I stopped by the Panel Shop to check the final fitting of some trim pieces before the car is shipped to the paint shop. I brought the headlight assemblies down to along with some other brightwork to make sure they fit the car. Now is the time to tweak the steel to fit the trim instead of later when the paint is on the car.

I bought a new windshield gasket a week or so before and fit it to the front windshield before heading down to the shop.

As usual, fitting the chrome trim was a little bit of a challenge, but I managed to coax it into place with some lube and lots of tugging and pressing. This is probably one of the hardest things on my hands in all of restoration. It usually takes a day or so for my hands to recover from all the strain!

I brought the windshield assembly down to The Panel shop and we laid it in place on the car to check for fit. Mark had moved some metal along the bottom edge of windshield and he wanted to make sure he didn’t make any dimensional changed to the windshield opening that would affect the way the gasket, glass and chrome trim fit the car.

Luckily, everything fit pretty well, but it soon became evident I should be sending out the windshield chrome out for fresh plating. What looked pretty good on the car before with the old paint will not look so good when we have fresh paint applied to the car. I will be taking the gasket and glass apart again and sending this trim out for fresh chrome.

Mark and I stepped back and looked at how the bumpers sat with reference to the grille and head lights. With hand made cars, they’re never completely symmetrical, but tweaking the parts at this point before the paint is applied is our last shot at making major changes. Hanging some of the chrome helps take in the overall look of the car so we could make any changes.

I also checked the gasket and headlight fit to the body.

Mark welded in the holes for the side view mirror so if we wanted to reposition the mirror after paint, we would have real steel to drill to.

Since the whole nose of the car was remade, I brought the nose badge in for installation. Click on the image to see the install.