66 dart convertible

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thought i'd drop by and take a peak. very nicework. i like the way your agressive with your work. remember take no prisoners!
 
rapidtransitric said:
thought i'd drop by and take a peak. very nicework. i like the way your agressive with your work. remember take no prisoners!
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thanks.
it is a choice, I work and have money or I work on the car and have no money. I'm doing the no money bit right now until things straighten up and I find out from the doctor if my knees are going to get better or I have to go under the knife to get it fixed .
so I have fun and don't buy much except for things I have to have and work on the car with existing stuff that I do have.
 
I am working on the drivers side fender and patching it together. that SuCKS big time, I'd almost rather drill spotwelds out. Here's where I started at today
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so I patched the front of the fender
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still have a little metal work to do to put it in finish mode but it's solid now
then went to the back part of the fender
made a back support structure
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and started on the outside patch.
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once this is finished I'll add the support structure to make sure I keep the curve on the fender as good as it is.
then on to the top section (man this fender is bad , gonna have to really work this thing in)
almost dine for the day.:cheers:
 
rapidtransitric said:
are you gonna pre fit the fender to the car before you finish welding in the support?
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Yep , I have to put the car on the body cart and mount a door for the fit, once I get the fit the door comes off and the inner structure get's tacked in place. Then I'll pull the fender to finish welding it up.
I didn't do that to the 65 satellite and had to make a lot of corrections and slices to fit good. that won't happen again.

I did leave a small piece of the inner support in the edge of the fender for curvature support while I was tacking in the outer skin.
 
rapidtransitric said:
so you been through that before huh. a mistake you won't make again lol
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yeah about 5 hours of cutting-check fit, cut some more, check fit and on and on. It took me longer to redo it than if I'd have done it right the first time.
I have to fix the lower door hinge first, Bushing going in and I'll blast it to see if the wheels turn freely (freely is a word isn't it?) oh well is now
 
I got a little more done on the dart. I put it on the body cart and took one brace off and lined up the door and fender. It took a couple of tries but it looks ok. I still have to add the top of the fender metal but I think I'll do it in the mounted position to make sure I don't blow the alignment,
here's some progress pic's. the first set of pic's are just putting it on and basic alignment.
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Now these are a little better on the alignment
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this is the position I'll weld in the top patck and the inner support structure. I left the back of the door up a little ,because the door is just a shell, when I fill it up with all the parts it should be a perfect alignment

time to chill for a little
 
I added the top patch piece(one of many to go in this fender) and was glad to discover that my decision to leave the fender mounted to the car was correct. MAN was that fender bent out of shape. I had to tweak the fender on the top and sides to get the patched part match the door and cowl. I still have to finish the inside mounting surface but that dhouldn't change the shape to bad. now it matches to the cowl
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started doing final tack to keep shape
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got the final shape at the door . It was almost 1/4 inch down too far.
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hmm is this supposed to be like that? I didn't grind on the edges at all.
I'll have to check out the other side later
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anyway the gap and curvature looks good from here.
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So I'll take off the fender tomorrow and add in the back pieces and tack them up to make sure the shape stays put
 
I finished little stuff today, darn honey do lists are killing me. they never get shorter,Anyway I worked on the passenger side fender a little and here what i fixed
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to this
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Fixed this
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to this
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fixed this
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to this
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oops didn't fix yet
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hmm honey do list calling ,maybe more work for me tomorrow
 
340sFastback said:
Nice metal work. That is gonna be a nice car when done.
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Thanks

It's been a long time getting there. Plus it'll take a lot more to get it where I want it for a daily driver and not be ashamed to pop the hood/trunk and drop the top to show it. (I'm practicing on this one so I get the wife's show car perfect) that way the wife let's loose of the money easier(NOT).
 
Ahhh I did some work today and finished up on the passenger fender and started stripping the door , it just feels good to be going forward's on this thing. I found a lot of bondo on the replacement passenger door but no holes,
there are some creases in it that I'll be pulling out to minimize the mud work.
here's where I'm at. Here is the lower patch panel that the wife's honey do list got in the way of.
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then went after the rest of it, mounted the door
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and checked alignment hmmmm not bad!
 

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I was able to get a little more done. worked on the fender (drivers side this time and alignment worked on the hood and will check that out too! passenger fender looks ok.
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passenger inner flange came out great.
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had to pull out the dents in the passenger door
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stripping the hood . curve on the hood looks a little off on the driver side due to some rust in the mounting area. I'll mount it and double check to make sure it's Ok , if it 's not I'll straighten it out and then fix the rust in the mounting area after i pull out the dent in there.
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I was able to get the hood on and start the fender to hood and fender to door alignment. It looks like I have a lot of adjusting to do to get everything spaced out correctly.
hood's a little high on the passenger side and fender is a little low, between the 2 adjustments it should come in ok.
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drivers side is not too bad except that I 'm going to have to adjust the curve of the fender by slitting the metal and massaging the curve to match the hood.
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hood alignment isn't bad , just a little tweak to the passenger's side to even out the gaps.
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and then there is the passenger door that looks like it went through a war and LOST!
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I'll be tinkering with the door/fender/hood alignment for a while to make sure I didn't screw something up when I had to put in all that metal.
should be fun
 
