The driver taillight area is just about done. What was a large shallow dent turned out to have a couple of high spots and the edge of the taillight and body needed reshaping.
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New metal was welded into the driver side cowl area.
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Very ugly welds, but a bit of dressing out and this will be fine. Most of this is hidden by the fender, door, and windshield trim.
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The driver rear door with the new metal was stripped completely and prepped for minor putty work.
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The rust in the passenger side headlight was cut out. Underneath was some netting for fiberglass work. We still are not sure why that was there.
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New metal was welded into the passenger front fender.
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The driver side cowl section. Kurt put in a bit too much putty. Once his wife was done dressing it out, it looked much different.
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The driver side rear fender work. We lost track of the hours spent on the wheellip alone.
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As we started on the passenger doors, we noticed an alignment issue with the doors. While the doors can be reshaped, there were also crease and rust issues. We started seriously contemplating donor doors for here.
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Remember that the alignment of the top of the passenger fender was good? Yeah, well the bottom wasn't so good. Evidently the new rocker panel shifted isn't a perfect fit and is a quarter of an inch too far in. The fender is off a donor. This may all work out with some reshaping of the fender, but is a cause for concern.
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The passenger cowl and door alignment problem at the top. The fender alignment is ok, but this area will need some tweaking.
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The ripped off mirror area of the driver door didn't take much to fix.
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Donor doors for the passenger side. The front is off a BelAir, so the stainless side trimholes will need to be welded up. The rear was off a sedan. These were some of the best ones that East Coast Chevy had in their spares area. They didn't have a wagon rear passenger door.
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The roof had a few small dents, nothing major.
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The donor passenger door was stripped to check the condition. It is so much better than the rusty, creased original.
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The stainless side trim holes were welded up and the door was dressed out with putty. Nothing too major here.
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The driver side is just about done with it's body work.
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The passenger side dog leg welds took several hours to dress out properly.
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Normally, a story like this is told in time sequence, however, for clarity, a time jump is made in the pictures. There is very good reason for this.
The donor door for the passenger rear door was off a 210 4 door sedan, not a wagon. The top window frame is not correct. However, Kurt had already decided to only graft the parts of the door necessary, namely the bottom half, onto the original door. The story of "franken-door" is on the next page. The next several pictures take up the narrative after that door was constructed.
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"Franken-door" fits pretty well into the reconstructed dog leg.
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The donor doors are in place and the front one is dressed out. There is very little work to do on the rear door, putty wise.
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The donor fenders had lots of rust pits. Skims of putty were used to dress out most of the dimples. Kurt had decided to use a different fill primer surfacer sealer for the next stage, so the passenger fender did not get "measeled" with putty. In hindsight, we probably should have done the same thing to the passenger fender.
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The dressed out roof dents.
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The interior wheelwells were dressed out for the welds and the dents.
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The driver side rear wheelwell welds dressed out nicely.
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