I decided to continue the fabrication work in the trunk extending the 06 trunk close outs to the back of the car. The first thing I did along this line was to glue down some dense 1" foam to allow a space for the wiring to run back to the tail lights under the floor cover extension. Next I built a transition piece that both receives the rear edge of the 06 floor and steps up to complete the floor. I used .021 steel, some 3/4" x 3/4" .049 square stock, some 5/16" honey comb carbon board and some aluminum angle to make the piece. I then covered it with some trunk liner material. After the floor was established I made some tail light covers out of .021 steel.

After covering the tail light covers with trunk liner material I held them in place with velcro both to the angle on the floor piece and to the 1/2" flat area just below the trunk lid seal lip. I made some side panels out of masonite and also covered them and attached them with velcro.  Also I had to fabricate a small cover for the lock mechanism in the center.

Here is the trunk with the latch cover and all of the closures in place.

I am still messing around getting the wiring extended and looped in the trunk area. Also I wanted to make my back up lamps rectangular and it took me a while but I found some aftermarket replacement housings for a 4 Runner that seemed to fit the bill. The only modification was to replace the bulb receptacle from the 06 tail lights. I then installed them from behind the roll pan so that they would not bulge out and I could control the size of the exposed lens. And before anyone asks I won't be leaving what looks like rocket motors for exhaust. The resonator cans are way too big and hang to low so I will have to do some re routing to get  everything closer to the bottom of the car. Hopefully eliminating the afterburners won't make the car sound funky.

I had to remove the 06 reflectors that I installed last week and cut them down a bit. When I put the red lens on you could see the circular perimeter of the 06 reflectors through the lens. I minimized them and they look o.k. now.

Well nothing overly exciting to report. I finished positioning the side window to roof seal track on the right side of the car and rebuilt the roof edge as I did on the left side of the car. I have been back and forth on what seal to use. The 68 top seal seems to roll the window out when the window rolls up which causes some binding when the door glass rolls up so I decided on the top to use the seal from the 06 which is softer and doesn't force the quarter glass outward. On the "A" post I will be using the front portion of the 68 seal as it does a better job in this location. The 06 seal also provides a finish lip that helps the transition to the headliner edge trim. I shaped a new headliner edge cap and mocked it into place with 1/8" spacers behind it to simulate the head liner. On the "A" post itself I had to make a steel transition piece to fill the gap between the inner "A" post finish cover and the seal channel.

One of the other things I got into was putting the 06 trunk floor and sides back into the car to see how it would all fit and what I was going to have to do to extend both the sides and the floor. The 68 trunk is about a foot longer than the 06. You can see from the pictures how much longer it is. The other thing I needed to do was to see how to work around the fuel line that runs on the inside of the trunk with the top fill gas door. I was able to cut around it pretty well and will be able to use simple plumbing pipe insulation to cover and protect it.

In the department of "one thing leads to another" I wanted to start getting some of the tail light harness organized which lead me to start fooling with the tail light housings. I had to do some adaptation to allow me to use the tail light harness and bulb set up from the 06. The first thing I did was to cut up the 06 tail lights to salvage the bulb receptors and reflectors. Next I clearanced the existing bulb holes in the 69 light housing so that the 06 bulb holes would protrude through. I then trimmed down the reflectors to fit into the 69 housing and riveted the in. Since the 06 uses just 2 tail lights I used the side marker bulb to finish out the 3 bulb set up.