I've made some progress on this and took a bunch of pictures along the way. Uploaded some of the more noteworthy ones to photobucket and am just going to add a bunch to this post, they are probably going to jump around a little bit. I apologize as some of these are kinda blurry. I'll add some notes to them, that is if they are worthy.
Starting off with the ladder bars which I still need to add gussets to and finish welding
Cut these out with the plasma cutter
the ladder bar jig
bar fit to the front bushing mount
ready to weld
here's an overall pic of them on the car, it looks like i forgot to upload a pic of the front bushing mounts. that's basically as far as I am on these
shows the notch i had to make to clear the shifter
shortened a driveshaft, only pic i have of that project. It turned out pretty good
bought a chopped insert from speedway but it was garbage so i just used it as a mockup to chop the shell before sending it back for a better one
bunch of the bars were too short
roughly in place
mounting the shock brackets from speedway. had to bend them to make them work
these are the 2 threaded bungs i machined that they bolt to. they go all the way through the frame
mounted the headlights to the shock brackets
the sun was setting when i took this pic so it almost looks like they're wired up and working
pretty sure this car was a special coupe and along the way someone tried to make it into a standard coupe. it was solid but i'd say they missed the mark a little bit. I bought a roof wood kit and decided to cut it all off and start over.
some of the roughness
bunch of heavy steel bracing
roof off
i wanted it to look as much like a standard coupe as possible so i tried to recreate the belt line as best i could. this is an attempt to make a piece for the quarter window so it has the belt line and bolts to the body like it originally did
coming into shape
ran through the bead roller
i trimmed the rear sedan panel i had so it would fit the coupe. here it is coming along
i wanted to retain the bead line that runs up the back of the roof so i am fitting that back on here. having the roof wood was a big help to me as i could fit the metal to where the wood suggested it should go.
i had to make up another flange piece so that the quarter window would bolt to back window piece
inside shot
tacking it together
here's a couple pics with it almost finished. still need to fill in the perforated areas that run down the sides of the quarter windows, cant really see them here.
i have some more pics to add but i've had my fill of doing this for tonight. ill add some more tomorrow or the next day