We started to dis-assemble her today...

More filler than expected on the old girl...

Rust repair needed as expected

Fender repairs complete

Engine is off to the rebuilder... Norm @ Fortin's

Time for rocker and floor repair

This was the previous "repair" whoever worked on this restoration in the past was a fan of the pop rivet gun..maybe no welding skills?

More pop rivets smothered in roofing tar....we found these everywhere!

Fixed up the battery box so it looks tidy

Floors & rockers are done!

Here we are showing the piece we cut out and the new piece already welded in...

This is the back side of that piece we cut out... you can see there are several pieces

On this close-up you can see someone actually used screen door screen to "fix" this panel

We noticed a lot of rust issues in the rear that we couldn't get to so....we had no choice but to cut the rear skin off the car

Here is the piece we cut off

And here is all the new metal in place under where that rear skin covers

This old girl is back for us to finish the body & paint. It went home for some work by the owner so new pics will be at the end of this post.

The customer brought us replacement rocker panels so we could take care of the rust for him.

We cut out the rust...

Checking fitment before we tack it in place

We found more rust in the rear door so we'll fix that as well

Swapping out a diff for a beefier one that was supplied by the customer...now to modify the driveshaft...

Home made "console" - that we promptly ripped out!

The wiring was a hot mess - it nearly made Chris (our wiring guy) cry

Yes folks, you're seeing this correctly...those are fuses mounted to the firewall

Some nice LED lights mounted to the dash...those were removed quickly

The "floor" was made up of about 80 pieces of metal that were overlapped and had 7 different fasteners holding each piece to other ones...that took a while to get all of the floors gutted

um....think this is a fire hazard? 

Our personal favorite find was carpet underlay used as...insulation??? in the roof above the window

There were parts of this underlay that were pushed up into holes in the roof that then had bondo on the roof - guess that's one way to fill in a hole

Floors finally all removed, now to fabricate removable panels so you can access all the engine and brake master...

Floor panels all fabricated...now fabricating a custom removable dog house complete with cup holders

This truck has returned home and the owner is now re-assembling it

This cab has gone home with the owner to be put back on the chassis and will return for the rest of the paint & body later next year

This old girl has gone home to be put back together by the owner.

This was the amount of filler we found in the rear panel above the trunk…among other areas

The customer has sent us some updates on the progress of the build so the following pictures are from the customer and it’s coming along nicely!

This customer is putting a new engine in this car that dyno'd out at 601 HP so we are putting a new clip and boxing the frame for him as well as fixing anything else that is needed to make it safe

The engine was hard mounted to the frame with a homemade bracket that someone had to cut to clear the steering column knuckles so we are removing that and fabricating engine mounts that will allow for some movement when the engine torques.

Here the clip has been cut out

Now it's time to grind off all these snotty welds

We split the fenders to fix the shape back closer to original - they were patched and patched and bondo'd which you can see in the next few pics

We found gaping holes filled with bondo and newspaper

The bondo never ended

here you can see where we used a moon hubcap to make a nice adjustment to the fender to clear the brackets on the new clip 

must have been a gallon of bondo in this fender!

The customer is going to finish the final touches on the build but here she is!

100% custom fabricated front "bobber" fenders designed and built for the customer.  Running boards were flared to match the widened rear fenders

We widened the rear fenders 4 inches to accommodate the tires. 

Here she is with her gas tank installed

The frame the customer provided was kicked up in the back so we had to modify the floor of the body to fit.

And here is what it looks like after some fabrication to fit over the frame.  The holes are to provide access to the shocks.

There were many modifications made to the firewall to accommodate the engine being set back an extra 4 inches or so

Custom battery box in the rear. We also built a cover for it as well that isn't shown in this picture

We widened the rear fenders 4 inches

The customer wasn't sure what he wanted to do with the front fenders other than he didn't want to use the stock ones.  Together we came up with a template and went to work making the framework for "bobber" style fenders

This picture shows all the sheet metal tack welded in place before Dr. Dave does his handy work

Here is the beginning of the bodywork on the custom fenders

This is what we started with....

Every body panel from front to back was beaten and dented....

We started rust repair here....the customer only wanted to replace the lower quarter panel so that's all we did...not sure what is above that patch panel we installed.  The customer originally wanted to fix the major body issues to pass inspection and just make it a driver.

The interior was absolutely brutal and missing so much...

The engine turned out to be a 360 - not the correct engine but the customer didn't want to swap it for a proper engine that would have come in this car - no big deal it'll still drive!

The grille was missing and the whole front end was beat pretty bad. 

We did a compression check on the engine - no rebuild as per the customer.  New gaskets, new fuel pump, new water pump and some paint makes her look better.

Rust repair on the quarter...we didn't take it down to bare metal above the patch panel as per the customers' request but we did put fresh metal where we cut out the rust

You can see in

Brand new gas tank installed

We would have liked to have put a full quarter on this side but we did what the customer asked which was just a lower patch

As you can see there was a ton of bondo in the old girl

We couldn't in good faith leave all that bondo on the car.  The customer decided to go gloss black instead of flat black on the paint so now we step up our game and machine it straight - no hand blocking as the customer didn't want to spend the extra money & time but she'll still look great

Ahhhh, fun with door pins, always a good time!

There...that's better - off to paint she goes for gloss black paint

A little uni-spotting to get most of the crease out so we can use as little body filler as possible....

Dr. Dave hard at work

Drivers' side quarter panel is all done and in primer now

The passenger side is way worse

We found an old braised in patch panel on the passenger side...

Quite a bit of filler on the passenger side when it came in

It needed to be literally chiselled off it was so thick and not adhered to the metal at all

It just kept going....

and going....

Had to fabricate a new inner wheel well on the drivers side

The old rusty floors are now cut out

She had cancer all the way into her inner wheel tubs

Time to fabricate a new rear pan - this one has rusted away

We started with the rear brace

Good thing we picked up some more vice grips!

New rear pan fabricated and spot welded in

All ready for the insert with the license plate light in it.  Voila!

Very funny Dave...bondo on the gaping rust hole? Really??

Last piece of the old floor to come out!! YAHOO

We had to remove the windshield in order to install the new vinyl top and this is what we found

Gobs and gobs of bondo, tin tape and who knows what else was in there to fill the rusted out holes across the entire cowl

We cut out all the rust and welded in new metal like it should have been done the first time

Lisa struggling with 75 year old bolts

The Legend at work

Dan brought us a photo of the car from 1964 with the previous owner!  How cool?

This was the suspension when it came to us...

This is the new TCI kit installed

We found sheet metal siliconed to the inside of the box sides

UHHHHHH we found a bit of bondo on the fenders....

and a bit more bondo....

We found a BIT of bondo on the roof! 

There were a few holes where there was an attempt to pull out the extensive dents in the roof.

Wiring is a bit of a rats' nest!

We also found metal overlapping behind the quarter panels...a good place for water to get trapped and rust.