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  #21  
Old 03-13-2018, 01:03 PM
cliffrod cliffrod is offline
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Very impressive, Dane. Work of this caliber is always great to see, but the conceptualization & deliberate execution easily trumps the work. very cool.

Thanks for posting.
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  #22  
Old 03-13-2018, 03:37 PM
AWM AWM is offline
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looks great
thanks for all the rocker detail
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  #23  
Old 03-13-2018, 05:11 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Hamilton View Post
Hi Dane
Nice to see a new design for the 49 - 51 merc.
I like the 3 window styling, it will turn a few heads!

Thanks for sharing all your thoughts and ideas along with the process.

Steve
Thank you. We are sure hoping!! I'm hoping there isn't a reason it's not really been done before!ha However, even in person at this stage it really does have a nice look and flow to it I think.

Quote:
Originally Posted by blue62 View Post
Dane
Your A man with vision and the ability to achieve it.
A rare breed these days.
Thanks for posting your work.
Thank you very much, that is a very kind comment and means a lot.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cliffrod View Post
Very impressive, Dane. Work of this caliber is always great to see, but the conceptualization & deliberate execution easily trumps the work. very cool.

Thanks for posting.
Thank you as well. I appreciate the compliment. As fun as it is to just go all crazy into a project cutting and changing things, going into it with an end vision and a pretty good concept of what you are wanting is a pretty important first step to any large project. Are there bound to be some changes along the way that don't work out in reality vs. vision though...for sure!

Quote:
Originally Posted by AWM View Post
looks great
thanks for all the rocker detail
You are welcome. Eventually I'll finish the outer skins and door sill area once the body is more secure and set onto the modified chassis later.
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  #24  
Old 03-13-2018, 06:01 PM
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This update will focus on rough fitting of the roof and rear window back onto the car.

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Because of the amount of chop, I decided to add width to the roof rather than tipping the posts inward. This would have made the roof look rather narrow (I did test this in Photoshop) and the sideglass to angled in.

However, I did lay the windshield back slightly for my visual preference.

Here I've started locating the driver's half of the roof roughly into place. I've added more square bracing to help support and locate it properly so I could measure and fine tune as I progressed.

If you look close, you can see I've "sleeved" the windshield posts for additional strength in the joint later.

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View from the front. I even have a few 2x4's helping support the floppy roof skin at this early stage! Hey, whatever works....a guy only has so many arms to work with!

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This view from the rear shows how I started to locate and hold the rear window section in place. Again, I added square bracing horizontally and vertically to temporarily support it after careful measuring.

If you look close, you can also see that I have now split the rear window opening in half and widened it. I discovered the need for this in my early masking paper mockups.

Look at the bottom corner and you'll see how narrow it would have been in regards to the quarter panel edge. If I wouldn't have widened the glass, this area would have been so flat with no shape and wouldn't have had nice flow from the glass into the roof and quarter panel. I'd rather of not had to modify the glass, but the overall look of the finished project is certainly more important in the long run.

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The view from the side. At this stage I was just looking for the proper look and flow of the roof and back window into the quarter panels and decklid.

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This picture straight from the back with both roof halves on shows how much I had to widen the roof. Again, at this stage I'm still really just roughing in the panels, so I just tacked "bridges" across the roof joint to hold things together.

This also shows the added width of the rear window opening better.

NOTE: I made a bad "miss trim" on the passenger roof to rear window! Oops! Again, some temporary bridges hold it until I correct the problem later. When you are doing this much trimming, cutting, and fitting....it doesn't always fit together right away! If I remember correctly, my measurements were a bit out of square vs. the other roof half, so I moved the roof forward slightly to get all measurements correct.

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I certainly wanted to save the nice original windshield "V" and roof peek. To do so, I cut it out as shown. From here, I lined it up correctly and got it ready to tack into place. (it's not correct in this picture as the driver's window opening isn't exactly inline)

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I added two thin strips on each side to make up the difference in width and tacked it all into place.

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Here I'm testing and trimming the rear half of the door / window opening. Trying t come up with the most visually appealing look in the end. Again I went through many ideas in Photoshop to see what might look good or not.

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Here the roof and rear window are basically tacked into position, checking the look before I finalize anything too much.

NOTE: You'll notice that I forgot to mention earlier that I also cut and moved the tulip panel / front trunk jamb forward significantly and up slightly.

I knew from my photoshops, that I would need to do this in order to help the visual proportions of the car. If I didn't, the decklid would look way too short and the tulip panel would be massive.
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  #25  
Old 03-13-2018, 08:02 PM
Mike Motage Mike Motage is offline
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This is really looking nice! Using Photoshop to preview before jumping in is smart.
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  #26  
Old 03-14-2018, 05:12 AM
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Gojeep Gojeep is offline
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I have never like the long tulip panel and short boot lid either. Glad I'm not the only one.
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  #27  
Old 03-14-2018, 02:17 PM
AWM AWM is offline
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nice chop
looks like widening it may have saved some work in the rear window area
the flow looks great
really enjoying this, I have a few different ideas for my 4 door
I have thought about keeping mine a 4 door but eliminating the b pillar
reinforce the rocker and have the rear door latch like a new extended cab truck with the latch in the rocker and roof, then the front door would latch to the closed rear door
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  #28  
Old 03-14-2018, 05:45 PM
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After the roof, rear window, door opening half and tulip panel were in place, now was the time to shape and fill in the missing areas of the sail panel and tulip panel.

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I shaped up and filled in the missing sail panel and tacked it into position. Nothing too difficult with shaping this panel really.

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A 3/4 view from the rear looking forward with the sail panel area filled in.

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One more view straight on from the side.

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Once I had both sail panels shaped and roughed in, it was time to start on the fit and flow of the roof, rear window, tulip panel and decklid. Here I have a profile gauge I made to lay over the area and see how it naturally wants to "flow" from the roofline down to the decklid.

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As you can see I kind of worked on fabricating, shaping and tacking new pieces in in sections. I did this as everything was so loose and floppy, I needed to just start getting some areas roughed in and work out from there.

Here I've got the center below the window shaped and tacked into position. If you look you'll see I had to make some relief cuts on the bottom corner of the window to help this area "splay" out and up to help the flow into the surrounding areas.

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Here on the driver's side I've shaped and tacked in the last remaining piece on the bottom corner.

The tulip panel area ended up being kind of a "patchwork" of panels welded into position (exactly what I basically removed on the '50 Mercury thread I shared previous) the only difference, was these panels fit and welded together properly. So the metal finishing will be fine when I eventually "fine tune" everything later on.

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A straight on view from the side with the sail panel and tulip panel shaped and filled in.

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A 3/4 view pic from the rear with the sail panel and tulip panel shaped and filled in.

Walking around the car, the rear corner looking forward is easily the nicest view / look of the car (in my opinion) Pictures don't really do it justice, but in person it looks so nice even at this rough stage.

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A view from down low in the back
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Last edited by pplace; 03-14-2018 at 05:48 PM.
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  #29  
Old 03-14-2018, 06:05 PM
cliffrod cliffrod is offline
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It does look really great.

This thread makes me think of a lead I got many years ago on a 49 or 50 Merc "chop top project." Not many around here, so it was with checking out. When I got there, it had been a 4 door, well hacked into oblivion in the hopes it would become a 2 door. They had not achieved what you have.....
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  #30  
Old 03-14-2018, 06:09 PM
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Kerry Pinkerton Kerry Pinkerton is offline
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Really nice Dane. I assume you are going to lengthen the decklid?
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