Let the good times roll! :biggthumpup:

Steve
Your car looks Awsome!!!
Paul

I have the Gramma car back at the local shop. He had an opening for some quick work and told me I could bring her down after i pulled the fuel tank out. The original inner and outer rear valance panels were rusted at the bottom flange from winter use by Gramma back in the 1970's. It was a terrible design that just trapped the salt and mud from the tires and held it in place with no real access for a hose to flush it out.

When I had the car painted 25 years ago the repro panels were not available. So I had to wait a couple decades for parts availability to catch up.

Happily, Santa brought me these two panels a couple Christmases ago. The shame is that we only needed the lower six inches or so of the tail panel so 75% of that $300 panel is going to waste. He was able to remove the inner panel at the factory welds and was installing that as of today.

I am getting all the underside stuff done in advance of a future paint job. This way when it comes time for paint, it will just involve sanding, massaging, and painting and no rust repairs. (resulting in a briefer sentence in bodyshop prison I hope).

With as clean as Gramma car appeared, I am quite surprised it had such extensive rust back there--you gave a good reason/explanation though.
Thank you very much for the repair pictures, and if you get any more, maybe close-ups of the welded edges/seems, I'd like to see them for future reference.

Thanks for sharing Steve.


P.S. I think it's about time for you to post up a cruising video to give us a chance to see how well she drives. :)

Does this count for a cruising video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptAubfuN8N4

The rust really isn't "extensive" at all. On the entire car, it is isolated to only those two rear sandwiched panels. These cars were known to evaporate rapidly once exposed to salt. We rescued it from daily winter driving after only a few years of use by Gramma and then my brothers. The lower portions of the rear frame rails are beautiful on this car - another major rust prone area to look for in case you're ever shopping for a second gen F-body. The other area is under the lower corners of the windshield where the water sits and puddles on top of the cowl.

The body man has the new outer panel installed today. Working fast!

----Have a complete Pypes exhaust on my 69 SJ Gran Prix and love it. Although not the 390hp HO (just the 370hp, but I breathed on it a bit when we went thru it), I switched to HO exhaust manifolds......Bill S

Go granny go!!

Great video! It hooked nice

That lays a great patch!

Yup, Got a great angry sound! Sounds kind of like the dragon "Spot" who lived under the stairs at the Munster's house on 1313 Mockingbird lane. :-)