As usual this week I had a bunch of family commitments in the evenings during the week, but I made an effort to be out in the shop late each evening to try to get as much done on my book edit as possible, so by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around I was just about done. At 4:00 on Saturday my pals Jerry and Steve showed up at the shop to give me a hand.
I've known these two guys for over ten years. We got to be friends through the model airplane hobby, as we were all flying radio controlled model airplanes back then. My barn is a nice, heated shop, so we had made a habit back then of getting together at my place to work on our airplanes over the winter. Jerry and Steve would each bring a plane over and we'd spend a fun evening doing wood, fiberglass, or paint work on the planes. We all got going making fiberglass molds together, and by the end of the "airplane phase" we were all making molds of giant scale World War II planes, and pulling out fiberglass replicas to build and fly.
Gradually over the years our interests morphed back towards high performance cars, which we'd all had some experience with earlier in our lives. Steve has owned a '67 Chevelle for many years, and when I bought my Mach 1 in 2003 and started working on it, he followed shortly thereafter with some improvements to his Chevelle. In 2004 I expanded my barn to have some more space, and in 2005 I bought my dyno. Steve built a 400 small block and ran it on my dyno in 2006, and also about that time Jerry bought a '67 Mustang coupe from me to work on as a father-son project with his son Steven. The car was pretty rusty, and Jerry and Steven replaced a whole bunch of the sheet metal on the car.
Over the years the car hobby has taken over for us. Steve has acquired and restored a 1950s Buick, and also an early '70s Camaro, and has his daughters running the Camaro and Chevelle at the drag strip. Jerry and his son finished the Mustang, and then Jerry picked up a Factory Five Cobra replica and built that. They've also been over to my shop quite a few times helping me with my projects along the way. Whenever they come over, the amount of work that the three of us get done together is pretty staggering, and to be honest most of it gets done by Jerry and Steve. Those guys really move along on the project.
Steve and Jerry are both expert welders and fabricators, and both of them are a lot better at sheet metal work than I am. We were all at Steve's 50th birthday party a few weeks ago, and agreed that we all needed a barn night to shake off the Minnesota winter doldrums. This was a perfect opportunity for me because I needed to get the new quarters, trunk drop downs, and outer wheelhouses hung on the Shelby clone. Did I mention I HATE sheet metal work? With Jerry and Steve helping I figured I could make a big dent in this part of the project.
When Steve and Jerry arrived we started talking about how best to proceed on the sheet metal installation. I told them basically how I wanted to approach the job, and in short order we got to work. Pretty soon the driver's side quarter panel was off, and we were trimming the sheet metal for installation of the new panels. Here's some pictures:
At the bottom of the top photo, you can see the modification to the lower rear of the quarter to provide additional tire clearance. We cut a pie shaped piece out of the quarter, bent the fenderlip back, and re-welded it to the fender. We gained about an inch and a half of tire clearance like this. You can also see the holes we drilled in the inner fender lip; I will plug weld through those holes to the outer wheelhouse, to hold these two parts together. In the bottom photo the 1" X 1" tube frame that I had added earlier to the back half frame is visible. The bar on the left side of the photo is level with the original trunk floor, and we were able to just hang the new trunk drop down from this square tube, making for an easy installation.
As we were working, Steve pulled out a box of self tapping sheet metal screws, promoting them as the best way to hang the new panels prior to welding them in place.
Jerry and I took exception to this idea. Whenever I do sheet metal work I like to hang the panels with Klecos. Jerry agreed, and this led to some good natured Kleco vs. self tapping screw commentary. I'm afraid that Jerry and I were really rubbing it in.
"Hey Jerry, I need to hold the outer wheelhouse in place here. What do you think I should use?"
"Gee Jay, I think I'd use some Klecos."
"Klecos, huh? You think Klecos are the best solution here?"
"Klecos are the only way to go."
"OK, I'll use some Klecos. Hey, look over here at the bottom of the trunk drop down. I can use some Klecos to hold the drop down to the quarter panel."
"Klecos would be perfect for that. I'm going to put a couple of Klecos in the back of the quarter to hold it to the taillight panel."
"Boy, these Klecos sure are useful devices."
"Yeah, I don't know how anybody can do sheet metal work without Klecos!"
Jerry and I went on and on like this at every opportunity, but whenever we did Steve would fire up the grinder and make so much noise that we couldn't talk. Eventually Steve got tired of listening to us and moved to the other side of the car to work on the other quarter panel.
The sheet metal work went amazingly quickly, and by 10:00 PM we had all the new sheet metal hung on the car (either with Klecos or self tapping screws, depending on who had done the work LOL!). We thought about staying a little later and starting on the welding, but we had spent the last six hours working pretty hard, with only a short break to have a pizza and a couple beers, so we decided to call it a night. Jerry and Steve took off, and I went inside and crashed, happy that we had been able to accomplish so much in such a short period of time.
Sunday I was going to start the welding, but I wanted to try to get the book edit finished, and after reviewing the corrected manuscript I found I wasn't happy with some parts of it, so I went back to make some more changes. I ended up working on it all day, and I'm still not quite satisfied with it, so hopefully I can get it finished next week and get the welding done after that. With the Christmas holidays coming up next week I've taken a few vacation days, and I should be able to free up some time to work on the car in addition to my family obligations.
