Well, after about a year now, I finally got everything welded together. Spot welder from work made easy work of the roof and around the trunk lid, but man did that thing get heavy, it started out at about 50lbs and by the last weld it had grown to over 100lbs. Miller 110 Mig welder was flawless, remember, I am NOT a welder by trade, but I'll try anything once. All the work was done by yours truly, by myself, never have I tackled such a project. Would I do it again? In a heart beat! There are still some welds to be cleaned and spots still to be re-welded, spots I missed or places that my welds just weren't good.
In the first couple of pics you can see the wheel stands, built those during my lunch break at work over a couple of days to support the car.
But I must say this is a great load off my mind knowing that its done.
Also you can see that I have decided to weld up the seams between the quarters and rockers and on the trunk filler strip, now I'm debating removing the door handles and locks or going with some handles from a newer style car.

http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000768a.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000769a.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000765.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000765a.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000766.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000766a.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000767.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000768.jpg
http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o132/chasesyc/IM000769.jpg

Looks great David! The spot welder, was it a Miller with 12" arms, 220 volt?
Was the new roof install a big deal?

Looks great, keep up the good work.
From the looks of the rear trunk arm brackets that car looks like it was a Cortez Silver car?

Color code is 17-17 Shadow Grey, this car was painted Gold (still there behind the bumper), then Silver from previous owners. Those trunk hinges are going to be replaced soon, I bent one then cut it and rewelded it, Don't do that!! Its like it sprung and you can see from the pic I had to slot the hole to get the trunk lid to line up, with lots of shims.
It was a Miller LMSW-52 230V spot welder with 6" tongs, I had to make up an extension cord to run to my dryer connection.
Roof was very easy, but required trimming to get it to fit between drip rails correctly.
OH, I guess you can see by the photos, my spot welds are about 3/4" apart where the factory's were about 2", can you say Over Kill.

Super nice Dave. I would like to do that to my car also. I never done anything like that but would like to. I have Mig, tig, and plasma cutter so at least I'm that far ahead. Nice job
Jan

Thanks David, those spot welders are very heavy, I was thinking of hooking mine up with a long spring & hook from the ceiling to carry the weight.
How did you take off the old roof? same as other panels (spot weld drill bits)? My roof has a minor dent and a little rust so I can't decide what to do with it.

wow looks awesome.
My friend just bought a welder, After seeing those pics it makes me want to work on mine

I like the idea of suspending it from the ceiling to do the roof, I just stood on a bucket, the rough part was the front, leaning over the car to get the middle just about killed me. I had to grind the tips down to get it to fit in the drip rail area and trunk area.
I simply used a cut-off wheel for the roof removal (did it with the glass still in the car, not smart I know) then I simply ground out the spot welds. I gave up on using the spot weld removal tool, just never could master that one. 4" grinder to thin it down then used a chisel.

That's coming out great David

Looks great! I hope you had the deck lid installed before you welded quarters to line up the gaps

:thumbsup: Isn't it a great feeling to get from where you were to where you are now? I look back a my pictures and wonder "what was I thinking to start someone like this".