Doing a little work on the side

It’s Christmas eve so we didn’t do a lot around the shop today, but we did work on the Chevelle some. It’s surprising what you can get done when the phone isn’t ringing off the hook and you can focus on one thing for more than five minutes.

In the first photo Chris and I are hanging and aligning the door. Hanging panels on older classic cars isn’t any more difficult than doing the same job on a modern car, but they are much more fiddly. We worked on the car for about 3 hours mounting the door and fender, and the bulk of that time was spent tightening the bolts, checking the gaps, loosening the bolt, moving the panel, and retightening.  It seems like just when you get the gaps perfect in once place, you mess the gap up in another, so it is dance to get everything as close as possible at the same time.

The second photo shows me hammering the door into place for the final time. Now that the door is aligned we can move on to the fender.

In the third photo Chris and I are mounting the fender. The fender isn’t heavy, but it helps when there are a couple pairs of hands to hold and align slots and bolts.

In the fourth photo we are finger tightening the first set of bolts so the fender will sit in place and we don’t have to worry about it falling off and getting damaged.

In the fifth photo we are beginning to insert and tighten the other bolts to see how the fender sits on the car. We will install and remove these bolts several times, inserting and removing shims, to adjust how the fender fits on the car.

In the sixth photo we finally had the top and bottom of the fender where we wanted it, so it was time to put the screws to it so the fender is secure.

After tightening the fender down tight the fender moved just enough that I was no longer happy with the bottom gap, so in picture seven we loosened the bottom bolt yet again and applied some muscle to force it back into place. While Chris held it in place, I tightened the bolt down again so it would stay.

The last two pictures, number eight and nine, show left side of the car with the door and fender on and properly aligned. You can’t see it in these pictures because the car is so black it sucks up all the light in the room, but the panel gaps look pretty good. Not a bad way to end the day before the holiday.

Wednesday, when we return to work, we get to repeat the process on the other side.