Monday, July 20, 2009

Under the Knife

There is really no other way to put the next phase of this conversion. At this point we took a step back and evaluated the best way to remove the roof. We had to consider that our main cutting tools were only a 4" cutting wheel and a large flat head screw driver which we used as a chisel. I would recommend a sawzall if you have one though. We began from the back of the car and worked our way forward. I first marked a line approximately 1" below the edge of the rear quarter panel. This is where we will separate the old roof from the quarter panel. It will make for an easy lap weld. I will have to replace the quarter panels on this car so I will go back over this part once everything is fitted in place and cut the over lap off and make it a butt weld. I read that a butt weld is stronger and if you ever replace your quarter with a quarter skin you need to butt weld it in place. Should make blending easier too once the body filler is applied.

The next major chunk to be cut is the rear trunk section. At first I though I could remover this part with the roof as one piece but it became clear that we had to take it in steps. There were a lot of layers of pinch welded metal in this part. A sawzall would have come in very handy right about now. This part is the most time consuming of the whole conversion. After we removed the the rear trunk section we moved on to cutting the rest of the roof away from the rear quarter panel. At this point it got very frustrating trying to cut through all the main support in the rear of the roof. Like I mentioned before all we used was a 4" cutting wheel so we didn't have very deep penetration. Finally the entire rear section of the roof was free. All I can say is use you best judgment on how much you want to remove on this section. I recommend looking at some interior shots of original fastbacks with out the interior panels (just google 65 fastback restoration pictures). From what I saw the coupe is much more supported in the rear of the roof than the fastback models so don't be afraid if you feel like a lot of it has to go. I guess it also depends on how much of the fastback you have. Mine actually included part of the wheel well so I pretty much remove every piece of support from the coupe roof and just used the support from the fastback roof.

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