I really love A Body cars. I have done a similar job before.

Keep up the good work

 

Well, some of the project got moved... To my garage! LOL

I brought the doors and front fenders to my house to be able to work on them more. Setup some nice (and hot) lighting in my garage so I could see what I was doing and got to work on the driver door today. Skin is off and all of the areas that need patching are marked up. Tomorrow I will be getting some 20 gauge steel and maybe welding some things up tomorrow night!

Here are some pictures of the day...

Documentation of where things go?

Patches to be made:



Patch areas from the outside portion of the door frame:


Frame without the skin:


More pictures can be found HERE. Most are just documentation of where things go and what they look like so I do not get confused when I put this thing back together in a few years (LOL). I will be sand blasting the whole thing before I put anything back together.

Anyway, just wanted to show that there was at least something happening!

 

Looks great. Some really nice progress. I can't wait to see what's up next.

 

All I have to say is Im envious, the '70 Chevelle SS is my ultimate dream car and I can only dream of doing what your doing, someday Ill have one. sweet car man!

 

Ok well, no one around here has the steel I need. Had to order a full 4 foot by 8 foot sheet of 20 gauge! I'm going to use up some 14 gauge stainless I have laying around to patch up the inside support. I'll have more pics coming soon.

Some more great news! I don't know how I missed it, but today I was poking around in the pile of parts under the barn when a piece of paper caught my eye. I found the build sheet for the car!! It was in the bottom seat cushion actually crimped into the springs on what is the driver side of the lower cushion!! I couldn't believe I had over looked it when I took the car apart initially.

Here are some pictures.


I'm scanning in the build sheet right now and will update the post with that picture. I need to figure out what everything means now!!

*EDIT* - Here's the build sheet:

*caution - large image*

 

Oh Man! That's awesome that you found the original build sheet for the car. Everything looks good and before you know it, it will be put together and driving her around!

 

It's going to be a beautiful car swartllk. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I'll make sure I follow along as you update us on the build progress.

 

The patch areas on the doors looks like hard places, ( corner and 3 angles) looks like its going to be a tough work. What do you thing about that? are you gonna cut that part from a donor car or produce a patch part? If you gonna produce a patch part how you gonna do that? The reason for asking is I want to learn if there is a practical way to do that.

Im really looking for to see some progress.

 

More good news! I just emailed H&H Chevrolet, the dealership who sold my Chevelle! They are still in business. Now lets hope they have good records and have some stuff they could send me regarding my car!!

About the doors, no, I will not be patching these areas with donor pieces as these areas are VERY common for rot. I have broken the surfaces down to mild contours that I will hand form and weld individually. With both doors, I had to remove the lower support that ties the lower hinge into the rest of the door frame to get at the back side of the rusted areas as well as repair rust in the supports themselves. These pieces will be sand blasted by the end of the week (hopefully).

Once I have the frames complete, I am planning on having them galvanized to protect everything. I'll then install the new skins and

 

Shippensburg, eh? That is about 45 mins to an hour west of where I live. I do not know what opportunity I would ever have to meet up with you but if you need something from there I could work something out.