In with the "new"...

Now we can start to rebuild the car.  As mentioned in the previous section, the truck was already tacked back in.  With that lined up we began to work our way around the car.  Hoping by the time we get to the passenger side, we'll find a good donor piece. 

Next up was the driver side rear quarter panel.  Here is a picture with the donor piece getting ready to go on.  This came from a 2dr coupe, but the plan was to cut just below the top edge, preserving the original convertible steel.  The coupe panel was the same as convertibles from the side.

Continuing our way around, next up was the tail panel.  I scored an NOS tail panel off eBay for a great price.  All we had to do was swap out the trunk latch, as it did not come with that.  This was a great find.  The bottom lip of the original trunk was in very rough shape.  All the cars I've seen and parted out had the same problem.  Gunk would build up at that base of the trunk lid and just eat away at the steel.

And now back to that passenger quarter panel.  I still had never found a good one and we almost decided to go with one that I had removed from another car.  It needed some patch work around the base of the wheel opening, but it was far better than the one we had.  Then out of no where, Pat the owner of Pro Street was at a Mopar swap meet.  (He's a Mopar fan more so than a Chevy fan)  He happened to see what appeared to be a quarter panel looking just like mine sitting on a guys truck.  He asked if the guy knew what it was for, (And Pat already knew what it was for...) and the guy said it was for some 70's Chevy.  He didn't really know.  Pat asked to look at it and sure enough it was the passenger side 71-73 NOS rear quarter panel we had been searching for!  Pat got it for only $200 bucks!  Finding that rear panel was probably the luckiest thing to happen in this restoration.  So home it came and it was grafted in place and looked phenomenal. 

Work continued and more steel was replaced.  The floor pans were cut out and donor pans were cut back in.  Again these came from California, and were far better than my original pieces.  When we did the driver side, the donor panel was just shy of a rusted area around the firewall.  Luckily I had two spare firewalls and we cut a section off one of those.

The last major piece to graft in on the main body was a section at the top of the firewall.  This time it was the area where the wiper linkage runs.  Same story again where gunk built up over the years and ate away at it inside.  So Joe did a great job of cutting out a section of the donor firewall and grafted in a new piece of steel.  It was a really tricky part to do with all the layers of metal and all the curves.  Joe did a great job of welding that in.

Earlier I also mentioned the spare tire bracket.  As convertible are nearly impossible to find, at least for parts, we had to make our own.  Luckily I have access to GM archives and I acquired the original drawing for the bracket.  I could still get the hold down bracket for the clamp, but the drawing showed exactly how the big the base was to be.  So I gave the drawing to Joe and he mocked one up in less than a day.  Looks just like the original.

Looks like it came from the plant!

That pretty much completed the main part of the body.  The car was ready to get prepped for primer and paint.  On to the rotisserie!