Preparation for bodywork and some rust repair

Its a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.........before you can do any bodywork, the car's got to get stripped of paint, rust-proofing and misc. goo.  Used a combination of a grinder-mounted spiral brush and cup brushes, drill-mounted wire brushes, DA, heat-gun / putty knife, and lots of elbow grease.  Still have more stripping to do - will wait til its on the rotisserie. 

Driver's side stripped first. ( you can see the door opening brace covered under the rotisserie link )

Bought a donor quarter-panel to replace passenger side that is rumpled, from Craig Halsted, who was kind enough to bring it to Hershey with him and deliver it to my Dad's hotel.  Found a couple of dings  and some light surface rust while stripping, but its solid and straight overall.

The deck-lid on the car was dented in four places from a luggage rack - a trade of some stock mechanical parts with Jim Sloan, Sloan Racing included a clean straight deck lid.  The hinge / bracing needed to be tweaked to get it to line up straight - basically bolt it on, check the fit, pull, twist, yank on the open deck lid to slightly bend the underside bracing so the edges line up when its closed.  Going to have the deck lid and fenders dip tank stripped since they are relatively small and cost effective to do, plus it will avoid possibly deforming in the stripping process.

Get the lead out....of the seams in the rear-panel in preparation for quarter-panel alteration.  Propane torch and a wire brush cleaned them out.

 

This is what the underside of the driver's side rocker looked like.  Marked and cut out the cancer, leaving the internal brace in place to weld to.

Made template out of cardstock, marking hole locations for fender bolts, then transferred to sheetmetal, cut, bent over a piece of steel tubing, hammer and dolly and leather mallet to form the compound bend.  Bend, test-fit, repeat, until it fits perfectly

Bolt in weld-nuts, then weld in place.  Drill holes for plug welds to internal brace..

Test-fit again and tweak, then weld in place and grind the welds.  There's some deformation since you can't get to the back to dolly it, but nobody's gonna see it anyways...passenger side received same treatment.

'Nother patch in the driver's quarter behind the wheel arch had a small rust hole, maybe 3/16" - replaced with a 1-1/2" patch - can't see it?  GOOD!