1971 Mustang - Body Gaps

1971 Mustangs were much like their earlier 1965 to 70 brothers with bad gaps and overall misaligned fit of the panels. This trunk lid shows one of the problems. There were so many areas on this Mustang with fit problems we do not have the room to show them all but here is a few of the techniques used to repair them

Sliced back and re welded she is ready to grind back to our desired edge for a consistent gap of 3/16th

Ground and looking good. On to the remaining trunk lid areas.

Bottom section is way to Ford tight. Paint chips were a common problem on early Mustangs because of this.

Mani does his thing and we are on our way.

Looking good in the neighbor hood.

Same on the driver side only this panel sticks out also. We will hammer and dolly the edge to fit correctly before we proceed.

Note the angled slices Mani performed before hand. He then tack welds the panel in these spots to keep the overlap from separating. Then he trims the remaining edge back before re-welding

As discussed.

Welded.

On to the next problem. As seen this Mustangs' front fender is pretty straight except for the very edge. Unless this is tweaked the car just will not present itself in the way we must have it " Bad to the Bone" We fix all misaligned areas as part of our minimum quality requirements in the restoration process.

All panels needed gap work for consistent 3/16th for our approved Mustang restoration.

Fully welded and ready to grind to dead on status.