For 'some reason',,this thread was clear back on page 6....

Your car turned out great. I want to do this again to a Valiant that I have. I did my rear section differently and didn't take apart the added rear window rear quarter section. Did you but well the rear of the added on door sheetmetal and overlap the front of the door sheetmetal to weld it? Did you use the 4 door post or the two door post. How did you get the metal to lay flat and smooth before welding on the 1/4 panel?

Chapper has my wife put you up to bugging me about finishing projects? I do appreciate the interest though!

Abody, thank you for the comment and questions. Have to use the 2 door post as the 4 door is completely different on these. I suspect you'll find a similar issue on the Valiant.

We did overlap the door skin at the front as you can see in one of the earlier photos. This made it easier to keep it flat and in line and provided enough room to blend in when done. The back end was as you suspected butt welded. With the inner panel gone (since it was a 4 door opening to begin with) it wasn't too hard to support the skin from the back side in order to weld on the outside. The inner panel was added back in later on.

Since posting these I've heard from several others who've done the conversion with different techniques. Certainly the cleanest is to be able to use full front quarters off the donor car. My donor was too rusty to do that with. We settled on the door skins as the next best option.

It had also been suggested here that we weld in subframe connectors because of the cutting done to the rocker boxes. That was an insightful suggestion.

I deemed it not to be required as the rocker boxes were rewelded to duplicate the construction of the original 2 door rockers. This wasn't obvious in the photos I'd posted. I've had it up and down on the asymetric hoist a number of times and watched to see if the door openings changed shape. So far at least there's less movement now than there was with the 4 doors. This seems to make sense considering the sheet metal added to make up the front quarters.

If I was going to put slicks and healthy engine in it I'm sure this would need to be revisited. For now I just can't wait for the sun to come out again. 3" of snow again yesterday. We might actually reach 30 degrees outside tomorrow.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your conversion!

did you want to trade it for a clean 66 Belvedere I? LOL

Looks great! Thanks for the detailed pics documenting the conversion.