you see how much I was like F this repair? Anyways came back from my trip, promised myself I would do something… not the seat base… wasn’t happening…. couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I made some holes one the front end screwed some things in and boom.
Now that I did something that made me smile… I had to finish the seat base. I told my body guy an estimated time that I would be ready for him, dammit if I wasn’t gonna make it. So I pressed on, over the next few days I pushed and got the seat base and battery box in and done… so happy that is over.
Is it pretty, no, do I care no, is it strong? I sat on it for a few hours peeling back sound deadening on the roof and with my covid-30 extra pounds these days it held my ass… no one will ever sit back there, there won’t be seat belts and I won’t be offering rides. Either way this marks the last of the major metal repairs… WOOHOO!
I know what you’re thinking… But Jeff, what about the doors? ah good question I am not doing them. I am tired, I don’t feel like stressing over more stuff, and my body guy gave me a really nice estimate for him doing them… yes some times you just need to start throwing money at things. Could I do it? sure I believe I could but I want to be done and another week in my garage means just that far away when someone who knows how to do this stuff can probably knock it out in their sleep…. I bow to the experts.
But before I jumped on disassembling the doors it was time to mount some bumpers, play with some boot badges (not sure if I want to go middle or side). I had to make my own bumper brackets because I apparently threw out the ones I bought and wasn’t about to pay $30 in shipping for another set. What I made works ok. I also had to drill holes for the boot latch, these were left undrilled by the manufacturer to leave options, also needed a hole for the wire harness. Good thing fiberglass drills easy.
Next it was time to take apart the doors, which I was under the impression this would be very painful. Like hours of torture and getting no where painful… 40 minutes… is all it took to fully dissemble both doors fully, that was me taking my time. I could probably do it faster. What I found was the RH door is in excellent shape aside from the dent. I don’t think I will bother with replacing the skin. LH door also in great shape… slight frame rot, because of that and the welds breaking and the overall poor fitment of the door, a skin will be necessary. Oh and I thought I had got all the hard candy rappers out of the RH door a while back, apparently I didn’t, seems previous owner had a sweet tooth and without a door panel found it to be a suitable trash bin. I found a pile next to the gauge cluster as well.
Last was time to fill some rivet holes in the floor pan (no pictures) and fix the gutters (some pictures).
With all that done it was now time to take it all apart again. Not much left but time to disassemble the front end, take the front subframe out, get the boot lid off, and remove the bumper. With all that done and with the help of my brother in law this happened…
The shell is now on a trailer and just waiting to go to the body shop… I am done… as long as nothing crazy is found during blasting, I will drop this thing off and pick it up painted and ready to be put back together. It has been almost 5 months of grinding, welding, hammering, cursing, sweating, damn near crying, and sleepless nights but it is finally on a trailer and I am done in a sense. I could not see this day even when my punch list had 3 items. I still feel like I missed something. One may say its just a car why do you stress so much… I wish I knew why, but I apparently cannot take things slow. From week one I just wanted to be done, now we are here.
So with all that, the next blog posts might all be in black in white, well at least the ones with the car. I have some mechanicals to work on while the shell is at the shop. But theres only a handful of people who know my color choice… and who knows I might change my mind again. But I want to keep it a secret until its done and I can get some really good photos of it in the wild. Depending when that is I might have some nice fall colors to play with.
The Rust chronicles 