falconvan

Looks good except someone mounted the steering column on the wrong side! Killer deal; that'll be a nice car when it's done.

And one more....

OK, while Kyle's smoothing the wrinkles I decided to start figuring out how to make this 64 T-bird rear seat work. I always thought the wrap around rear seat was cool so when I saw one in the bone yard last year, I jumped on it. It's about 4" too wide and after a lot of staring and thinking, it made the most sense to narrow it in the middle. I'm going to figure out the back section first and then move to the seat. Here we are cutting up and narrowing the package tray.

OK, I'll take a look on their site and give it a shot. I'd like to see your Charger; that's cool to have held onto that car for so long. Hard to believe 1989 was 22 years ago; seems like yesterday.

That looks great, Rodney. What's the Eastwood part# on these things? I had the main body of my car sandblasted but the guy I used has since folded so I'll be hand stripping my doors and fenders. I did part of one door with a DA and 80 grit but I'd like to try these.

Does anyone out there make a lower repair panel for a 48 two door coupe drivers door? Or does anyone on here have a good door for sale that's somewhere around Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, etc? I'd probably cost a mint to ship a door but I'll make a road trip for a good one.

You think you're getting pretty decent at body work until you sit and watch someone that does it for a living. Man, I got a lot to learn. I've got him putting about six hours a week into this; that's about all I can afford but he's making much better progress than I was. I'm doing the grunt work; lots of sanding, stripping and patching and Kyle's doing the finish work. I'm optimistically hoping we'll have the body work wrapped up by mid summer. It's good to be excited about working on this car again.

We've steadily been working on this a few nights the last couple of weeks. I've got the rustproofing paint pretty much done on the interior and will be starting underneath soon. Kyle's starting to go back over the patched areas and smooth them out. Still a ways to go but moving along.

There's a guy on ebay who has them, here's a link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370357472807&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK:MEWAX:IT

I'm with you guys on the interior; looks awful. But if the body is solid and not full of bondo it'd make a good starting point. I like the color, wheel choice, and stance but the interior and diesel would have to go.

That's cool, I didn't know anybody was making an HEI for the flat six. I'll bet that does make a huge difference and no more adjusting points. Definately post a picture when you get time; I'd like to see it.

Welcome! Sounds like you've got you're work cut out for you but that's a great car you have there. What are you're plans? It's sounds like a major restoration is in the works if you've got the space to take it apart that far.

My friend Kyle has been putting some time in on this and it's nice to have the help. He's been finishing up some metal repair and is getting ready to start at one corner of the car and work his way around smoothing everything. I've been painting some POR-15 in all the hidden cavities and the trunk floor to try and make sure the rust stays gone once we're done. It's moving along pretty good; as soon as we've got the main body finished and primered, I'll move to setting the drive train, and setting up the steering.

Same to all of you; I hope everyone got the day off to work on their projects.

That's a steal for $3500! Upgrade the brakes, scrub and polish, throw in some new carpet and seat covers and you're pretty much done.

I'm off work all week and man does that feel good. I think I'm going to start scouting around for a different job; I thought I'd really like a higher level of management but it has been nothing but constant aggravation. I just cant get away from it; long hours plus constant calls and emails when I'm not there. The money was nice at the beginning but It's just not worth it so hopefully I can find a way out. I got to spend a few hours working on the car the last few days. Lots of prep work underneath but nothing that really shows on a picture. I had a few spots in the floor that had some small pinholes so I mixed up some All-Metal filler and took care of those. I got the door hinges out which was an adventure all in itself. Those big #3 Phillips screws figured they had been there since 1948 so they were staying. It took about 3 hours to get 16 screws out. I saved this brake petal assembly from a 96 Firebird we scrapped and I think it's going to work fine once I trimmed off the unnecessary pieces. I did a little trial fit with the dash and front seat; it might have to come down a few inches but I think it'll work.

If it was three years ago I'd say jump on it. I made some good $$$ parting out three 47-50 Dodge/Plymouths on Ebay and was able to put that back into my own project. But when the economy tanked, so did my Ebay sales. Now the money you get for used parts seemed to have gone way down or they wont sell at all.

Great job, Alan. I like the color choices a lot.

Your killing me here, Bob! I promosed my wife no more new projects until the 48 is done and I'm probably less than 100 miles from this place.

You bet, Bob. I'd love to see your ragtop up close.

Thanks, I appreciate that! Going this far with a rebuild is really tedious and you have to learn to be satisfied with slow progress sometimes so it's cool when people appreciate what you're doing. As far as skill; I'm learing along the way like all of us. More than once I've had to go back and scrap an idea after spending a lot of hours on it, but that's the price for having a finished product you're happy with.

You know, I like doing it myself but most of mine are 10 footers so far and this car is just too pretty to not be happy with it when it's done. That's cool your brother in law is a body man; my brother in law owns a nice big trailer and a truck to pull it with so I make sure we keep a good relationship! He's hauled a lot of cars for me and never complained so i guess I'm doing something right. I kind of jumped around today; I finished up welding in the trunk panel and a couple of little patches where the spare tire bracket was. I'm going to eliminate the cowl vent so I cut all the brackets off of it and turned it into a patch. This is going to be tough getting this straight so i just tacked it and I'll let my body man finish this up. I've got the whole week of Christmas off so i'm going to try and get a couple of long days to work on the underside and get the welds cleaned up and hopefully POR-15 the whole underside of the body along with a lot of the inner body structure. I know a lot of guys like to paint all that body color but I figure if you're not going to see it once the interior is together, it's getting the POR-15 treatment.

Nice job, Fred. It's cold here, too but not as cold as your place.

I decided I'm at a point where I'm going to need some help on this; my body skills are fair but I want this to be nice. I've got a friend who's a pretty good body man so I had him come look today. He gave me a pretty good price so we'll start working together on getting the main body work finished starting the last week of December. I'm excited; it's going to come out great plus I get to learn along the way.

A lot of work there but it is a cool ride. Buy this and the taxi thats on another thread and you'd have a great looking pair.