Final assembly....

The headers back from coating yesterday.  Eric at Advance Paint Technology did a fantastic job with a very short turn around.  He has done over 20 sets for me and have never had an issue.

There is some final clearance to do and all of the edges have to be cleaned up a bit but we should be able to get this thing done within the next day or two.  I can't wait to hear what tat '58 dual quad 'vette motor sounds like...

More rust repair for the fleetside...

...this time on the rear fenderwells.  Once the rust was repaired, there were also a large number of little dents and dings to contend with.  It seemed like a golf ball was smoother than these...

Now comes the fun part....

...seemingly endless amounts of grinding.  Each weld has to be ground and metal-finished so that it will become undetectable once coated.

...and yes, for those who are wondering, my vise is in my flower bed.  I actually prefer to grind outside because it keeps the grit from getting over everything in the shop.  Plus, there is no mess to clean up.  I just noticed that bush really needs trimmed back a bit....

And here they are...all ready for coating...

Piecing it together...

It's a bit of a tedious process piecing headers together, but it seems to go rather quickly.  On the passenger side, I had to use a total of 5 combination bends with 20 joints to get the pipes to go where they needed. There in not much room for a set of fenderwells on this Plymouth so I had to really squeeze them up and out of the way.  There still is quite a bit of welding and grinding to do, but its going fairly well.  Unfortunately you are not going to be able to see much of them once the car is back on the ground...

Plymouth gasser....

The latest project was delivered to the shop over the weekend.  It's a '51 Plymouth gasser that is in need of some fender-well exit headers...
 

Fleetside repair completed...

So it was the same story on the other side...complete with the similar abuse of Bondo.  Initially, it really didn't look that bad.  Once I was able to get the pocket out, however, you could tell that it would be long before this side would have looked like the other.  Oh well, it's just work, right?

 The pocket was actually in far better shape than the driver's side.  Only about a 1/4 of it had o be replaced...