We've been making pretty good progress, unfortunately my new job doesn't leave me much time during the week so we're working in short bursts. We did do some work this past Thursday and I learned a valuable lesson - when you spend two hours next to someone welding, simply not looking at the arc does not mean you won't burn the hell out of your eyes. I woke up at midnight feeling like I'd been pepper sprayed! That one cost me a day of work, dumb move but lesson learned.
Our next step was to weld the doors shut. We tacked thin filler strips onto the rocker to give a backing for filling the bottom door gap.
The door edges were a little tough to weld because you quickly start cooking out the seam sealer and crap that's in the folded edge. Also took our time trying to cool the panels as we went to avoid warping as much as possible.
and it's a two door car now.
Next thing we started working on was the frame for the rear quarter window. We have the rear corner of the D-pillar, so the idea is to continue that around the window frame and we'll glue in a Lexan window.
First we made plates to tie the front section of the window frame to the B-pillar so nothing is loose and flexing around.
So in order to get the frame for the window we sectioned a piece off the rear of the c-pillar
Then cut, nibbled, trimmed and tweaked it so that it could be fit onto the front of the door.
And you can kind of see what we're going for. The lower section will get sliced off the top of the quarter panel of a yet-to-be-purchased second donor car, and we'll make little filler pieces for the corner. Might try and chop a piece of that lower window trim and fit it back onto the top of the door edge and use that as the lower window moulding? Have to see how everything fits.
We also cut 3" strips off of the roof and tacked them onto the side of the bed to help to help visualize how we want to shape the bed. This is going off the excellent suggestion from slow240 to continue the hood line back through the car.
I think that looks just about right. Our plan is to figure out exactly what shape we want and have a piece of "C" channel bent to spec to serve as the cap of the bed sides.
So far so good! I'm loving the look of it. We have a million hours worth of welding and grinding left to do, not to mention a hell of a lot of body work!
As I mentioned, I need to rustle up another donor wagon post haste. We need another tailgate and sections chopped off the rear quarter area that will make life a lot easier than trying to scratch build. I've been kind of sitting around waiting for a free car to fall in my lap near by, but looks like I'll have to reach a little further out.
Eeuroparts just announced their annual car show is now a big event at Lime Rock Park on June 9th, so the goal is to have this thing mostly together to bring to the show. At least in primer and roadworthy! That also means I've got a deadline to get my butt moving on some projects for the 242...