I came across an older wagon in the junk yard, with a good front end. So I took both fenders, hood, grill, light bezels, etc to do a full conversion from the later 79 style to the earliest 1971-72 body style as that of the two-door coupe and two-door sedan (extremely rare).
I had to clean up the underside of the panels a bit (photos):
Some fiberglass work just to seal up some rust damage:
Now I had to weld on my patch panel for the one rusted fender:
I had to relocate the headlights since the new grill and headlight assembly was different. I used the pieces I cut out as the sheet metal to fill the moved holes for convenience It's all hidden anyway.
A new square hole:
Now that all that is done I didn't want to put back on the damaged under pan that goes under the front bumper and wraps under the radiator. So I decided to make a fiberglass air-dam. I was running out of time to get it done so I just did it free hand style, no molds just a backing plate and some tape.
In this first picture you can see that I just now realize that I needed to move my headlights as shown in previous section.
Now finally the home stretch and by far the hardest. After welding some holes in the roof from the roof racks. The long process of sanding, painting, sanding, painting, sanding.... I used a sealer primer for the first two coats. Then three coats of a high build primer. Both of which I had left over from a project about five years ago. Followed by Home-Depot variety paints. I topped it with a good quality 2k clear-coat out of my HVLP gun running at around 80 psi. Finally, a wet sand with 600 to 1500 grit, followed by rubbing compound, rubbing polish, and turtle wax. Also, at some point during this process, I managed to finish my custom aluminum bumper made from a piece of shelf railing and bolted onto welded brackets I made.
Finally a finished process! Well I consider it finished for now. Still some little things to do, but done enough to enjoy on the road.
