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Well, here goes nothing! This is going to take a long time to put together, so have some patience 
First things first, if you somehow missed it, here's my last built thread:
Most of the pics are dead at this point, so I'll need to go in and do some maintenance and re-host everything.
Anyway, onto the good stuff. It feels most fitting to begin with the fire.
In April of 2011, my garage caught fire with my car inside, and everything inside was burnt to varying degrees.
The fire was started as I was attempting to build a wiring harness for an M30. Not knowing what I was doing, I managed to fill one of the cylinders with fuel, and in order to purge it, I pulled the spark plug and spun the starter in order to shove the fuel out of the cylinder. Something sparked, and the rest was history.
For a few hours, I figured that was the end of the car, but before going to bed the night of the fire, I knew the car would come back. It had to. After some deliberating with my friend Chuck Yoder, we talked about the possibility of rebuilding it. The chassis was tweaked and twisted, unfit for road use, so we knew it would take drastic changes. Chuck convinced me to go full tilt with a tube chassis, as opposed to building a serious cage to support the original structure. At the time, it was something far beyond my skill set, and in retrospect, I really had no business doing what I was doing. Nonetheless, I was eager and bright-eyed, so we jumped straight to business by cutting the car apart.
May, 2011
Knowing that the car was going to get cut to bits anyway, I suggested the idea that we convert the car to a coupe. I did a couple of photo shops to see if I liked the look. I began with a pretty simple version: simply shortening the car, and molding the back doors into the body,
But that made for some really stumpy front doors, so I moved the B-pillar back and lengthened the doors:
That started to look more like the coupe I was envisioning. I did one other chop I've managed to find since then:
So, with a plan, we got to work. As we were cutting, we braced the insides of the car up, knowing we'd have to cut the car in half in order to shorten it.
We didn't want to wind up with two loose halves of a car, even though we weren't interested in making it perfect, so we created a sort of "slider" out of angle iron, so that when the car was cut in half, we could slide the front to the rear and reconnect them without too much effort.
In the photo above you can see the slider taking shape, and how it was intended to work. Wed be able to cut everything out between the two vertical rails, and the car would still be "connected" in a sense.
From there, we got to cutting!
It was quite scary making the final cuts and seeing the car in this state. It was definitely the point of no return. We slid the halves together, and as you can see, everything actually lined up pretty well, luckily for us.
From there, I cut down the doors to begin the rest of the conversion:
Here's the fit, prior. Obviously they don't fit anymore.
We stuck the B-pillar back in, 6 inches further back ,and then attached the tail end of the door to it, so we could get an idea of how to extend it. We chopped up the rear doors in order to give us the material.
And here it is with the extension in:
From there, we continued cutting the car apart:
Here's one of my favorite photos of the build, and it was one that was very hard for me to not share. Cory actually snapped it during a visit to Chuck's, as I was cutting in the background.
In and amongst the chopping, we stuck the remainder of the rear door to the body:
However, inside was beginning to look more and more barren:
If it wasn't obvious, it was the messiest automotive endeavor I've ever undertaken. It smelled awful, was a huge mess, and was rather arduous.
Eventually, I got the whole floor cut out.
We continued throughout the summer, and over time, I finally cut away nearly every bit of interior metal, leaving only the car's skin. I had begun to acquire parts for the actual build of the car. We worked on a lot of other aspects, some of which I may go back and cover, but in the end, progress halted.
I moved to California in November of 2011, leaving the car behind to sit in Chuck's yard under a tarp. In the mean time, I built an E9, and then built the hot rod as an exercise in fabrication. Leaving chuck behind meant I was all on my own.
April 1, 2014
I trucked the car out along with Jeremy Whittle as he moved to the west coast, but it sat for a good while as I prepared to work on it.
Byron had joined in on the hot rod project during its second half, lending an invaluable hand in getting it complete in 2013. I had told him what I wanted to accomplish with Rusty, and he was as excited as ever. What was complete already only scratched the surface. When the time came, we pulled the tarp off of rusty, and got to work. April 1, 2014 was our first day working on the car after a several-year hiatus.
