Stage 7    Jack Smith           June 2001

Here's the pictures of Snowball on arrival and unpacking. Unfortunately the combination of opened panels, opened side windows and massive body work in the roof chop had resulted in a structurally weak body unit. Upon opening the package I found that the roof had cracked severely on the passenger side, was slightly opened on the drivers side and was showing a hairline crack all the way across. In addition, the body had cracked below the rear edge of the passenger side door so the entire body was flexing WAY too much. My original plan was to work on the front end of Snowball but the emergency repair and the need for stiffening kind of took over any other plans.

The initial repair was done by carefully removing paint at the crack edges and working Ambroid liquid cement into the cracks, followed by carefully applying pressure to the area to get a solid bond, all the while being incredibly nervous about having the entire (irreplaceable) body break apart! 

Here are a couple of pictures of the area after the initial re-gluing.

I felt that lengthening the rear fenders would work with the rest of the modifications that had been done so far in helping to extend the long/low look of the car. 

Returns were placed on the inside of the fenders that fit flush with the body to help support the body shell and add a finished look. The first step involved using another '40 Sedan kit to get a new piece of rear fender. By measuring and eyeballing the 2 sets of fenders I found a spot that added about 1/4" to the overall fender length and resulted in a more-rounded rear tip to agree with the curve of the rear edge of the side window opening. The two fenders were cut and the new extended rear section was glued using ambroid. The inside of the fenders was cleaned up with a Dremel to remove the ejector pin marks and to clean up the bodywork on the inside. The rear wheel wells were also reshaped to a smoother shape to flow a bit better. 

   The returns for the inside of the fenders were mocked-up from plastic sheet stock then all bodywork on the rear fenders was done with sprue-glue and sanding. I took this picture of the finished taillights and rear fenders and realized that the taillight on the passenger side had been mis-measured and was placed too low! I had measured to place the taillight from the bottom rear of the fender before reshaping the bottom edge of the fender. The bottom of the taillight opening was filled with strip styrene and a Dremel was used to extend the opening further up the fender to even it out with the driver's side. Final primer is Duplicolor scratch filling primer that was used to finalize the body work.

The rear taillights from the Vette Agin' were fit into reshaped taillight pockets. After the taillights and rear fenders were finished, the body is nearly a flush fit and seems to be a bit more solid   

(Jack also lowered the rear end in the suspension so it would sit way down low and cruisey.) -pbc

click one:

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