1963 Tuxedo Park Mk3 Build (patina Preservation)

The front screws are still there on both sides. Not sure why the sides were replaced with bolts and washers.

 

Spent a little bit of time with the hammer and dollies on the original driver's fender. I'm happy with the results. It will, however, need to be resprayed in the correct color. At some point it got sprayed with something way too orange.





Next up I'll pull the passenger fender to try and straighten it out more. It needs a lot more hammering.

 

That looks 10X better! Yeah, from the looks of your pics, the passenger side looks like it’ll take a bit more work!

 

Another small piece today.

Replacement side mirror. Not a 100% faithful reproduction of the original, but it's chrome, it's a circle and it's 5 inches so it's about as close as I'm going to get, and I can actually see out of this one.

 

Had a little fun doing a photoshoot in the backyard with the FJ45.






Dog tax

 

Looking better. Any plans for the wheels?

 

Not gonna lie. I don't hate the green on one side cream on the other side asymmetrical thing it's got going on right now.

I might leave it. If I don't I'll paint the green ones cream. I probably should get some new bias plys at some point. And finding a set of the hub caps would be nice too.

 

Cream looks better than a bright white IMO. I started by painting mine white white and it almost looked too harsh. I then went with off white. The cream/off white looks better to me

 

Wasn't planning to. If there's a way to swap the glass from the new one into the old one I'd do it.

 

Few little projects today.

Apparently I didn't completely tighten the brake lamp switch into the master cylinder all the way (it was hard to get a wrench on it) because I lost brakes today! Luckily I was close to home and going slowly. Made sure that was tight now, refilled and bled the system. Brakes feel great now!

Also installed some belts. Now at least I have the illusion of safety!



Also spent some time going through the wiring today. Actually in decent shape. Cleaned up all the connections and replaced a few terminals.





I don't think I'll be needing to do a new harness. At least for now. Was able to get all of the cluster lights working including the oil and amp senders which seem to be working correctly. Wiring to the temperature gauge is clean and intact but it's not working. My guess is the gauge is dead rather than the sender. Same with the fuel gauge. I have a new cluster with gauges on order so time will tell.

I also pulled the speedometer cluster apart. My speedometer wasn't working partially because the needle had broken off, but the odometer was still working so it wasn't the speedo cable. Turns out the spring was broken.

To prep for the new cluster which I would like to swap the original face onto, I opted to pull the original apart.

Carefully drilled the rivets out of the original face.




I'm not yet sure how putting this on the new cluster will go. I'm interested to see how I can make this work while keeping the original face.

 

I think I remember seeing a thread about guys who rebuild gauges on here a while back. I would recommend spending some time searching old posts.

 

I love what you're doing with it. It looks great and is, to my eye, what the previous owner would have done if he was on the ball about maintenance but not overly concerned with cosmetics.

I didn't catch the mismatched wheels at first but it's cool.
Maybe it needed 2 new rims at one time but the local auto salvage didn't have the right color. Function over form won the day.

 

Pulled the passenger fender for some time with the hammers today. This one had some pretty serious creases in the metal, and I'm not much of a body guy. That said, I feel like only the most stubborn body guy would even try to save this fender.









At the end of the day I feel like I did a pretty damn good job with what I had to work with! The goal wasn't for it to be perfect anyway, just to get the creases out and make it straighter than it was, and I still get to maintain the original fender.









There were a few spots where the metal has cracked so when I get the motivation I'll fill those in with the welder.

 

Nicely done

 

Some before and after shots of the fender reinstalled.

Again it's not perfect. Far from it, but it's 1000x better than it was before.

 

You say you're not a body man; neither am I, but I bet there's dudes out there than can form the metal to "like new" condition, or maybe with just the most minimum amount of 'rash' left.

I'd love to learn and have been eyeing that body hammer and dolly set at Hazard Fraught with a gleam in my eye....


EDIT--love those green rims. Are they metallic green or is that just an illusion?

 

They do have a bit of metallic sheen to them.

 

Love it!

 

Nice work! I see your bumper could use some love too, I was able to massage out most of the kinks in mine using a hydraulic press and a few select blocks of wood to preserve the chrome.