[BamaWildcat]

Barry, Any movement on Mr. Limo? I've been keeping up with the Coke cooler and the boat.

[dwynne]

Great project! I restored a 67 lehman limo this one is very unique qnd longer than normal.. i am currently doing basically same thing to a 79 mahoney stretch.. mechanical finished and going to the rust under the vinyl top.. Will keep up with your progress it has inspired me to get back to the 79.. thanks dennis

[Barry Wolk]

Very soon. I have one more galvanized trailer to finish.

[Barry Wolk]

I acquired the tool I'd been missing to move the project forward. Now that I own a spot welder I can start to reassemble the car.

The first thing I needed to do was to reinforce the "B" pillar. Metal fatigue took its toll on this connection. Since I planned on replacing the kluged roof support anyway I was able to make a permanent repair.



My solution is to install a substantial roof support and add a second "B" pillar salvaged off of the donor car. The nub of the old "A" pillar presented itself as the ideal location for the second "B" pillar, forming a very strong box that wasn't there before.



I may put glass in this opening.



I needed to stabilize the passenger side of the car before cutting away the hack work. I brazed a piece of 1 1/2" angle iron to the two existing "B" pillars and the "A" and "C" pillar. This allows me to cut away the roof support without having a 22-foot car bend in half.





I trimmed away the mangled sheet metal on both sides and the support dropped away.



Trimmed the metal back until I had a clean cross section from the roof of the first car to the roof of the second. I was going to match the exact structure in new sheet-metal but I didn't think that that shape would handle the addition span. The old support had bowed upward, slightly.



Looked around my shop for a piece of iron to better bridge the gap when I noticed one of the Unistrut pieces I used to lift the trailer body. The cross section turned out to be an exact fit. The structure allowed me to slide a piece in that is 6" longer than the opening, slipped 3" into each end. The metal is much thicker than the original structure yet will allow for some flex.

[Barry Wolk]

Welded in the new "C" pillar and removed the braces that determined its location. This new pillar was welded to a new heavy gauge piece of sheet-metal that now forms an edge for the new filler windows to mount to. There will be a similar flange at the base of the fixed panels.



It is very important to get the body lines straight on a slab side. Having an extra 4 feet of body line makes it even tougher. It's apparent now why they made their own center door panel instead of using original sheet metal. The whole center door needed to be dropped almost 1/4" to get the front line up with the back. This was the simplest fix. I simply removed the door and elongated the mounting holes by 1/4" and it dropped right into place.





After rehanging the door in proper alignment I was ready to cut in the filler panel. I positioned the panel in place with duct tape and drew in registration marks and noted the edge of the cut in panel on the center door.



By measuring the distance from the vertical registration line to the edge of the door I was able to transfer those measurements to the inset panel. It was then a matter of connecting the dots to determine what needed to be cut away.



The filler panel fit right in.



That's a whole lot of slab-side.



I'm also helping a friend build a pick-up box for his '40 Dodge. Boy, was steel thick back then.

[Road mister]

Great to see new progress, a fascinating build.

[Barry Wolk]

Thanks. I have fun documenting the progress. As I type up what I've done it makes me think about the next few steps.

There were two critical body shapes that were poorly done before and were beyond my skills. I had the local sheetmetal fabricators make me some panels that made my job much easier. The roof line has a small detail that I could have duplicated in lead, or not duplicated at all if I had gone back with a vinyl roof I'm going to try to avoid that.



Since the center door will be fixed it was important to think about making it watertight. To that end I had them duplicate the curvature of the top of the door with an extension and a flange to hold the base of the fixed side windows.



I trimmed away the original door tops leaving only the flange that has the welded trim studs. The new panel slipped under it. I left about 1/2 of the original door edge on top for a factory finish at both ends of the fixed panel.



This is why it was so important to get those parts right. Nothing worse than crooked lines on a boxy car.

[BamaWildcat]

From means of support to raceway, Unitstrut has you covered!