:wow:

Those last pictures make baby jesus cry!!!

Yeah...umm...good luck with that.

I see another article in the works.

No biggie.. Just you're run of the mill quarter panel and rear panel replacement story.

They were original panels (except the inner rear panel) so the insides were a bit "vintage" looking.. but solid.

Need to clean up all the edges, coat everything in some POR-15. Built a frame for then new fuel cell and start putting it all back together.

Like my shop said "this is as bad as it's going to look, it's all better from this point."

She's looking better each post Steve.
She's a hot car to begin with. GOOD LUCK with everything.:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

The shop has cleared out the cars ahead of me and can now work full time on Penny.

New quarter and rear panel being test fitted. Next up is to pull the old tank and build a new trunk floor. Oh, and fix the passengers side rear quarter.

http://www.lifeinwidescreen.com/siihp/pennyfix.jpg

Sweet. You will have your car done before mine.

Steve,
What are they using to fill the seam at the roof skin and quarter?

Twice!

Mike

She coming together nicely man, and going to be awsome later on. :thumbsup:

Nice progress!! Thanks for the update!!

Yeah I know. :(

Its hard to beleive that the Tiwain parts fit as well as they do.That thing is looking good.Did you get your cf hood,how do you like it? Ron

Your Penny looked nice in the Magazine article this month. Congrats, hope she's well soon.:thumbsup:

wow its awesome that they are giving u that much money to fix it....hope it comes out better than before buddy:cheers:

Not yet, but Joe at Stenod said "any day now".. expensive, but should be cool and that's another 30 lbs off the front of the car :woot:

Update..

My new 18.5 gallon FUEL SAFE bladdered fuel cell arrived. We should have the cage done for it by tomarrow.

The cell top:
http://picsorban.com/upload/shop 118.jpg

Without the top (the bladder):
http://picsorban.com/upload/shop 117.jpg

From the back (cage not welded in yet) - Just barely hangs down...
http://picsorban.com/upload/shop 115.jpg

Looking great :thumbsup:

Steve,

The progress looks great! By looking at the pics it appears that the repop quarter panel fits pretty well. Could you let us know how well it really fit? Did your shop have to modify to the panel for fitment?


Mike

She's looking great Steve. Getting close. There is still some driving time you and I will see this summer yet. :unibrow:

Looks awesome Steve. :thumbsup:

Mike,
I just replaced the driver's side quarter as well, and it almost fit perfect right out of the box. The door gaps are amazing. The body man had about 2-3 hours of work on the door jamb and lower rear valence combined. I ordered a Golden Legion panel from Brian at CPU car parts. $299 plus $95 shipping. This is the same panel that Goodmark sells for a lot less. By far the cheapest I found.

Chris

Thanks Chris :thumbsup:

Will give a more detailed review after Monday.. that's when we're welding it on :)

So far so good though.

The "cage" for the new fuel cell..

The mounting rack:
http://picsorban.com/upload/shop 119.jpg


With the can, tank and top installed:
http://picsorban.com/upload/shop 122.jpg

Looks good. Where did you buy it from? Direct from Fuel Safe?

Thanks Steve, Looking forward to the review. You could really help me decide between buying some repops or trying to fix the OEM quarters.

Mike

So when its done, is it going to see the track or only magazine testing with cones and stuff?

Both.. the track will mostly be auto-x and Open-track days at places like Buttonwillow.. no fender to fender stuff, I can't afford to keep building it.. lol

Oh and drag racing on an alternate set of rollers :D

Yea, I bought direct from Fuel Safe.. lead time was about 2.5 weeks. I talked with Gary at extension 234

Killer gas tank, how much do they run? Although it is a really nice tank, its also nice to know the stock one can take some good abuse after that major rearend!

Actually I had a custom stainless tank in the car. It dented in but didn't breech which shows the quality of the tank's from Rick's Stainless tanks.

This tank was right aroud $1800 complete.. that includes the pump, sender and all the widgets.

Looks to be going back together very nice, with a few positive extras. Very nice indeed!:thumbsup:

Looking good Steve!!

Something about "getting handed lemons and making lemonade" .. lol

Still, I'd rather be driving her right now..

I picked up PHR today. I really enjoyed the article on Penny and insurance. Great info for us guys. Sorry this happened to you, but because of this you have educated many classic guys and gals... Thanks for the value you and PHR provides to all of us. Ive been buying PHR since the 80's... Time to renew the subscription...:thumbsup:

Blesssings,

Here's the deal.. I had an OEM panel and a Repo panel (Goodmark) and compared them.

The GM panel was maybe 10,000th thicker.. just barely compared to the Goodmark panel. The initial fitment of the GM panel was just a bit better than the Goodmark unit.. but..

The Goodmark panel was $300 and the GM panel was $1100. The Goodmark panel would need about 5 hours labor to look as good as the GM panel. 5 hours at $75 and hour is $375. So the Goodmark panel is $425 cheaper in the end. That's a lot of $$$

Also, in the door jamb there a stamp from the factory.. on the Goodmark panel this was clear and sharp. On the GM panel the stamp was barely there. This confirms what I've heard and that is that many of the NOS GM panels were "factory rejects" that weren't good enough for production but good enough for the parts bin.

In my opinion you should save the money and get the Goodmark quarters. The only time I can justify NOS (OEM) panels is when you have a restoration where using all GM stuff adds to the value of the car.

The second gen Goodmark quarters fit better than the GM quarters.

There is also a difference between early OEM sheetmetal and those produced 15-20?? years later. Lines not as sharp as tooling gets worn. I had seen 2 fenders side by side where one was stored for years and the other in the 80's was fairly new. You could see a slight difference.


The guys that complain about the aftermarket parts are collison guys who are used to having cheap offshore repo parts shoved down their throats by Insurance Co's. Those parts are not licensed and can only replicate the part by like 80% without copyright problems. That 20% can mean it fitting or not.


Most of the newer endorsed sheetmetal is just as good as OEM lacking maybe a dimple or date code. Looking at the panel itself installed correctly it is hard if not impossible to tell the difference. The days of 1/2 panels that had the edges just left unfinished are hopefully in the past.

I would think a fender or hood is a better piece to judge because either it bolts on or it doesn't. A 1/4 panel has a sort of fudge factor where it can be adjusted or cut and modified.

Thanks for the info Steve and Brian,

Since I'm doing the body work myself, I want to minimize the amount of modifications required to the panel to fit. I currently have OEM quaters that have been on the car for well over 20 years. Do to a poor installation by the previous owner, the panels are damaged around the flange areas and rear tail panel. I need to do some work to get them to right again. So, basically I've been trying to determine which panels would require more work, new Goodmark panels or my damaged OEM panels.

Steve, do you happen to know what modifications were performed during the 5 hours your shop took to get the panel on?

I'm also curious why everyone likes Goodmark so much. Are they reworking the panels that come out of Asia? I was under the impression that all repop panels were stamped in the same factory.

Thanks again for all the good info its been a real help :thumbsup:

Mike

I have a Goodmark drivers door skin and Goodmark hood on my car. Both fit beautifully.:thumbsup:

i wish i would have waited for the new stampings that are out now, mine didnt fit nearly that well!

The major bodywork is done and the car went to the spray booth to have the worked areas primered. Then some more finish body work and paint.

http://picsorban.com/upload/shop 139.jpg

Also, the floor of the trunk was finished and painted with the fuel cell mount welded in place.

http://picsorban.com/upload/shop 144.jpg