Cool McCool's Garage

The excitement of panel fitting and gapping 40 year old fiberglass!  What fun!

The deck/rumble seat lid and tulip panel now fit!  Even though I knew they didn’t, in satin black, all the panels looked reasonably close in alignment, when in fact, they weren’t.  I’ve spent about 20 hours getting just the rumble lid to fit right, which involved moving both hinges, and half a gallon of filler on the tulip panel.   The lid and tulip panel (between the lid and the back edge of the cockpit) weren’t even close to having the same “arch”, and since it’s ‘glass and doesn’t bend, the answer was filler and blocking.

And more filler, and more blocking…

It’s good now, there’s a uniform gap, the lid doesn’t scuff on the body like it did, and I made a rain gutter and the little “dam” that an original car would have on the trunk floor.  On cars with rumble seats, the rain gutter disappears where the lid rolls back into the trunk when opened, and any rain or wash water just pours into the trunk.  There’s a lip on the floor, and drain holes behind it.  Pretty simple, but this car lacked that important detail.

The passenger side door had once made a hasty exit from the body when it was accidentally unlatched at speed, both rear corners were scuffed off, and both hinges had been broken,, and subsequently repaired.  The top one was slightly bent, the strap that bolts to the body, and I thought I could just clamp it in the vise and spring it back.

Wrong.

It turned out to be cast iron, not steel, and it broke.  So, being cheap, and having brazing rod, I brazed it back together.  Now the door fits much better,  where it was out about 1/8″ too far before at the door post.  Nice gap there too,  before it was tight at the bottom and 5/16″ away at the top.

Now, endless work DA’ing all that stupid flat black and one coat of the original purple off the body, and I’ll be ready for some high build primer and color.  That should get me warm enough weather to paint and start assembling.