First things first, if you somehow missed it, here's my last built thread:
Most of the pics are dead at this point, so I'll need to go in and do some maintenance and re-host everything.
Anyway, onto the good stuff. It feels most fitting to begin with the fire.
In April of 2011, my garage caught fire with my car inside, and everything inside was burnt to varying degrees.
The fire was started as I was attempting to build a wiring harness for an M30. Not knowing what I was doing, I managed to fill one of the cylinders with fuel, and in order to purge it, I pulled the spark plug and spun the starter in order to shove the fuel out of the cylinder. Something sparked, and the rest was history.
For a few hours, I figured that was the end of the car, but before going to bed the night of the fire, I knew the car would come back. It had to. After some deliberating with my friend Chuck Yoder, we talked about the possibility of rebuilding it. The chassis was tweaked and twisted, unfit for road use, so we knew it would take drastic changes. Chuck convinced me to go full tilt with a tube chassis, as opposed to building a serious cage to support the original structure. At the time, it was something far beyond my skill set, and in retrospect, I really had no business doing what I was doing. Nonetheless, I was eager and bright-eyed, so we jumped straight to business by cutting the car apart.
May, 2011
Knowing that the car was going to get cut to bits anyway, I suggested the idea that we convert the car to a coupe. I did a couple of photo shops to see if I liked the look. I began with a pretty simple version: simply shortening the car, and molding the back doors into the body,
But that made for some really stumpy front doors, so I moved the B-pillar back and lengthened the doors:
That started to look more like the coupe I was envisioning. I did one other chop I've managed to find since then:
So, with a plan, we got to work. As we were cutting, we braced the insides of the car up, knowing we'd have to cut the car in half in order to shorten it.
We didn't want to wind up with two loose halves of a car, even though we weren't interested in making it perfect, so we created a sort of "slider" out of angle iron, so that when the car was cut in half, we could slide the front to the rear and reconnect them without too much effort.
In the photo above you can see the slider taking shape, and how it was intended to work. Wed be able to cut everything out between the two vertical rails, and the car would still be "connected" in a sense.
From there, we got to cutting!
It was quite scary making the final cuts and seeing the car in this state. It was definitely the point of no return. We slid the halves together, and as you can see, everything actually lined up pretty well, luckily for us.
From there, I cut down the doors to begin the rest of the conversion:
Here's the fit, prior. Obviously they don't fit anymore.
We stuck the B-pillar back in, 6 inches further back ,and then attached the tail end of the door to it, so we could get an idea of how to extend it. We chopped up the rear doors in order to give us the material.
And here it is with the extension in:
From there, we continued cutting the car apart:
Here's one of my favorite photos of the build, and it was one that was very hard for me to not share. Cory actually snapped it during a visit to Chuck's, as I was cutting in the background.
In and amongst the chopping, we stuck the remainder of the rear door to the body:
However, inside was beginning to look more and more barren:
If it wasn't obvious, it was the messiest automotive endeavor I've ever undertaken. It smelled awful, was a huge mess, and was rather arduous.
Eventually, I got the whole floor cut out.
We continued throughout the summer, and over time, I finally cut away nearly every bit of interior metal, leaving only the car's skin. I had begun to acquire parts for the actual build of the car. We worked on a lot of other aspects, some of which I may go back and cover, but in the end, progress halted.
I moved to California in November of 2011, leaving the car behind to sit in Chuck's yard under a tarp. In the mean time, I built an E9, and then built the hot rod as an exercise in fabrication. Leaving chuck behind meant I was all on my own.
April 1, 2014
I trucked the car out along with Jeremy Whittle as he moved to the west coast, but it sat for a good while as I prepared to work on it.
Byron had joined in on the hot rod project during its second half, lending an invaluable hand in getting it complete in 2013. I had told him what I wanted to accomplish with Rusty, and he was as excited as ever. What was complete already only scratched the surface. When the time came, we pulled the tarp off of rusty, and got to work. April 1, 2014 was our first day working on the car after a several-year hiatus.
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