Next up was to figure out a reasonably clean way to close out the area above the tunnel where the upper trailing arm will reside. The part that came with the kit was ok, but I didn't like the area around the fwd upper trailing arm mount. It didn't fit tight enough to the mount to allow the hardware to be outside the doghouse, and it was too narrow to access it if you put it inside.
Noodled around a bunch of ideas, including what James did in cutting a tunnel out of another car (t-bird I think) and I looked at using a Harley FL front fender. Almost did that, but once I cut the rolled edges off the fender it was way too flimsy.
So, what I wound up doing is what you see below. Pretty simple. I just struck a template off the fwd edge of the upper trailing arm mount, transferred that to the end of that 6" wide sheet and put a gentle bend it it to land it on the top of the rear doghouse.
http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...pse303eee0.jpg
As you can see, the sides aren't symmetrical. Because neither is the tunnel so that made forming the sides a bit troublesome. This presented another, among many opportunities to discover that my wife is much smarter than I am.
So I'm kneeling inside the cabin of the car, whittling away at a sheet of poster board trying to make a template that matches the nutty bunch of contours from the fwd x-member all along the pan/tunnel, and up onto the fwd face of the rear doghouse. Cut-curse-mark-cut-curse-mark-cut-curse-mark.... So Kathy pokes her head into the car and says "why don't you use a piece of wire and bend it to all those contours and then transfer that to the posterboard?"
In less time than I'd expended nibbling away at the paper, I drove to Lowes, bought 8' of solid core copper ground wire (a bit larger dia than coat hanger wire but more pliable, I forget what gauge) bent it, transferred it to paper and it fit pretty close to perfect.
http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ps71bc7802.jpg
So there is the part tacked in place at the top & bottom, you can see a bit of light peeking in the gap, but it's tiny. A few nudges with a body hammer from beneath closed those up tight. BTW, the gizmo to the right is a "Gorilla Torch", it's made by a company called JOBY. The legs articulate and will wrap around almost anything and the feet are magnetic so it can be placed just about anywhere. Comes in really handy when there isn't enough ambient light to see what you are doing through the auto-darkening shield. Especially when welding under the car as you can focus the beam right where you are trying to weld allowing to to see perfectly before beginning the weld.
Quite a bit of yoga required to weld that part in, but despite that I was able to do some ok work.
http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ps931f39cd.jpg
http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ps1a8e81ca.jpg
Adequate given my meager skill set and experience.
So. Up next is front suspension install (v2.0) and assembly of the rear end housing......
