72 Duster Street / Strip Build
Sorry for the long post - teardown has commenced and I hit her pretty hard over the weekend.
So we got the car back and I am going over the metal work - finding some issues here and there but nothing major. Pretty satisfied overall, lot of metal work was done. Still not sold on that driver’s side rear taillight corner, just looks too pointy to me... I have taken about 15 different measurements and all are spot on compared to the original passenger side, just one little difference in the radius right by the edge of the taillight if you look straight down on either side you can see the difference. Once nice thing is I can fire her up and drive it outside to do all the messy cleanup work vs doing it in the garage and the weather is perfect for working outside in the evenings when I get home. I will be working on pulling 3 dents tonight - stud welding and slide hammer style, just can’t get to them very well from the backside.
One question - should I seam seal the backsides of the quarter patches that I can get to or not bother with them? The guy flanged the seams and installed a sheet metal backer strip. Seems to be quite solid, but putting a light to it you can see it shining out around the stitches. Just wondering if I should hit the back side with POR 15 and some type of seam sealer before or after epoxy primer or not worry about it...??
So I removed the old front fenders - pretty much junk, took a few pictures then hit the inner wheel wells with the needle scaller and stripped the rockers to the lower seam. The wheel wells are just about ready to be POR 15'd and I have the new control arms / spindles / shocks / disk brakes sitting on the bench. I removed the pins from the roof that held the old snakeskin top trim rails in place; need to weld up the screw holes by the drip rail without sending a spark inside to light up the headliner...! There are also 4 screw holes at the bottoms of the front a pillars which I assume held another piece of trim in place. Those too will be welded up and ground down tonight. Anyone have any tips for removing Front and Rear glass trim? I removed the lower piece on the rear window which was just held in place by trim screws, but the others seem to be glued in. I can get them flex and sort of peel up, but I do not want to bend or tweak them. Drip rail trim already removed along with old snakeskin top remnants.
Also installed the rear marker patches and sealed up the trunk patches. Plan there is to base coat it in black and then go over the entire trunk with the Black / aqua spatter paint. Yeah I know that's not traditional Mopar, but fully gutting this thing and doing the firewall / trunk and interior in B5 just isn't in the budget for this 10K...? build...
Plan currently stands to strip shell of the car primary focus is bare metaling the areas that need filler and getting a good base of 2 - 3 coats of epoxy primer on then applying / shaping the filler / sealing her up with a couple more coats of epoxy, with the final boarding and any remaining light body work to be done by the shop painting it.
Pictures - keep in mind this will be a street / strip car. Not getting a full restoration, as it will be getting driven regularly and raced pretty much every weekend in the spring / summer. Probably wouldn’t hurt to find a set of rear frame rails with new buckets but I may see about patching up what I have in there now with some 1/8"... Anyone have a set lying around??