Today I worked on the doors to get them straight. Whew! 2 creases and many door dings later I have both doors almost ready to block .
driver side is close. I have to adjust the curvature still for the hood to match
but it was my mistake in welding that screwed up the curvature.
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I found a ding on the top of the passenger side fender weird spot under the trim
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passenger side quarter is real close to finishing up
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AHHH gotta straighten up the body line with a little mud (darn it I thought it was straighter)
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even the hood aligned fair. I still have to tweak it a little more
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That is really coming together nicely. Keep working it you will be glad you did later.
 
unknownsnake said:
very nice work. I wish I had those skills. I just hide and get the rust free cars :)
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thanks , but it isn't skill, it's just plain stubbornness I'm working on it until I get it right. I'll probably use twice the materials than I should. (sandpaper primer ect. ) Plus I can't afford that rust free cars. Too many people watch Barret Jackson shows and try to price their stuff to match, which puts it out of my price range. BUT that being said I like working on cars like this, it relaxes me and let's me work at something I Like doing
 
340sFastback said:
That is really coming together nicely. Keep working it you will be glad you did later.
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yup, thanks for the kind words. I am looking forward to getting this car on wheels again. I am practicing on this one so I can get the wife's 66 done to show car spec's. this one's going to be a daily driver for me but I still want it to be a nice one. Just not completely stock, safety upgrades including larger bolt patern, disc brakes, electronic ignition, A/C and hopefully a completely different interior out of a late model convertible.
 
I was able to gap check the hood,fenders and doors to get alignment today so I decided to make it all one color primer. yeah it sure does feel good getting closer to blocking (fixing a body line)and shooting the jams and stuff. full color won't go on yntil I rhino line the bottom of the car and get some trunk work done, but I'm getting closer
here's some gap checks
passenger door
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drivers door
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hood
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and of course the darn body lines I messed up on
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I'm going to try and get the second full coat of hi-build on tomorrow and let it sit and cure a while
 
yup as the title said I low of funds right now so I decided to test out the led setup for the show car. not the drive I'm working on. but......It looks sooooo goooood that I might change my mind.

here some pic's of the prototype I've made of the lights right has the leds at a slight angle but it's just the first try The left one I did in cad, that one fit sooooo much nicer, easier to solder and the led's on the left(cad) aligned up much better with the lense. I had no idea just looking at them that they were at a 9 degree angle to level. I did find out that the left and right pattern are distinctly different (now I have to check the left side of the car and see how much adjustment I have to do to those patterns
brake power activated
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normal tail light
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one side @ normal tails
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the other side @ normal tails
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I've had it running on tails for about 7 hours so far and I'm going to run it all night to see if I overheat the LED's , after that I'll run the brake light powered for about 8 hours also. that way I'll know if it will burn out anything
I've still want to do some more extra stuff to the lenses and make some professional looking circuit boards . but you and see it from every angle that you look at it.
now that I know the right inner design fit's . I'll test the right outer for size , since I like it to fit tight I found that different tail light buckets for the right inner WERE a different size (just a little here and there) I'm making it as tight to the largest one I have and that way I can file it down for a perfect fit.
here's the pic for the right lights
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did you get the gap on the upper part of the drivers fender right. if not being on that body cart i would make sure your front end is not sagging. take a floor jack and raise the front of the rail and you might see it close up and your hood might come in line too
 
rapidtransitric said:
did you get the gap on the upper part of the drivers fender right. if not being on that body cart i would make sure your front end is not sagging. take a floor jack and raise the front of the rail and you might see it close up and your hood might come in line too
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yeah I checked that. seems that I bent the drivers side inner fender almost 1/4 inch up and out from taking it off the donor car and never noticed it plus I forgot some shim's that came out of the car in the lower fender area and had to straighten that stuff out before I bolted any thing on, I did pull it off the body cart and sit it down on 4 jack stands 2 in between the bolts for the front k frame and 2 on the leaf pad's that I temped into place where the rear end would go. then I re-aligned all the fender to door and hood alignment. I ended up with 1/32 difference in gap from top to bottom and the fender to hood line up was much better almost dead on even back on the dolly cart. I really think me fixing the inner fender was what lined things up (I checked the gap on the second dart, I'm going to have to find out whats wrong with that one for sure. it's almost twice as bad as this one 1/16 th top to bottom one side and exactly the opposite on the other but bigger almost 3/8ths.) But gotta finish this one first
and it's starting to look goooooood! did I mention I HATE PLUG Welding too!
 
yeah you can end up chasing your plug welds. if you can get a chunk of copper pou con put that behind the hole your trying to weld up to puddle over. you won't weld the copper
 
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