Getting Started with Your Classic Car Restoration

One of the things you notice about the installation center. Is we've designed tables to carry the car on the correct center line and datum. Because we're gonna replace a lot of panels at one time, this really makes the job not only easier but makes it come out the same every time. But at home, what you need to be aware of is, these cars are designed to carry a load on the suspension pickup points. So if you're gonna put a quarter panel or something like that in the car, support the car under where the suspension would be.

If you have the rear end still in the car, under the rear axle. If you kit it all the way at the end of the frame rail, the car is gonna wanna come up with the quarter panel off. Same if you put it up here and you get the quarter panel off the rear end, it's gonna wanna go down. It's all about the control. This is my control device.

But the tip for you is, if you're gonna replace the panels, support the car it was designed to carry a load. And you might want to consider one panel at a time so you don't upset the car too much. Just want to make you aware of. I have an excellent control device. It's up to you to control your car.

Randy Bolig. Hey Craig, how are you doing? Good, how's things at the magazine? Busy. Things are going really well.

You know, we have here, we have a project right here with Randy Bolig. We're gonna do some quarter panels on a Dart. It's a 344 speed car. It's really a cool little car. It deserves to come back up hill.

One thing Randy is talking about right here with me, we talked about, you know, if you're gonna do a quarter panel installed, the body lines have to work, right? Yeah, you can't start replacing quarter panel and go off the lines of this door hanging here. What we've got is actually the hinges, are just completely gone. So before you start any sheet metal work, you want to replace those hinges first. But, now you don't have to send your hinges out and wait for them to come back because, Auto Metal Direct has come up with a new set of hinges for this car.

So what we're gonna do is we're just gonna replace the bottom hinge and align the door. That's the perfect start point for this quarter panel installed. And like I said, I can just get it out of the box. That's a really neat piece. And you're gonna see when it goes in, every bit .

Now I've got the door hinge in there. I have it adjusted. And really you can tell all I'm looking for is the height and the line. And it's on the rocker. Now, this way when you line your quarter panels up, you have a reference.

Now I build a lot of cars here at the installation center. So I'll remove the doors and the panels and everything and send this car out to blast. But if you're doing it at home the easy way is, leave the reference, do it a panel at a time.