We’ve gone from Colorado to Orlando, FL (via Chicago Ohare) to Northwest of Seattle, WA (via the interstate) and have returned just in time for a planned maintenace outage at work since I last wrote about the ’40 Chevy chop, but I took advantage of a couple of free moments in between to get a little done. The results of those “moments” are posted here. 

You can see in this shot down the side how chopping the front and rear sections of the window opening leave a resultant gap in the top of the door frame. Usually you can take the piece of the door’s previously removed vertical section, trim it accordingly, and fit it into the top horizontally. Not so with this one.

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I have gotten back to working on the ’51 after the summer doldrums.  Doldrums interspersed with changing jobs, thinking about moving, and doing the remove & replace thing with the transmission in the Wife’s Miata…..twice and a half.  The Miata transmission still isn’t right but ignoring it until spring is starting to look like a really good idea.

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Yesterday was Hawks’ football day for the Colorado Melons and priorities being what they are, I didn’t work on the ’40 Chevy… which my wife and boys have affectionately named “The Thing”.  My ’56 F-1oo was dubbed, “The Blob“  so I guess “The Thing” fits the developing theme of old “B” horror flick creatures while it’s here.

Although I got a full day on it today instead of the usual “couple of hours at a time” since the start, there’s not a ton to write about that I haven’t already written. I’m doing the same things on the passenger side that I already did on the drivers side:

Fitting the “B” pillar, you can see the difference in the width created from the taper in the removed section when I align the door opening (right side of image).

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To be abundantly clear, this is not our work. This is what I’m used to ripping out and replacing. 

Unfortunately this is a new installation and was represented to me to have been done by a professional racecar chassis builder in San Angelo TX before the vehicle was brought to Colorado, performed under the direct supervision of a self-proclaimed “experienced bodyman”.   

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I know it’s been a few days since I’ve posted about this chop, but I’ve still been busy on it every night. After getting the left sail panel tacked in, I went over to the right side to cut, fab, fit, and weld in the other one so we’d have two sides that match. As you might imagine, it took a little longer to do than it did to write about it.

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