I've done absolutely jack shit on the car in the last few weeks, but the outer cowel extension panels showed up this week.

I probably won't get anything done this month, because I've been working on the Corvette to try to get it into some sort of track worthy shape, and still have a bunch of stuff to do (braided brake lines, different brake pads, adjust rear alignment settings, change just about all the fluids, etc...), because I'm heading to a 3-day track day at Buttonwillow at the end of the month.

I picked up my parts from the sandblaster today:

All I can say is that I'm glad I didn't do it myself.

I'm going to be busy all week dicking around with the Corvette getting it ready for Friday's track day, but I might have time to do some work on the car this weekend. I want to get those parts in paint pretty quickly so they don't start rusting.

Tonight I removed the last remainders of the factory roof and roof brace, and welded the replacement center roof brace in. I continued my theory that more welds = better, and stich welded around the edge of all the braces in addition to plug welds in the factory locations.

Additionally, in the rear I bent the panel over and welded all around it. The factory just let that panel hang over the edge of the rear roof support, with two puny spot welds.

Today I started out by making a patch panel for the outer sheetmetal that was rusty. No pattern this time, just some metal and a hammer. Then I got to work welding in the replacement roof braces. Since there's a greater than 0% chance that I may end up on the roof of this thing one day, I went a little overboard welding the corner braces. Those welds are in addition to plug welds in the factory spotweld locations. BTW, my new plug welding pliars worked pretty awesome, I have to say.

Today I finally decided to get to work on repairing the rusty a-pillar. I'd been putting this project off because I wasn't quite sure how to address it, and it had been kind of getting me down.

I received some new tools today--a bunch of clecos and buttwelding clamps. Nothing like a shipment of tools to keep you motivated.

This morning when I walked out to get some clothes out of the dryer, I noticed yet another rusty spot that needed patching. This time on the firewall behind where the RH fender had mounted. Tonight, I cut the rusty metal out, ground the rust off the brace underneath it, and sprayed it with metal ready to neutralize any remaining rust. Then I made cut out a patch, welded it in, and smoothed the welds out.

What's this?

It must be my highly expensive ($20) sandblasting kit! It'll come in handy cleaning up the inner fenders, some bracing, and the front subframe.

I spent about an hour making a gigantic mess in the driveway tonight before it got dark, and managed to blast most of the outside of the RH inner fender:

I haven't done a whole lot lately--I spent all day Saturday replacing the halfshaft u-joints on my Corvette, and all day Sunday sitting on my ass. Tonight I drilled out the spotwelds on the pieces of roof still attached to the car.

I'm taking a break from panel replacement for the next few days. Hopefully I'll be sandblasting (and maybe painting) the inner fenders tomorrow. I'll probably also get the rest of the roof panel removed so I can get an idea of how well the replacement fits sometime in the next few days as well.

Tonight I worked on the dash panel patch. I decided that with the tools and skills I have available I'd never be able to form the patch out of a single piece of metal, so I made it out of two, welded together.

As my luck would have it, the heat from welding stressed the panel enough that a large thin area I had missed (to the right of the patch) cracked open. Fuck. So I ground out the rust, verified that the panel underneath was intact, and spent the better part of 2 hours chasing thin and rusty parts in the upper panel around with the welder, attempting to fill them in.

I decided that I'd attempt to patch the rust holes on the upper dash & cowl panels, because replacing the cowl panel would be a major pain in the ass, and they don't actually sell a '69 dash panel (just '67 & '68 for some reason).

I started cutting out the rusty metal... and kept cutting.. and cutting... and cutting. The rust on the dash panel went about a foot in either direction, and extend through part of the cowl panel and into the panel underneath.