Body Restoration

Built a dolly to hold the body.  Here's us moving in through the yard after we moved the rolling frame up to the top garage.  I wasn't sure if the dolly would roll through the grass so I figured we might end up with the world's most expensive yard art.

About 30-40 damaged places on the body, not including the obvious damage to the tail lamp panel, right rear quarter panel and right door.  Repaired numerous cracks and damage on the nose section.  Here's before and after shots.

Repaired pretty crappy looking door jambs and wiper bay area, these are "after" pictures:

And did some extensive repair and reconditioning in the engine bay.  Before paint and after (including dust):

Currently working the major damage on the rear.  Here is before...

The challenge was that most of the rear tail lamp panel was lost in the wreck, including the edge that is normally on the rear deck.  Did some creative adjusting and placement using the left aft corner as a reference and fabricating and installing temporary locating tabs to keep the rear panel and right quarter panel aligned while we bonded.  Here is the current state of repair on the tail panel and right quarter.  We fabricated bonding strips and glassed the rear end in from the inside.

Rear quarter panel replacement..

Now we have to repair this big-ass hole in the rear deck while maintaining the contour.  Learning more bout this everyday.

Finally finished the rear body repairs.  A lot than I bargained for as everywhere you see primer below I had to repair in some way..  For those that might have to do this level of repair.........buy a rear clip or rear deck and replace the entire thing.  Having to do the entire rear by hand and get it close to the original lines is a real challenge.  Finally, I got it as close and as smooth as I can, after about 8 hours of finish work.  If its not perfect, then hey, its not perfect.  After doing this, I don't believe its humanly possible to get it any better, at least for an amateur human like myself.  Anyway, here's the after pics.  Now we can move on to the door sills, etc.

Here's a true before picture....

And after.  We still need to replace the lower exhaust filler panel.