[SlowProgress]

When you’ve blown up your favorite engine, it’s time to buy a welder. I had been looking at the 211 for some time and realized I would need it for building up the back end of the car.



Since my MIG skills are even worse than my poor TIG skills, I decided to build something easy as a confidence builder. I may not know a lot but I know that thick metal burns up slower than thin metal, so I started putting together a simple body cart to give me a chance to practice with the MIG. I bought some telescopic tube online and had it delivered to my door. That stuff was great and saved a bunch of heartache trying to get tubes to slide together.







I bought the good urethane wheels. Don't do that if you want the cart to roll. When I switched to the metal wheels I can move it around with one hand now. I also pulled the 12-bolt out to prepare the axle ends for the Quadralink brackets.



Since I knew the ends were going to be changing it was pretty easy to just cut them off and grind all the welds flush. Easy is a relative term I probably have about 3-4 hours in that grinding. The RH perch had been stick welded back on so it was obvious the wreck that caused the RH quarter to be replaced had also damaged the perch. Good time to straighten everything back out correctly. That perch was hard to remove because they stick welded every square inch. It came out in a bunch of pieces.







Having the car up on the cart really helped and with the rearend out I was able to really get going finally. Cool weather in the Spring helped also. Working with the garage door open is nice.
I got started on the upper 4-link pockets



I also cut out the LH tub. After drilling all those spot welds I realized I should have just cut them out. Guess I should have watched a few more videos on Youtube. Probably doesn’t hurt to be cautious the first time anyway.



It was super cool to get the tub up in the wheelwell the first time. This is one of those big milestones in the whole back end project. This was installation #1 of about 100 test fits.





Or course it didn’t take very long to shove one of those 325 up in the wheelwell. This car had tires sticking outside the wheelwell the last 40 years. What a huge improvement in the looks to have the tire up inside the wheelwell !!