The replacement dogleg arrived, looks great but the fit is terrible. Not nearly enough curve in the trough part so the entire thing is way too high. You can see almost an inch of it sticking above the body in the 2nd pic. Should be flush or have a small amount of trimming. That's just the beginning, probably going to be more problems at the B-post and the body line where it lines up to the door.

This is going to be a challenge, too small to english wheel. Going to have to hammer it into shape I guess, need to think on this one.

That sucks. I've been disappointed in every repo panel I've bought.

For the most part I haven't had much luck with them either although the fenders for the square body Chevy I did were good and the floor and sill for this build were good. I heard these dogleg pieces used to be perfect and now they suck. Worse part is they cost a fortune.

I did some pounding on the trough part, it's getting closer. I had to straighten the top of the whole thing, they had an exaggerated bend on the top. The bottom under the sill wasn't bent right and the jog in the first two pics is supposed to be 90 degrees not 45 or so. I dulled an air chisel bit and bent it in.

Still a ways to go on it before I can weld it on, and who knows how well it will line up with the door.

I have the dogleg fitted in and lined up with the B-post. I drilled a bunch of holes for spot welding it. I put the rear fender on to see how it fits and I'm pretty happy with how it matches the curve in the dogleg and the bead trim helps any minor problems.

I stripped the rear fender and hit a ton of filler, looked like it was going to be a repeat of the other side where it was so bad I had to find a replacement fender. Oddly enough the fender is almost perfect, a couple of slight imperfections but nothing that needed a 1/4" of filler. I took the picture after I had already ground off a pile of it.

I need to test fit the door and A-post before I weld the dogleg on. Things are starting to come together.

That looks good.

Good job.
Amazing how much work these restorations can take isn't it.

Yes it's a lot more work than most people realize. Even worse when you have to cut up the structure and try to make it right again like this project. Spend more time thinking and measuring than doing.

I switched over to the good side and mounted the door. It will give me some reference for doing the cut up side.

The door fits pretty good, the front gap to the cowl is really good but the B-post is off near the top. The gap isn't as bad as it looks in the pic. The top 3 or so inches of the B-post is pushed back close to 3/16". The small bit where the paint isn't stripped has lead so I'll need to torch that, probably why it's pushed back. Once I pull that forward somehow it will be really close.

It may not look like much but this is a giant step forward. Getting the A-post to fit and line up half way decent was kicking my butt. When the back of the door was good the front was awful. The gap between the top front of the door and the cowl or scuttle as the Brits call it, was horrible. I managed to move the sill outward about 5/16" which helped, I'm going to try to get another 1/8". Also need to work the floor pan as there's a pretty big gap where it meets the sill. I'll probably have to reshape the outer flange of the pan.

The A-post is tacked in place. I need to remove the dogleg and weld the B-post in, then weld the dogleg. I'm feeling a lot more optimistic than I was a few days ago. Apparently the early TR3's like mine fit pretty bad from the factory and then mine has seen a lot of abuse so getting anything to fit is very challenging.

Making some progress albeit slowly. After I got the sill in the right place the floor pan didn't fit right, no big surprise. Reshaped the flange and welded it in so that's pretty much done.

The replacement firewall/toe board piece is next. It's an original piece from a newer TR3 so there's a little extra work needed to fit it. I test fitted it and it doesn't line up at all with the old beat up kick panel. I cut the old one out and made a new one. Pretty basic except the top 8" or so bends and curves in several places so that was interesting. The original is so beat up there's nothing to reference other than the basic outer shape.

It's clamped in place, I'm going to tack it in a few places and then see how well it lines up with the new fire/toe board. If it's good I'll weld it all in.

Nice mock up on the replacement panel