The Crusty Cuda: Whole lotta Shakin' (N96) Goin' on!

[njsteve]

Dave just sent me these photos of the new trunklid. Fits very nicely!

[njsteve]

Happy Birthday to the purple project! Born today, fifty years ago!

[A12pilot]

Rust repair has started! I'm splicing in a new floor pan and after it's butt welded there won't be any seam and it'll look factory. This part of the floor has the speedometer retainer loop welded to it, so that's going to come off the old floor and will be welded onto this newer piece.

This next week I'm moving the folks up from Florida to their new ranch next door to us, so more updates later this month! The plan is to have all the metal work done and the car down to 180-220.

More to come!

Cheers
Dave

[njsteve]

I got the new grill painted in the correct dark grey argent "sparkle" paint. The grill is manufactured in a light grey plastic. It took half a day to tape the whole thing off just to paint the center black grill portions from the front and back side. Then, the next day it took an hour to remove half the original masking tape and then tape off the black grills so I could paint the dark agent. I made sure the outside and back were completely masked off too.

Thankfully it was around 75 degrees out today so I could spray it in the driveway on a large cardboard box so it was at a high enough angle to get the metalflake to lie down right.

I did the headlight buckets too.

The only problem with the reproduction grills is that the stainless trim that goes around the grill and buckets is not very good. The two bucket trim pieces are 3/8" too long on both ends so that will need to be removed with a Dremel tool and disc, then sanded smooth. That's the next phase of the project. Oh, and they also don't snap into place like the originals do. They either are too loose or so tight that it risks breaking the grill plastic to get them in place.

Here's the grill after painting, with the red bar and "Plymouth" emblem installed.

[L_e_e]

Grill looks great!!

[A12pilot]

Looking good Steve-O! Production resumes next week!

Cheers
Dave

[njsteve]

According to UPS tracking, the front and rear elastomeric bumpers are due to arrive at Dave-Land today. Can't wait to see what those look like. They came all the way from the Great White North. Here's who makes them:

https://www.tommythechryco.ca/Elastomeric-bumpers.php

https://chryco.store/

[A12pilot]

Well, let's see. The past week was spent moving my folks next door to their newly completed house on 5 acres next to ours on 10 acres, so they're officially done with The Villages in Florida! I installed a wrought iron style gate on our service entrance, removed two large piles of dirt on their lot and graded it into our drainage ditch, and now I'm FINALLY able to work back on cars! So with that, it's Cuda metal time! Yesterday I spliced in the new floor pan, rear quarter and extension, and got halfway done with the trunk floor. A productive day! Here's a few of the rear quarter to start. After butt-welding the patches in and grinding the seams smooth, I covered them with USC's All Metal then started with Rage to get the curves perfect. Body line matches up perfectly, and the weird thing is the quarter panel lip remained perfect so I spliced the patch in to that lip. Wheel lip moldings will arrive today or tomorrow and I'll be able to ensure a perfect fit prior to paint!

More later today....

Cheers
Dave

[njsteve]

Amazing!

Just out of curiosity, any idea how many layers of paint you found while grinding away? Not counting the white latex house paint they hastily brushed on to camouflage the car from the invading Soviets in Ice Station Zebra.

It almost looks like that purple is the original paint? Looks like red oxide dip, then grey primer, then assembly line purple. On top of that maybe some spray can black primer/purple?

[TimG]

Nice work, Dave.