Welcome to site #4 in my continuing quest to help stimulate the economy by dumping massive amounts fo cash into a blueish-green hole that's going to make the ozone evaporate when it's driving around the streets sometime early next year.   The best way to summarize this journey is like this:  You and the misses decide to go on vacation.  You book one of those "Supa Saver" trips that you get the vouchers for in the mail.  First class all the way baby.  You show up at the ticket counter and the agent says, "Ohhhhhh, geeee, we're sorry.  That ticket's not really "valid" (as she makes the quotey quote symbol with her fingers).  So she assigns you and your lovely, but increasingly aggitated, bride a few coach class tickets.  As you board and pass row 127, you figure out why your ticket is blue and all the others are white.   You have R4LAV and your silent wife has L4LAV.   Congratulations!  You're both sitting on the toilet for that lovely, scenic, aromatic, flight to blishfullness promised by that little voucher.  Oh and when it's meal time, you're getting a heated packet of mayonaise, a turnip, and a spork.  So what exactly do I mean by all of this?  In other words, I thought I bought one thing and it turned out to be quite another....and a rude awakening to boot!  So what'd I do?  I bought a welder and a crapload of sheetmetal, proceeded to throw a lot of tools into and through several walls, scrape a lot of knuckles, and... well, what you see at the bottom is the result.  Here's a quick recap starting at the car parked :04 minutes after I got it...

Yyyyyyyup....what you're thinking is exactly what I was thinking at the time.  "Hello, AAA Car Salvage?  Yeah, can you come pick a vehicle that's long overdue for a trip to the furnace?" After a few months of tearing it down and blasting it, now it's cut and replace time...

I used an entire tail light panel from a 1969 Road Runner and modified it to work on my 68.  The tail light buckets had to come out and I installed my 68's for proper fit.  1969 RRs aren't even remotely close since the 69s use different bezels and lenses.  I also needed the entire lower portion of the panel above the rear crossmember and again, had to make some slight differences so it would fit my 68.  It's extra work that doesn't need to be done on future cars since AMD now makes that part in a quality reproduction piece. 

So after all the cutting out of the old metal, I started at the bottom and reassembled the entire back half before I could lay down any welds.  Rear frame rails, crossmember, trunk lid, drip rails, and quarter panels too.  All of this needed to go on to make sure everything lined up before I laid down the first weld.  Would have been REAL bad if I welded everything up and the trunk lid didn't fit or worse yet, the rear sagged to the left or something.   Nothing worse than a saggy rear!

I didn't want any seams showing on the frame patches, so after running the bead around the junction of the two frame rail halves, I ground down the welds smooth until the seam disappeared.  With the rear end all firmmed up (man, you gotta love a firm rear end!), I then spun the car around to fix the other half... 

And what that involved was an entire rocker panel replacement.  My car was involved in an accident...or two, or three.  So that rocker was shot and as a result, nothing was lining up properly on this side of the car.  So I was able to find a donor rocker panel from a 69 Super Bee (another B-Body) and spliced that in right in the middle of the door post to include the lower hinge.  Again,  the mock-up is everything.  So on goes the rocker, door jamb, quarter panel, door, and fender.  Once I was happy with all the gaps and such, it all comes off and the welds start.  This is by far the easiest way to put a full floor pan in.  See?  Rusted out hunks of crap cars ar so under rated!               

Last part is stripping down the remaining panels of the old brown, orange, and red coats of paint and fixing any last remaining rust, dents, dings, and prepping the car for paint. 

Fresh from the booth and one pass with the buffer.  I still need to do some more buffing to get all the wet sanding marks out.  So 1.5yrs after I got the car, it finally sits in it's original color of LL1 Dark Turquoise Metallic.     

For more details, the start of all this was here; Site #1 and then progressed to here; Site #2 and finally came to this conclusion here; Site #3  Which leads us to the current page we're on now.  So sit back and relax as I start the final site documenting the reassembly of this trainwreck of a car.  What's the goal now?  That'd be to become a chemist.  How's that?  Career change?  No, more like this:  December of next year I want to sit in the cockpit, bump the key, roll through the water trap, and when the tach hits 3000 rpms- dump the clutch and turn repro-redline-rubber into a liquid state under 485 ft. lbs. of torque and inhale deeply as it then proceeds to revert into an inert gasseous state who's odor will forever be absorbed into the upholstery and my nostrils.  That about covers it; A solid to a liquid to a gas.  Yeah, something like that...... 

PAGE #2:  Vinyl top installation started  PAGE #3:  Vinyl top completed  PAGE #4:  Firewall insulation, body bumpers, weather stripping