Well I did not feel like laying on the floor and cutting the other rocker yet so I decided to put the last of the mechanical stuff together. I got the AC condenser this week and that was the final piece to close up the system. All I lack now is the fluids. I have to deal with the rocker before I drop it back down though.
One of the final things to deal with on the hood frame before I mate it with the skin was to re engineer the 06 latch mechanism to work with this hood. I had to boost it out 5" away from it's normal mount position on the radiator core support. Once the spacer was made and installed the latch mechanism was positioned with the catch engaged.
From there I welded in some 5/8" .049 square stock front to back on either side of the mechanism. I then bent some offset tabs out of .125 material to bolt to the catch. I then welded the tabs to the 5/8" stock.  Since the latch is 5" forward of the normal mount point I had to run some 3/8"tube to bolt from the latch to the frame rail to solidify the whole mess.  I am pretty happy with the way the whole thing works.

Well I am super happy about the way the left side rocker came out. You can see the dramatic difference from the picture of the right side which still has to be re worked.  Also I got the front springs changed out and all of the broken or missing suspension components put back. Inching along. Just inching along.

I promised myself I would not get distracted by anything that did not have to do with getting the car back on the ground and able to move under it's own power because at that point I can get the NC state inspector back out to start the operational title process going which could take 6 months. However I had a major "DUH" moment the other day. One of the things that has really upset me about this build that I had resigned myself to accept was the appearance of the rocker area. Since the car was down as far on the chassis as I could get it this initially left me with a 3" pinch weld that I was desperate to reduce. It really screwed up the side profile of the car. I managed to reduce it to 2 inches by cutting it flush on the bottom of the LX inner frame rail. I figured I would have to use some paint tricks to hide what was still too big looking for me. Much as I hate re doing something that I have already spent a lot of time on I never the less took a cutting wheel and cut the remainder of the pinch weld off and then removed the bottom of the LX inside frame rail. I added back some.060 steel to re mend the bottom of the rocker to the inner frame rail wall. This only pushed the pinch weld in 2 more inches inboard but the result was pretty dramatic.  I have only done the front half of the left side rocker but I am pretty excited with the results so far. It is kind of hard to see in the picture so I drew a diagram of what I ended up doing.

Well I slowly started back to work on the car this weekend with a bit of a heavy heart. I had gone back to New Jersey to see my dad who had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just a couple of weeks into the new year. I got there and he passed in less than 24 hrs of my arrival. Everyone said he was waiting for me. God I hope not.  He was a great guy and I watched him build a lot of stuff when I was a kid and broke most of his tools trying to learn how to build stuff myself. I am going to miss him.

I decided to start off slowly removing and replacing the crash damaged items in the front of the car. They included the upper radiator support, lower radiator support ,the AC condenser, the radiator, radiator hoses,fan assembly,power steering reservoir, power steering pump, serpentine belt, transmission coolant lines, window washer fluid container and pump, right front steering knuckle, r s swaybar bushing and heat shield and some misc small stuff. When they say minor repairable crash damage it is a matter of subjective opinion what the word minor means. Nothing was bent on the frame so I guess that is where the term minor applies.
 While I have everything apart on the front suspension I am changing out the springs to some lowering springs that will drop the front 1.75" Hopefully that will give me a better stance front to rear.  I got some adjustable upper "A" arms from Jeggs so that I can bring the camber back in line when I am done. I made a small jig to copy the stock "A" arms for caster and a start point on the camber. Hopefully I will get it into the neighborhood of where it needs to go.