63 Galaxie Boxtop - CMEDROP's Build Up

So two summers ago I purchased a '63 boxtop with 50,000kms on it, sight unseen. After having it trained in, this is what it looked like. I wish it was as clean as it looks in the pictures

I quickly stripped the car to find it was not as clean as I first thought it was going to be.

Got to it, and started cutting out the rot in the floors




Built new braces to strengthen it, and then patched it back up




Picked up a set of NOS fenderskirts.

Next it was time to deal with the trunk.
Cut out the rot, and made new braces.

From there we moved onto the rear quaters

Next area in need of care was the rear window ledge.





The trunks ledge in the corner was shot, so we bent and fitted a new replacement piece.




While I was back there, we shaved the lettering.

Like everything else the rockers needed some care

Surpisingly only one of the doors were bad. So reskinned the bottom of that door.





Not that you can notice but we also filled the emblem on the rear quater, pillar, and keylock.

Now that the panel replacement was done. It was time to decide on a power plant. The plan is to drive this car from Canada to California down the coast. So I opted for an engine that has tons of aftermarket options and is better better on gas than the 390.
5.0L ho efi. Picked up some motor mounts for the 289 that fit perfectly.

At this point we decided we might as well make this a frame off. In order to do this we built some rotisseries. We used the plans from Auto Body Rotisserie Plans. and just adjusted them to suit our needs.






The car off the frame. We completely smoothed the belly.