THE BATTLE CONTINUES!! Work continues on the rear clip of the coupe body:
After both sides had been welded in the next step was to integrate this rear body clip in with the lower deck lid panel and rear part of the roof section. The lower decklid panel was actually in very good condition. The interior part had portions missing, but was not all that hard to replicate these missing part and weld them in.
I use a mig welder for all assembly, and butt weld the joints together in most cases. I will hammer form these seams on flat panels to keep distortion to a minimum when grinding the weld flat. Its important to constantly "step back" and view your project from a distance as your eye will catch many imperfections and disproportions before your tape measure will. Making the seams through the belt line rib allows you to hide the weld and minimize distortion as the curve will hold its shape better than a a flat panel will and you can smooth it over with filler when the car is painted. Next was to address the rear window panel that had been rudely cut out with a torch. Again my friend Donnie Smart had a rear window section out of a coupe. I learned that the coupe and sedan are different, in that the sedan had a curved bottom edge and the coupe is straight. It came with the prerequisit bullet hole, which I debated on leaving it in the body, but finally decided to weld it closed.
The upper deck lid panel was a mess and I should have had Donnie make another one for me, but I patched what I had together and went from there. The trunk hinge pads were missing, and had to be fabricated, which took a week to get worked out. The problem is to place them correctly so the trunk lid will close where its supposed to. I had bought a new decklid from Steve's Auto Restorations and had some decklid hinges. Its all trial and error to get the thing to fit correctly and hours of patient manipulation. 
The next major project was to get a foundation that the body could be secured to and built up from. I bought a pair of new reproduction frame rails and the Chassis Engineering X member and took the diamensionals from a frame drawing and proceeded to build my frame. The frame rails were secured to metal saw horses that I built. Center was established from a wire strung from one horse to another, and used as a center reference I began to position the rails and cross members.
This photo is a later one, as I didn't take any as I began to postion the frame rails on the saw horses. With the frame assembled, the next step was to cut the body loose from the existing twisted frame (it had been welded to the frame) and position it on the new rails. Since I was starting with a car with no floor at all I decided to channel the car about 3 inches in the front and 2 inches in the back, just enough to cover the frame rails. Channeling is the process where the body actually sits lower on the frame, simular to a shoe box cover, and gives the car a lower look without altering the suspension.
Here you see two cars in comparison, with the one on the left being severely channeled and the one on the right in the factory position. I wanted my car to be low, but not as much as the blue car; just enough to hide the frame and with a slight rake. This is accomplished by taking the new sub rails that I puchased and welding one on top of the other. This gives a factory look with all the bumps and ridges that should be there, but sits much lower than normal. Below you can see the installed subrails that sit on the frame.
It was now time to take my new cowl and integrate it into the roof section and to the subrails. This was very time consuming as the metal was rusty, and rusty metal desintigrates instead of welds. You can see from the photo above where I welded new cowl bottoms and welded small patches in to make the section strong. The most difficult part of the project is getting the doors to fit in the body correctly and line up. When the floor is out of the body the body wants to sit and open up like a banana peel. The task is to gather it up again and place it in the factory postion. More on that process next post.
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