Here are some pics showing the various stages of the body work on the project. I started with a beautiful body, with just one little problem... :)

So, the search was on for a donor car... The right one was selected, and a trip to the local tool rental place netted a plasma cutter. And VOILA! I have a new firewall! :)

Alas, the floor was not the only piece of missing sheetmetal, so I also had to drill out a WHOLE lot of spot welds from both cars in order to fill this:

with this:

After much struggle, I finally had a solid body again! You can see in these pictures that the firewall was also smoothed. This required a lot of effort, both in filling areas with patch sheetmetal as well as a thin as possible coat of body filler to finish things off. The results were well worth the effort though!

With it finally installed, the dash was painted black before the glass installation. Also the area below the rear window was painted at the same time.

With the firewall and dash finally taken care of, it was time to finish up the rest of the body. Many many many hours of straightening and sanding were performed to get the slick finish I was looking for, and I started with a body shell that was already mostly done! You just can't skimp in this area if you want a nice looking car when all is said and done. I think the body appearance speaks for itself, even though the pictures don't do it justice.

Here are some more pictures of the body, with some closeups... WARNING: These pictures are VERY large... They will take a minute to load...

OK! Now we are making some progress! Let's see a few pictures of the other pieces that are painted... Note the good use of the extra space in the house... Good thing I'm still single, eh? :)

That's it for now... There will be more to come with the hood and other fender, as well as the little pieces (ie: mirrors, urethane nose, spoiler, etc) are painted.