theastronaut

Cutting out the quarter panel. B pillar post base.

Starting on the rockers. Tons of lead and filler. Trying to find the rear rocker and quarter panel seam.

Started digging into the driver side lower cowl, rocker area, and lower quarter panel. It was tough to find the rocker seams in the door jamb since they were butt-welded from the factory. I took everything apart the way it was assembled so I could use the original parts for templates. I'll leave the other side together for reference until the driver side is back together. The cowl was pretty rough, had stress cracks all over it plus rust at the bottom. Cut it out to get to the inner layers. Made a paper template before cutting it out. Inner door post. Inner panel rust.

I made body braces out of 1x1 tubing with turnbuckles welded in so I can adjust the door gaps before everything it welded back in. Some of the body mounts are completely rusted away so it's doubtful that the body is still sitting squarely on the frame. This will also keep the body from folding in half once it's on the rotisserie.

Bondo check... used my 3" grinder to get to bare metal around the bottom edge. Lots of filler over caved in metal, and there are gobs of brass showing around all the "patches". Old floor "repair" with aluminum pop riveted over the original rusty floors. The rivets had fallen out long ago.

Pics of the rust. There won't be much original Packard metal in the lower 8" once we're done. Trunk area.

This is my current restoration project, a 1940 Packard 120 Convertible Coupe with tons of rust. The owner is from Connecticut and heard about us from another Packard owner who lives near us and stops by our shop regularly. It was bought as a driver but the owner kept finding more and more wrong with it so it came apart for a full restoration. He and his wife drove down a few months ago to meet us and check out some of our work, and decided to have us restore it. We had only seen pictures until then... had no idea it would be this bad! We'll be doing the rust repair, metal work, bodywork, paint, upholstery, and final assembly. The owner and a friend have already done the suspension and mechanical work. This is it as it was delivered, we have the rest of the parts in storage. The owner was a helicopter mechanic and is very detail oriented so all of the parts were boxed meticulously; each box is labeled with a list of parts and hardware inside. I started the project last year so I will be a little behind starting off this thread. I'll post the work already completed.