I'm tired of messing w/ the engine. It runs, the trans works, the brakes work, it rolls. It's only natural to assume that it would probably be driveable.
If it wasn't missing the doors, the windshield, the front and rear lights, and a place to sit.
The seat thing is dealt with, I could bolt the driver side in in a minute. But those pesky few other items,.......those are a problem.
When I last attempted body work, I made a buck, and bought the necessary sheet metal to form 8 sections and use the buck as a guide to weld the sections together on.
The end result of that endeavor turned out miserably. I'll be like Nick,
@95BlueStallion and stand it in a corner of my garage as a reminder of how NOT to do something.
It needs to be said that I am far from a bodyman, but if I had to pay one to do the stuff I want to do, that would require I take out a second mortgage.
( I'm not gonna do that)
So that leaves it to me to get it done.
Plan B was to use the stock rear bumper and come up with a way to blend it into the body. The problem w/ that is that it's aluminum, and the body is steel.
When I built the last car I ran into the same issue when it came time to blend the potmetal headlight buckets into the sheetmetal of the car. On that car I used a combination of bolts, and JB Weld to hold the dissimilar metals together.
That method lasted about a year before cracks started to show through
So this time around I ain't bonding anything on the body together w/ bolts and glue. (I have enough of that in the engine)
I decided to cut the ends off of the aluminum bumper, and I'll cap them. In essence, I'll have an effect similar to a baby LTD w/o the urethane end caps to worry about.
I came up w/ this hair-brained solution:
.
In the pic, the steel endcap isn't finished yet (I was, I was dying of thirst, and was tired of messing w/ it by the time I got this crap done)
Like the Mustang pictured above though I do one side at a time, and it seems that each side never matches the other. The driver side was first, and it was the "Beta". By the time I got over to the passenger side , I had figured out how to do it better.
(I'll probably end up cutting all of that junk back out on the driver side to better match the "new and improved" passenger side)
Just like this for instance. On the driver's side that center piece you see above was butt welded in. The quarter was already distressed as a result of me trying to fit Fox mustang tail lights in there, and by the time I started welding in patch panels to bring it to the finish level you see here, I warped the piss out of it.
( We will NOT be looking at that side)
One the passenger side, I learned my lesson, and got out a flanging tool, and flanged a 1/2 " perimeter around the patch. That flange served as a backer, and helped to keep the quarter in better shape. I still got it too hot, but the warpage is managable, unlike the driver's side. (Which now looks like the surface of the moon)
So what we're gonna do here is create a gap between the steel end caps and the alunimum bumper similar to the 1/8" gap the trunk has around the perimeter. That'll let me slide the bumper in and use the stock mounting system for that, while the end caps are permanently mounted to the body.
So then this is gonna be the approximate rear facade the tail lights will recess into. I'll just take a regular piece of sheet metal, and follow the crown of the trunk. I'll make a bottom piece that will sit approximately 1/8" off the bumper, and trace the crown onto that piece. Then I'll weld the two pieces together to hold the crown. I'll do the same thing at the top.
I'm gonna build a custom set of tail lights for the car, and recess them into the rear panel. I've been looking into sequencing led circuits, and I think that is how the tail lights will indicate a turn. The running lights/brake lights will either be more conventional socket type led lights, or a whole butt load of the individual 5mm leds like I'll use for the turn signal lights.
I just gotta buy a bunch of electronic doo dads, and start dinking around w/ that.