One of the worst days of my project unravelled when I went over to see the progress my paint and body guy had made, and saw that he had cut away more of the sheetmetal than I felt was neccessary to replace the bad metal.

The car had the battery put in the trunk way back in the mid '70's. It was done without a battery box. By the time I got the car in 1978, powdered battery acid had made it's way into the lower , rear quarter panels. As a kid of 17, I knew this was bad, and used baking soda and water to neutralize it.

I pulled out the lower quarter-panel plugs and flushed the whole trunk out with baking soda and water. The factory trunk mat was still in the car, and it was contributing to the pitting of the sheetmetal in the trunk as well.

Once I had it all cleaned up, I treated it with ospho, primed and painted it. That saved my trunk floor, which is still in the car. later on I would discover that the lower quarters had been etched and weakened by the acid that had been pack down in them with dirt, small debris and gunk that I washed out last century.

They looked ok on the outside, but the sheetmetal on the lower portion had been compromised structurally as I found out one day while driving down a mountain road.

My cousin had installed these uni-lug aluminum rims with large excentric screw on lugnuts. My only guess as to the reason they made these things was so that one style of rim could fit chevy and Mopar. They were ugly and the design sucked. Once the unilugs were screwed onto the lugs, the rim would be installed and a large cap-type lugnut and washer would hold the rim on.

One day ad the ledgend goes, my buddy and I were coming down a winding mountain road towrds home at about 35 to 45 mph. Every once in a while, I kept hearing this faint...ting...ta...ting...ting....ting and then it would go away.

After the fourth time I heard it, I turned to my buddy and asked him if he was hearing that noise. He asked, what noise. Suddenly a large dark shape passed my drivers door, and the back of the car jumped up into the air about a foot and squated down on the ground with a loud grinding noise.

A split second later, I realized my rear tire had just passed us and was bouncing down the road in a lazy, surreal motion. I thought the worst was over when a few hundred yards after we skidded to a halt, we watched in horror as the tire disappeared over a cliff.

Shocked, we went over to look for the tire and rim. The tree covered cliff sloped down so steep and far that we could not see the bottom of it for hundreds of yards. My heart sank as I stood there thinking there was no way I would ever find that wheel, and if I did, I would never be able to hoist it back up to the road. I shuffled on down the road in disbelief at what had just happened. Just as I thought we were going to be stuck for hours, I spotted my wheel wedged in a tree crotch a few yards from the edge of the road. It took me twenty minutes to unstick it from the tree and lug it back up onto the road. I walked back up the road and found two of the lug nuts. Using a small pair of pliers and a bumper jack we borrowed from a passer-by, we put the wheel back on and limped on home, having to stop every few hundred yards to tighten the remaining two lugnuts.

My driver's side quarter panel had folded inward as the tire rolled off the car, and the sheet metal had cracked along the bend revealing the damage that the battery acid had done over the years before I had neutralized it.

It wasn't to much longer after this infamous incident, that the car began a long period of storage. I knew in my heart that one day I would have the resources, the location and the knowledge to restore it to the car I had always wanted it to be. That day would come, but it took a lot longer than I ever thought.

Three decades later and about 4 1/2 years ago now, I picked up some patch panels and trunk extensions and CLEARLY explained to my paint and body guy that I wanted to keep as much of the original sheet metal as humanly possible.

To make a long story shorter, I came over to look at the progress and discovered that he had hacked off about 8 to 10 inches more of the metal than i felt he needed to. I was livid and devistated to see this. After several days of plotting his death, I accepted what had happened, delt with it and moved forward.

Overall the patch installation came out good as did the overall paint and bodywork. There are some "issues" with the paint, as I now refer to them, but it's a black car, most people never notice them and that's another story.