RBrid

All the books I acquired so far for this project. Some I read partially, some I read twice. Can you spot the intruder? Because of my OCD I had to grab my wife's reading to complete the square. I know what you're gonna say: "Your wife reads about carbon fiber parts?"
The bottom 4 books are very good.

RBrid

Passenger fender is going through the same treatment as its driver side sibling. Inner glassing is done. One picture before and one after. RVZIO, as you can tell, you're not the only one who gave me wings.

RBrid

Glassing is done and I'm on the second round of VPA'ing.

RBrid

Got this camber/caster alignment tool so I can better determine what kind of backspace I need for new 15"x10" wheels. Measure 23 times and buy once, I hope.

Thanks for taking a peek!

SB64

Now that's a really cool tool.

gs568

Awesome build thread. Can I drive it when you’re done???

caskiguy

I just spent time tonight going through your entire thread, I'd forgotten about it, but remembered the door on the transmission stand (that was why I bought mine a while back, thank you very much). OMG ! Truly amazing effort by you. I'm in the process of rebuilding my 70' Coupe, so thank you for posting all that you have it is going to be a great reference for me on my journey. You like others on this forum have extraordinary skills and ingenuity that I marvel at and will try to achieve similar results but that's a pretty high bar you guys have set.
Plugging away an hour a day does yield great results.
Best,

SB64

As your journey continues R, so do your skill sets. Nice job so far on all that we are seeing. your project has come a long way.


RVZIO

RBrid

I'm not sure I'll let myself drive it when it's ready. :-)

Thanks much! You're doing very well with your own build caskiguy - I'm following it too.

RvZio, hope everything's OK - I have not seen an update about your Black Mirror lately.



It has been a couple months since my last update but things are moving along baby step after baby step.

First a bunch of déjà vu steps:

Graft the front section of the passenger fender.




















Because I'm nuts, I painted the portion of the fender that can be seen through the heating hole:


And here it is, after gluing the fender:


The gluing went smoothly:




I have also started to customize the front bumper to get rid of the bumperettes and accommodate the Cibié fog lamps.

Chop, chop:


Little preview:


Then the plastic reconstruction began:














The fiberglass grows back everyday piece by piece. Still a lot of growth coming.

I'm keeping the entire steel bumper structure behind the fiberglass.



So this didn't leave me much choice for the final fiberglass shape, given the lamps' location I picked.


Other than that, SBG lended me an old 15"x10" wheel with a 295/50/15 tire (i.e. what I want). I did a fitting test with 4.75" backspace and it looks good to me:







What do you think?

Thanks for taking a peek!

13611

VERY nice!!!

SuperBuickGuy

lookin' good

PainfullySlow

I love this thread. I am somewhat nervous about the bodywork portion of my project but you make it look very easy.

RBrid

Thanks! I have the benefit of not having mangled wrists like you. I saw you jumped right in with your stinger hood. Good luck!

RBrid

For about 408 days I struggled with deciding whether I should put a 275/55/15 tire + 15x9 wheel or 295/50/15 tire + 15x10 wheel combination in the front. Well the struggle is over.

I put that old wheel on the front for testing purposes (second combination) and it did not fit. The backspace was 4.75". The tire hit both the top control arm and the steering tie rod. The tire was pushed in by a 1/4" in both locations.





So I'll probably go with Avon CR6ZZ tires. 275/55/15 in the front and 295/50/15 in the rear. They have the same 26.9" diameter.

As for the wheels, the top candidates are minilites 15x10 (rear) and 15x9 (front).

For both the front and rear, the "2 inch flares" are in fact more like 1.25 inch flares.

SuperBuickGuy

and we can both take my Corvette out too.... oh the plans let's not forget that when I first posted the Sledanette I said it wouldn't be done until 2017.... yeah. Now back to looking for a picture.

RBrid

OK, slight adjustment: SBG, one nice summer day in 2021, I'll visit you with my completed vette to check how your Buick Sledanette project is progressing...


I do make progress:

Building up the glass




Mounting the Cibiés








They are about one inch behind the nose tip


And on, and on, and on...

Thanks for taking a peek!

RBrid

Still working on the debumperettization. It's starting to take shape. Still ahead: round the edges, redo the holes for the cibié lights, grind the visible glass and cover with VPA, and more... Here's where I stand:

caskiguy

That is impressive. Very nicely done.

RBrid

Yo everyone. I have spent about 100 hours more on the front bumper:
- completing the customization for the fog lamps.
- smoothing the inside.
- fitting to the car for a relatively seamless seam.
So it's time for a little update.

This is what it looked like before working on the seam:

RBrid

The front bumper after a crazy number of VPA spreading+sanding cycles: