1970 Chevelle SS restoration

[Too Many Projects]

As promised, more metal gore. Left side is off. Good example of the pop rivet panel replacement era... There are still remnants at the tail panel to clean off before I can test fit the NOS panel, but it's close now. I cut away the large section to improve access to welds in the trunk and roof gutter. Then grind them off with a combination of a stone wheel and cut off disc to save the structure underneath from holes from drilling. This quarter to extension flange is the last piece I needed the stone for and it quit right at the last weld. I like to get my monies worth out of consumables...

[Too Many Projects]

Brought both of the left side q-p's up from the storage shed.
Behind door #1 is the NOS panel
And door #2 the Goodmark repro I've had since 2005.
The repro actually fits with the repro full 1 piece floor/rocker panel better than the NOS. I've seen this before too. The outer wheel houses I bought at the same time as the quarters fit them like a glove. Leaning very strongly to just using the repro and pass the NOS along to someone with a more deserving car.
There's nothing special about this car, other than it's Vintage Vehicle certified as an Oshawa built real Z25. Nearly the entire car is built out of reproduction parts, so 1 NOS piece doesn't make it worth anymore.

[RPOLS3]

Wow that is a lot of work Mitch, admire your skills and perserverance.

[Too Many Projects]

Thanks, Jake. People have mentioned I may need a frontal lobotomy for thinking I can do this..
My perseverance is getting seriously tested today. I have the q-p and the trunk drop clamped and looking fairly happy together and then I took the repro "tail panel" out of the box and the day went down the toilet. I have spent over 3 hours attempting to get this POS to fit correctly and I give up. I put the original in and everything went right where it's supposed to be with no arguments... The repro will now become a donor to repair the worst of the butchery on the original, needed to get it out. There wasn't a DANG thing wrong with the original, but after drilling about 50 spot welds to get all the adjoining pieces off, it is pretty rough, especially on the ends. I am going to cut the ends off the repro and section them onto the original. As soon as I took the repro out of the box, I wasn't impressed to see the upper braces under the tail of the quarter not there, and things went down hill from that. I can't get the flat part of the tail panel to meet anywhere close to the adjoining flange on the underside of the quarter panel and I now believe GM added that upper panel to push the flap down to the quarter-p for welding. Add to that, the seal channel is way off from original and the trunk lid hits it before it gets far enough down to match the quarter panel. I was able to "adjust" that with a ford tool to get the lid to close but, it's still not near as nice as the original. I've had enough frustration for today and don't trust myself to not use the ford tool more on the repro start cutting and welding, so that is for another day.