1971 Chevelle repair

[Too Many Projects]

I couldn't find a lower valance I could get in less than a couple months, so performed surgery on the damaged one.



After I did some twisting, pounding and welding of the tears, I had it pretty good, but the weld nuts were broken off both ends. I had a couple left over from a '47 ford project. I had to grind the raised locator off to be flat for this, but they worked well.









Not bad for a mangle part.





The right side has issues of it's own under a thick coat of filler. I'll let the bodyman deal with that...





Onto the last details. I used the cut off panel as a template to mark the cut line, cut it out and test fitted the marker. It even works...








Located the position of the trunk latch and welded that in. I had to make a major depression in the trunk pan for this, as the latch is not the same on both sides and the mount area didn't have a provision for this. It's just metal, I can bend it.









And the LAST piece of the puzzle....I took the lock from the old deck lid and installed it. Amazingly, the trunk shuts, locks and opens again.