Eric, thanks for the kind words, I enjoy helping where I can.
As far as qaurter panels go, I only had to do those on my grey car since the new car had good metal. If you look in my build thread for Fool's Gold you will find some tips on the roof skin. Hit me up when you get ready to remove yours and I'll try to add a few more.
The repop roof skins may be different now. On mine, when we welded it in place it all looked good. During the mock-up and pre-fit I decided to pull the old glass from a rusty parts car I had to check gaps and fit. It's a good thing I did because when we layed the rear glass in it turned out that the skin was almost an inch too short in the rear window area. I cut the window lip from the parts car and we fabbed the rear edge to fit correctly to the glass which was a factory piece. Good idea to save the old roof for this and check your rear window fit and gaps after install or during.
The last time I used a repop tail panel was in 2006 when I was building the grey car. Unless they have improved they fit terrible in several ways. Compare the tail light mounting studs with your original, The repo units aren't in the proper place. Also where the deck lid meets the tail panel the repops seem to have a swag on each side from the latch to where they meet the qaurter. You pretty much have to work with what you can get unless they have improved over the last few years. I tried 3 different ones from three different suppliers and all of them had the same issues.
The repop full qaurters fit well and only need slight tweaking while fitting and installing. I used Goodmark brand on the grey car in '06. These should be no problem other than a lot of labor.
Be careful if you need to replace the decklid. The early models have a slight radius on the corners where they meet the tail panel. Later models were sqaure edged and so are repops. The later models didn't need the clearance at the edge due to large plastic tail lights. If you use the sqaure edge decklid on an early car it has a tendency to chip the paint badly on the tail panel at the corner area, don't ask how I know this little tidbit, as I learned it too late on the grey car. You can radius the corners correctly on the repops and others if need be before paint.
Repop front fenders are hit and miss regardless of brand. Most of the left fenders are good and require minimal tweaking. The right side fenders are the screw up. The area where the fender meets the door and windshield area is usually too tall and has to be sectioned along with a fair amount of fitting and tweaking. That's why we just repaired the lower sections of the factory fenders on Fool's Gold.
The repop flat hoods are fairly good and only require minimal work for hood to fender gaps.
Repop door skins are notorious for being just a little small. You have absolutely no extra metal to play with and they are usually short hieght wise at the rear, requiring a welded build up to have a proper gap. This is best done after re-fitting the door on the car to get proper gaps as the repop tapers at the rear. So once you have skinned the door, mount it before doing final body work or you'll be sadly surprised with the lower rear gap.
Thats about it for my sheetmetal info.
Brian Hobaugh SCCA National Tour June 2014
First Hemi 'Cuda Convertible Ever Built
Short clips: Goodguys Pleasanton autocross and pit videos
Second gen full quarter replacement
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