The fender patches arrived but they're dead flat and oil canning to boot. Should have about 3/8" curve to it. I used a shrinker on the flange and then English wheeled the panel. It's pretty good for now, has some shape and no oil canning. I'm sure it'll need a bit of tweaking when it's time to weld it. The bottom pic shows how totally straight it was.

Some of the old panels I got for my Chrysler were like that while they had basic shape they lacked any contour or shape to the panel. Glad I got the parts car to cut up.

I shouldn't be surprised, never had much luck with repop sheet metal. I would have expected a bit better given the ridiculous cost. Not much chance of finding a decent parts car where I am. When I do find replacement panels they're still pretty bad. No such thing as a pristine panel.

I have all the sheet metal off now. I need to gut the engine bay. I'll pick away at that in between stripping and body working the panels.

Trust you are taking plenty of pictures for reassembly purposes.

Doing a great job on this car, anxious to see the finished product.

I'm taking a lot of pictures, way more than I have in the past. It's amazing how things you thought were obvious no longer are when it's time for reassembly.

Thanks for your interest. It's such a totally different kind of build. The little disassembly jobs you take for granted as easy are a total head scratcher.

So speaking of head scratching. I need to remove the steering wheel and column, etc. Normally removing a steering wheel takes about a minute. Quite a different procedure with this little car.
First you remove 3 grub screws that hold the control head as they call it, I call it a horn button. Then you unplug the wiring that goes through the stator tube. Also you need to remove the gland nut. Unfortunately my shop manual is written in the Queen's English not mine. None of these words mean anything to me. The stator tube is basically a brake line that holds the wiring. Why they thought it should run the full length of the steering shaft and right through the steering box baffles me. The gland nut is like a plumbing collar that makes a tight seal. Now that it's out the steering box is gooing out it's oil.

I got the dash and anything under it out. Most of the engine bay is stripped, need to work on getting the wiring out intact so lots of labelling wires. I have a new harness for it but the more reference you have the better.
It's been quite a learning experience, I think the English motto must be, why use 2 bolts when you can use 12.

This car is going to be all kinds of fun to put back together. Taking it apart is taking so much longer than any other car I've done.

My replacement hood and trunk lid arrived. Started on the trunk lid, very solid and rust free unlike my original one that was rotted pretty bad on the inside. It had a few small dents to deal with. I picked up this stripping tool. I'm pretty impressed with it, only took about 15 minutes to strip the top side of the trunk.

I looked at those stripper tools I liked the idea of it Just not impressed with the replacement cost of the cutting wheels.
I use the Flat 3M stripping disks on a variable speed buffer deal I can get the 8 inch 3/4 inch thick Velcro attach stripping disks for about $20 bucks each.

That Trunk lid looks good

Yeah the 60 grit is around $60 but I figure it should be good for the entire car. I'll get back to you on whether or not I'm correct.

Getting close to pulling the body off, need to remove ebrake handle assembly and a bunch of body bolts. I got 6 of the 20 out easily but the rest are seized so they'll need to be cut out.

Lots of damage on the right front all the way to mid door. Door jamb and inner rocker are buckled. The inner fender is bad, big creases. I have a lead on a good used one.