The passenger front fender had some galvanized metal that was pushed in between the brace before filler was used to smooth things over. It caused further rust to the brace as well as the fender skin. I made a piece to repair the brace before repairing the outer. The brace was welded, finished, painted, and the back of the skin repair panel painted before it was welded on top.

The drivers side hadn’t popped loose completely, but it was pretty obvious someone was living behind that bubble on the bottom corner of the fender. The repair was welded over the hole to catch anything on from the road that build up, to rust the hole to the size of the oversized repair patch. The inner brace needed some repair as well.

The bottoms of both doors was bubbled from repairing trim holes from another model. The repair was done the same way, by slapping a piece of metal over the small hole to try to make it vanish. Out of sight, out of mind.

Ohh, I guess that doesn’t do anything, but make the small hole a big rust hole.

The passenger side door had pinholes the entire length of the door from some of the debris that had accumulated in the bottom over the years. A replacement was ordered.

The dash was taken apart, the air boxes removed from the inside, and the outside. The plastic duct was held together with duct tape, miscellaneous screws, and tangled wire.

Some of it is salvageable, but it will be a lot nicer to update and replace all these boxes with a single unit under the dash. The only duct available for replacement anymore is used original plastic pieces that are still intact, but they are all the same age and brittle. A Vintage Air unit will be going in to simplify the conversion from R12 to R134a, and minimize the clutter under the dash and in the engine bay with all the boxes that were needed back in 1966.

The headliner came out, along with the nest that was the headliner. I’ll spare everyone the gore and show the floor after it was swept up. You get the idea from looking at what dropped when the edges were taken loose in the first picture.

Right on schedule the door shows up when it’s needed! It comes as a hardtop version with no window frame. The brackets have to be removed from inside the door to convert it into a post with frame model. The frame was remove from the original door, blasted, and fit to the door.

The door was then fit to the car, the gap set with paint sticks, and clamped in place before being welding. It takes a bit of work to get everything aligned, with tack welding, moving things, checking gaps and rechecking, before it’s finish welded.

The front a-pillar covers hadn’t been touched, and there was a nice surprise waiting under the driver side. Some of the holes around the windshield frame were covered up with brazing and needed to be cleaned out.

The hole was bad enough that a panel was order to replace the damage. They don’t make any repair panel for the windshield frame other that the complete inner post and both sides were fabricated. The replacement panel that is available isn’t the full length of the pillar and stops short of the to corner. I had to take piece of what was left of the original to make a complete patch to weld in place since the original had rust. I guess to was to hard to reproduce the entire post like they made it from the factory.

Either way, it was repaired along with the upper corner of the windshield frame, the inner panel was fabricated, and the a-pillar was repaired.

Here is a few pictures of the inner panel being made for the passenger side. I used some old packing paper that came with a box, traced out the general shape, and a piece of metal about the same.

The pattern was transferred to the metal, radius of the pillar fit, and lined were drawn on the metal where it needed to be shaped. The metal was bent in a break to make an L-channel, a shrinker and stretcher were used to shape the channel L-channel, and the upper flange was folded over and trimmed to shape.

Once everything drops right in place, it was clamped, tack welded, and finish welded along with the little hole next to it in the dash.

The windshield frame was cleaned and any of the rust spots were cut or ground out before being welded.

Some pictures of the windshield frame cleaned up with the a-pillar covers back on and fit to the passenger door frame.

The console was placed on the new floor, aligned with the cowl, hole cut for the cable, and the screwed where it needs to go. Once the console was in the place the passenger side seat was fit in place to make sure there was room next to the console and away from the armrest on the door. This car had a power seat on the drivers side, but it was locked up and parts are really expensive to find old units to make a good one. A manual seat track was sourced and in route to be able to place the drivers side seat mounts.

The rear window was next on the list of repairs, and had some brazing dripped into the corners where the rust was starting. I wiggled them around a bit until they popped out of the rusty hole, and cut a small piece to repair the corner.

The other side was the same way, but had some rust along the edge where the rubber would meet the rear cowl panel. The corners were both welded and the rest of the window frame cleaned up.

That should pretty much take care of the rust that was found on the car, and make for a lot better base for the bodywork.

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