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September 25, 2004
4.5 hours

The Grand Illusion

Illusion you say? Here's one: the back end of my Century. You'll see why in a moment.

Today I continued work on the trunk area, finishing removal of the rear-most panels, half of which were still OEM and valuable as patterns. Disassembly is not demolition, however, so I used care in removing the part because I'll be using it as a template to make its replacement. Whenever possible, I drilled out the spot welds holding the panels together and gently pried them apart. Where I couldn't reach the spot welds with a drill, I used a technique I call "turn and burn" which is basically sweeping my cut-off wheel across the spot weld until the metal is thin enough to pop apart. Crude, yes, but effective and not destructive to parts that require duplication.

Yes, I'll be using this panel as a template for a new one.

I was pleased to find that the tray supporting the trunk floor is in decent shape and won't have to be replaced. I'll sandblast it, paint it and close it back up once I have the new floor fabricated. It'll also be good to be able to keep it in the car so that the surrounding panels have some support while I replace them.

Tool tray area is in solid condition and will be preserved.

The next problem I faced was removing the remains of the panel shown above from under the trunk lip (you can see the trunk lip in the photo above--the strip that runs along the bottom of the trunk opening). There is a flat piece of sheetmetal spot-welded on top of that panel that forms the lip of the trunk opening. I drilled out the spot welds holding that one on and removed it--it's nothing more than a strip of sheetmetal with a folded edge. Easy.

But once that part was gone, I could better see how bad things really were in the damage department and how bad the guys were who once worked on this car. As I said earlier, there's about 1/4-inch of lead filler on the rear corners of the car which extends across the trunk lip. It's all kind of massaged into a basic shape that resembles a 1941 Buick Century trunk, but not really. That's apparent now, and I need help. Look:

Before and after showing just how much lead was used to reshape the back of the car. It gets
worse, don't worry...

I cut out the piece that spans the trunk opening along the bottom--it's so rusted and beat up that I decided to repace it. It's a fairly easy shape, so I will be able to make a new one without too much trouble. I have a NOS piece of trim that runs along the rear edge of the body right below the trunk, hiding the gap between the bumper filler and the body. Obviously it follows the lines of the car fairly closely and I thought that I would use it as a template to rebuild all the parts that I cut out. Since it's NOS and I can't detect any bends or damage, I figured that it would be a pretty exact model to follow. So far, so good, right?

Here's the trim's proper position on the back of the car.

Here's how the trim looks compared to the back of my car.

I haven't decided what to do next; the metal is so far out of shape that maybe it'll take a new rear clip. Of course, there's always the chance that the trim is wrong, since that's a HUUUGE gap, but I think that the back of the car got smacked pretty hard. This would explain why this piece of trim was never replaced and the inappropriately thick lead filler work. I thought about cutting off the corner panels and rebuilding them all from scratch, but after seeing this fittment problem, I don't want to cut out more sheetmetal until I know how it should be shaped. In this case, there's only one thing to do:

Nick, Nate, Doug? Drop me a line when you have a chance. I need your help, gentlemen!

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E-mail me at toolman8@sbcglobal.net

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Last modified on 02/06/2005

Thanks, Fidget!