It's been a little while since I posted but I have been getting some work done; I've been pushing on to more of the body work while I wait for some steel supplies to arrive; I want to add the roll bar tubes that run forward from the main hoop to the foot wells but I needed to order the square base plates to mount them to the floor.
I stripped and primed all the radiator core support, bumper filler, and hood latch support pieces; luckily none of them had been rusted or previously damaged so they helped me to rebuild the front of the car accurately a couple years ago.
That was the easy part, but I knew sooner or later I'd have to get back to the hood, which, for whatever reason, is probably 1/2" - 3/4" too narrow.
I laid the hood upside down, sanded the underside surface up to about 1" from the edge, then laid down a couple layers of fiberglass that extended over the edges by about 3/4". My next step will be to flip the hood over, remove any high spots from the added glass, then build up the surface of the new glass to match the hood surface. One mistake I made was not supporting the additional glass as well as I should have so the additional glass is somewhat wavier than I'd have liked, but working with glass is so much easier than metal working I'm not worried about it.
Here are a couple shots of the hood, the first showing the under-lament I laid the glass on, and the second showing the glass additions. If you're wondering, I use wax paper to line the under-lament so the glass and resin won't stick.
While waiting for the glass/resin on the hood to dry I un-boxed the trunk lid, which I hadn't done in many years, and having never tried to fit it to the car I had no idea what to expect. Sadly, I was disappointed as can be for a couple reasons:
1) I don't know about any other '64 models but on a Fury there are cut-outs on the vertical rear panel of the trunk lid where the trunk wraps up and around the tail lights, but for whatever reason they weren't cut out of my lid. No big deal, but...
2) The fit was even worse than my hood; the trunk lid was easily 1" too narrow! Damn, here I go again having to widen a body panel.
The only benefit of doing the trunk lid was now that I'd done the hood I've learned a couple things and it made the job much easier, but I still have lots more filling, sanding, etc. than I'd like.
Here are some shots of the lid:
In this first shot you can see the blue painters tape where I'd marked off the center-line of the lid in preparation for making some hinge mounts (yeah, I'm using the factory hinges, not pins) and this is when the gravity of the situation really hit me. The gaps looked awfully big when I test fit the lid but proof was in measuring from the center-line to the outer edges; NO BUENO!
Here I've sanded the outer perimeter 1" in from the edge and added the under-layment/wax-paper.
This last shot shows how I've added 2 - 3 layers of glass matting and resin to extend the edges of the lid. Next I'll flip the lid over, put it on the car and trim down the excess, leaving the gaps VERY tight, then begin filling from the top to get a uniform surface. Once the surfaces are uniform I'll move on to making the hinge mounts, get the trunk centered up, then trim the lid to fit correctly. The factory hinges are anything but stable, there's probably 3/4" play side to side on each hinge without the lid bolted in place, but I believe by bolting the lid to the hinges it will eliminate this "wobble" and the lid will fit really well.
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