Been on Spring break all week so I felt like I made some progress. Spending 9 days in my shop working on a project sounds so much better to me than getting on a crowded plane and sitting doing nothing in the warm for hundreds of dollars a day.
Finished the wheel arches, mostly. One patch on the DS and two on the PS. Once the big patch was in on the DS I found out how bad the purchased 1/4 patch was I bought. $256 and I needed to shrink both ends to match the door and the tail curves. The big reason I bought it was the fading away flare on the arch. Now that it's matched up to something other than air I can see it's probably a 1/4 inch too pronounced. I'm going to cut a kerf through the part and try to bring it together, but I might just have to make a new piece. The way I made the flat edge to the rounded curve was to cut shims from sheet to place under where it was going to be flat and then hammer the curve into the unsupported part with a teardrop mallet. Easy to make the curve different depths by changing the shims.
Built a trunk drop. It was a big job because it had two breaks and my HF break can't do that long of a piece in 18g. I ended up using the edge of a metal table and an I-beam, them hammer forming the break. Probably would have been easier to put the break in with a tipping die on the bead roller first, but I didn't think of it and it wouldn't have been as straight. The other thing was a curved and tapered feature that I'm sure gave it strength and is where the exhaust pipes go. That part I just had to make the matching half. I used a shrinking stump and a teardrop hammer to form it, then a heel dolly and body hammer to make it straight. I only made it so straight because it is a trunk drop that you can only see part of from underneath. The inner part in the picture is not visible at all. It did get POR15 even though it will never see the miles or weather that caused it to rust before.
Now I just have to build one for the DS. I didn't have a reference point for that side until I put the outer on. I'll do that one when I put it back on the hoist in a month or so. Few more patches in the wheel wells will get done then as well. I want to be able to drop the axle and stand in the wells.
POR15 on the PS hinge buckets and inner cowl area and tail piece that's behind the bumper and trim. I'm digging the 6 pack of little cans. The quarts are a pain to store. Even if you do the plastic under the lid trick, you end up throwing a bunch out.
Outside of the quarter behind the wheel well is just a big sheet of 18g with a roll at the bottom I formed with a 2" exhaust pipe and some 2" angle. I clamped the sheet between them in the vise and rolled the sheet over the pipe, then bead rolled a flange and put the big radius in over the side of my shrinking stump.
