Great news!! My Dad has worked very hard over the past two weeks (March 25 - April 8, 2004) and repaired all the rust and repainted the lower white area and both fins on my old Dodge. Here is a photo of her in Dad's shop with the Driver's side paint stripped and awaiting rust repair.

This is another view of the driver's side of the car stripped and ready for rusted areas to be repaired.

Here are some close-ups of the rusted areas. The lower front fender, as you can see, was actually rusted through and the underside of the rocker panels on both sides of the car were covered in surface rust and rock chips. The original owners of the car lived in the country in Nebraska and apparently never slowed down for gravel roads. Some areas of the car look like they had been sandblasted by the gravel!

This is the passenger side front fender with all paint stripped. Dad confirmed what we had believed all along, that the old girl was still wearing all of her original paint. It was a tough choice to decide to strip it down, but knowing that there was rust, we felt that to preserve the car the best we can, we needed to take off the paint to see what needed to be repaired. We will be leaving the original coral paint and the white paint on the roof of the car.

Here you see the same passenger side fender with the patch already in place where the rust had eaten through. Dad is an artist at this type of work and when it was finished and painted, you could find no trace of his patch.

This photo shows the patch Dad welded in to repair the rust on the lower edge of the passenger side rear quarter. This area had extensive rust - more than we thought once Dad started working on it. Again, the patch is expertly done and the finished product is amazing!