restoring My 66 dart gt convertible

[keastab]

yah more metal work, will I ever get done??
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[keastab]

here's some more work in progress
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and even more to come

[keastab]

here's some more
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[keastab]

I'm trying to finish the fenders and some other stuff
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and I did at least get one done

[keastab]

just finishing up some of the panels and got the door mostly pulled out
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on to the next panel

[keastab]

doing other panel work
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getting pretty good at this so far

[keastab]

as stated I finished a coat of epoxy o the complete body (minus trunk)
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whew it looks like a car again and the parts just might line up correctly

[keastab]

I put some buff hi build on it to help find the high's and low's . looks like I found em, and plenty of them at that.

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got a little side tracked and made up some led tails that I'd been thinking about
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I checked the brightness using a luxmeter and some numbers given by a member(he does lighting regulations for a living) of the a body forum that I'm a member of, so I could make sure they were safe AND good looking. I've had those leds running continuously for about 80 hours in brake mode trying to overheat them and blow them out. I've gotten them to go to 96 degrees after 45 hours and the temps were 85-88 and lows of 68-74 in the garage, and 90 outside in the sun.
the cool part is that they didn't dim out on long term usage.

[keastab]

can anyone say got seats??
yeah baby I scored a set of sebring seats with the built in seatbelts and drivers seat is power!! you can see that I'll have to build a panel for the front of the rear seat bottom and add mounting brackets, but it's wild that they fit(almost) with just minor foam trimming on the sides. I have not done that yet but as soon as the upholstery guy I know comes over to instruct me it'll get done. the 1st and the last pic shows the slight scrunching of the seat to fit. it's the correct color for me too since I'm painting it a cool vanilla (chrysler 300 color,pt cruiser) and a tan/beige top
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[dogpro]

WOW! Looks good sometimes it seems like metal work will never end LOL.

[keastab]

I just re-shot a couple of coats of epoxy since I did so much sanding and had bare metal showing everywhere. It's starting to look complete now but as I look down the sides I see a wave or 2 in the doors and some little ones in the rear quarters. the trunk and hood are a different story all together (as in high spot heaven) in the trunk center top edge there was a funnel shaped hit like a pick had dimpled it down 1/2 inch or so I pulled most of it out and started shrinking it back to shape but still have a way's to go. the hood has ummm you can see the bracing shape in the hood when you lightly block it down. lows are in the unbraced areas. it looks like someone put something heavy on the hood and left it sit there for a while. I do have 1 or 2 high spots I can feel that I"ll shrink back to level but I doubt it'll pull all the low's out(featherfill is going on for that I think). all in all thought it's 1000% better than it was and it'll be even better after I figure out how to block it a lot better than I have been so far here's a couple of shots as I'm putting up the pvc spray area
here's the trunk area that messing with me but 2 or 3 coats of hi build and blocked should make it flat again
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here I'm starting on the spray area so I don't have as much of an area to clean up, the frame up and one door filtered in (I have painters filters ordered, I'll have 8 exhaust and 10 intake filters total)

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got the frame up and the cross bars i for the lights
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2 views of my quarter wave I'll have to work on
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[Len]

Nice work. Looks like you'll have it in paint soon.

[keastab]

Nice work. Looks like you'll have it in paint soon.

Thanks Len
I hope so I just have to figure out how I'm messing up the blocking. I've done it once already and have seen the wave in the quarters (larger that time) it almost seem that I need to use a hard flat block instead of the durablocks ! have an 18 flat &36 inch flat durablock but it doesn't seem to take out the wave in the door
so I'll shoot 2 or 3 coats of high build and get me a flat (stiff metal) block and try that in the ////\\\\\ pattern on the doors. the quarters I'll find something to fit that is hard and I can use without digging in. meanwhile I'm back to watching the painting dvd just to make sure I don't screw up any worse than usual.

now if I could find the red iron purlins and girts to fix the tree damage that was done to a 12x40 section (about 1/3 of the garage and I had a storage section over my design room) I'd be happy clearing up my mess so I can get to paint.
everything from that area is jammed into the good part of the garage right now. it sucks not having room to move.

[Len]

Thanks Len
I hope so I just have to figure out how I'm messing up the blocking. I've done it once already and have seen the wave in the quarters (larger that time) it almost seem that I need to use a hard flat block instead of the durablocks ! have an 18 flat &36 inch flat durablock but it doesn't seem to take out the wave in the door
so I'll shoot 2 or 3 coats of high build and get me a flat (stiff metal) block and try that in the ////\\\\\ pattern on the doors. the quarters I'll find something to fit that is hard and I can use without digging in. meanwhile I'm back to watching the painting dvd just to make sure I don't screw up any worse than usual.

now if I could find the red iron purlins and girts to fix the tree damage that was done to a 12x40 section (about 1/3 of the garage and I had a storage section over my design room) I'd be happy clearing up my mess so I can get to paint.
everything from that area is jammed into the good part of the garage right now. it sucks not having room to move.

We do almost all of our work on very high-end cars using Dura-Blocks but if you need a hard flat board then something like the one below is the standard for filler work.

Filler Tools Link

[keastab]

Nice work. Looks like you'll have it in paint soon.

oops double post