The Upper Krust - a Jaguar custom

I'm anxious just looking at that. But I agree on your piece by piece methods, that's how I like to do stuff like that, too. Unless you build a giant, complex jig to hold it all in place, taking the whole section out at once to replace it in one piece really risks things going haywire.

 

It's mangled and rusty, but I was able to straighten it out enough to make sure things were aligned. Right now the L and R sides are within 1/8" of each other, which is probably better than factory from what I've heard. The fender didn't move while I was messing with it, so I guess that's and advantage of being a unibody/monocoque. The bolt holes for the bumper may be off. but I'm not sure the new bumper will line up with the originals anyway. The good thing is that the R side was less mangled and I already fixed it, so I have a model to work from.

 

I got this far. Well, actually a little further. The crow's foot is ready to weld in, but I didn't want to wait for the paint to dry tonight... and then realized I used regular primer instead of weld-thru, so I'll correct that in a few days.

 

I found some time today to get some more work done. I got the crow's foot welded in and the strut repaired, and started the process of fitting the patch panel.

 

The left fender is giving me trouble, so I decided to go back to the right side. I was going to hold off, but realized it helps to have the original side to compare to. Anyway, I got the B-pillar tacked and clamped to start fitting things. I switched from an ****og angle finder to a digital one and realized I'm 1* off. That will be easy to correct at this stage. I cut up the inner door structure and started piecing it back together, and started thinking about how the outer skin is going to work.