71 510 Hitomi

[Busta Nut]

Awesome. Just so you know. I do this shit for 3 reasons. 1 love the cars 2 love building/ fabbing 3 the most important the people.

 

It is fun to have a car you want. Enjoy it by yourself. But the most enjoyment is having other people around to share the experience. I try to help others out any way I can. I know not everyone has the same level of experience but when you can access someone else's talents everyone wins.

 

I have friends that can't do anything but have nice cars that join up with us for cruises etc. then I have friends that their metal/ fab and paint and body are the best there is. I personally don't care about how good or bad someone is at building. I just happy they are involved.

 

 

Could not have said it better myself............

[earlyvws]

Their real. Showed up today.

 

 

So might get back to my dime. Sold everything I needed to raise the cash I needed. Keeping my fingers crossed and hopefully have my next purchase tomorrow night.

[mrbigtanker]

14x6.5 right.

[earlyvws]

Yeah I think it said +6 estimated

[skyblue]

I'm curious what your going to to do with the floors. If I remember correctly they were redone with fiberglass.

[earlyvws]

I started the front 2 quarters a couple weeks ago. Haven't finished them yet. Removed all the fiberglass and made 16 gauge quarters.

 

Going to try to get back on them this weekend. Now that my week of selling is over gotta get back to building.

[edekalil]

I think I found a couple of those trucks south of where I live. If I only had some ROOM and TIME and MONEY.

[earlyvws]

So this is how I'm doing the floors. The metal shop gave me 16 gauge sheet instead of 18 that I asked for. So I was not able to do what I was planning. And they only had a 4x4 which is not enough.

 

So this is my cheated method. 4 quarters. Had to use English wheel because my bead roller could never come close to rolling 16ga.

 

 

 

[mrbigtanker]

Wow Joe that is really clean. Its almost as clean as my work.lol :rofl:

[skyblue]

wow is right. you make it look so easy. :thumbup:

[shacks510]

Almost too nice to upholster over them.

[mrbigtanker]

scrap that skyline and put all your money in this 510.lol wait other way around I think.

[earlyvws]

Tedious repair.

 

 

 

Futofab panel. Nice piece but going to require some tweaking to work. The usual for aftermarket parts. But this piece is making me delete the bluebird taillights. The license plate stamping is 1/4" wider then OG, making the tail lights overlap the pressing looking bad. Too much work to correct it. So going to move on and go stock.

 

 

I was going to make the trunk flat then decided to make a little extra storage, but made a critical error. I knew what my maximum length and width was so I didn't have to cut into supports, so I made the tub this dimension but forgot the flanges I made at the top were suppossed to be the max dimensions. So may scrap the while idea and just go flat. Going to decide when I start repairing the trunk area and take measurements to see how much cutting is required.

 

 

 

[earlyvws]

Made the trunk flat.

 

 

The panel is too wide. I pushed the quarters out as far as I could and still couldn't get the panel to fit in between, and even at that test the trunk the gaps are all messed up.

 

 

Also there isn't enough radius. Need to stretch the ends some.

 

 

Additionally need to do some trimming at the top and reshape the channel.

[Georges510]

the rear panel looks as if it needed more of a radius when they built it. does the radius on deck lid and valance match up?

[skyblue]

Is that a futofab rear panel?

[mrbigtanker]

Is that a futofab rear panel?

Yes it is.

[skyblue]

Maybe pm Dave in here and ask him why no fit right.

[earlyvws]

the rear panel looks as if it needed more of a raduis when the built it. does the radius on deck lid and valance match up?

George I didn't have a chance to really check every aspect of fit yet. The top doesn't fit in the channel so not easy to check trunk alignment on top.

[earlyvws]

Came today. Nice setup. Went this route cuz I like metal. Not a big fan of plastic. Didn't know the other cool grill was plastic.

 

[skyblue]

Nice grill. What's it off of?

 

The '69 grill you got with car should get you a pretty penny if you decide to sell it.

[earlyvws]

Told it is a 69 SSS Bluebird pot metal grill

[mrbigtanker]

Came today. Nice setup. Went this route cuz I like metal. Not a big fan of plastic. Didn't know the other cool grill was plastic.

 

Yea so the bluebird grill is metal except for the bezels.

[earlyvws]

I passed on this and the dude said, no problem I let u know if I find another plastic grill. I hit him back and said what do u mean plastic, he told me that and then I said fuck it give me this one.

[earlyvws]

Got the panel in finally. So this is a bit more tricky then I first thought. If you are planning on using one ur going to need a stretcher and some careful planning. When welding it in start at the middle and line up the tail light pressing first. Helps if u have a spot welder. The work ur way up to the top. The clamp the bottom edge down as hard as u can to line up the bottom crease in the body. If u clamp the bottom down u will not get the middle body crease to line up. The ends at the bottom need to be stretched to add more curve. At least the last 8" on both sides.

 

There is also a lot of trimming to do. For me the panel was about 5/16" to wide. Trimmed off about 1/8" on both sides.

 

 

The top needs a lot of trimming where it meets the ends. This is the initial mark I made but ended up trimming a lot more. I started to give up on pics because hard to take them while working. Also added some curve in the top edge where the trunk lines up. In my photo u can see the center gap is a little more then the ends. The panel is almost straight originally. I pressed hard on the ends and got a little more out of it, but I didn't want to kink it so I stopped when I felt it was just about to buckle. Try to fix the gap by messing with lid.