15.10.2022 - New Project: 1955 Early Oval Convertible
This Ribbed Door Early Oval Vert was hunted for almost 15 years.
Several cars were scouted, but none were eligible and this is what we ended up with.
And as you might know you can not actually SELECT a car if you are looking for an early oval vert project.
This is a matching numbers 1955 Early Oval Vert!
After many and many messages and calls during the years with the owner and others it is finally at the Westcoast Cave and it is going to get a new life on the road!
Special thanx to Doodah, again!
To keep updated while the project continues check out our
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20.10.2022 - Condition of the car
This is how the car looks like when the project was started.
This car was pretty rusty and crispy all the way.
However it is RIBBED DOOR oval vert so definetely worth saving.
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13.11.2022 - Engine bay corner supports
Convertible has these extra supports on the engine bay.
On this car those were rusty and needed to be replaced.
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14.11.2022 - Firewall
Top section of the firewall is under the engine bay extra supports.
This is where the moisture lives in and because of this
the top section of the firewall is rotten and needs to be replaced.
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10.11.2022 - Rear Inner Fender Rear Sections
Rear inner fenders of the vert are in really awful condition.
A lot of sheet metal is needed for a complete rebuild.
Here the rear sections of the inner fenders are being rebuild.
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14.11.2022 - Luggage Tray Sides
Because the rear inner fenders are really rusty on vert the luggage tray sides needed also some attention.
Luggage tray side sections are completely rebuild.
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30.11.2022 - Rear Inner Fender Upper Sections
Also the upper sections of the rear inner fenders are completely replaced.
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03.12.2022 - Rear Quarter Panels
Rear quarter panels has seen better days and are not so good condition any more.
This is mostly because the inner fenders and crossmembers are so rusty.
Now the quarter panels are replaced with new panels.
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07.12.2022 - Wooden parts of the roof
After carefully extracting the wooden parts of the roof
all the wooden parts are digged out from the massive wood (red beech) blocks.
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18.12.2022 - Rear Inner Quarters
Rear Inner Quarters are also so rotten that they need to be rebuilt.
Some of the parts were first designed and printed in 3D and then laser cut from sheetmetal.
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10.02.2023 - Frontend Sheetmetal Parts
The frontend of the car is all so soft and partly completely gone.
Lower section of the frontend needs to be rebuilt completely.
Few parts for the frontend rebuild arrived.
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27.02.2023 - Repairing the A pillars and front firewall.
Like almost everything on the body of this car the A pillars and front firewall were in really bad condition.
So the A pillars and the inner enforcement sections were almost completely replaced.
Also the lower section of the front inner firewall was completely gone and needed to be replaced.
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04.03.2023 - Front inner fender lower sections.
Lower sections of the front inner fender were long gone and needed some new sheetmetal.
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22.03.2023 - Tank brackets.
The spare wheel section is completely missing in this car so rebuilding that was started by rebuilding the tank brackets.
After that spare wheel section itself can be built.
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09.03.2023 - Fitting the Doors and combining the front and rear ends of the body.
Test fitting the doors after the front and rear of the body was welded together.
So the body is now in one piece!
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15.03.2023 - Rear body brackets.
Now that the front and rear sections of the body is welded together it is time to position and weld the rear body brackets.
These were made out of 2mm sheetmetal.
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25.03.2023 - Convertible A & B pillar supports
Conbertible has extra support triangles on the bottom of A and B pillars.
These make the convertible body more rigit.
Also the interior carpet channel is different than in sedan cars.
So that is also installed here.
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31.03.2023 - Dppr upper hinge
The thread plates of the door upper hinges has disappeared during the years.
Because the conbertible has support plates under the front hood.
These could not be repaired via that route.
So the A pillars had to be opened to repair the upper hinges.
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03.04.2023 - Lifting the body into dolly
Because the frontend is completely missing from the body of this car.
The temporary front dolly mount was built to get the body into dolly at this point.
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04.07.2023 - Test fitting the wooden bows of the roof
The carpenter has completed almost all of the wooden parts. So test fitting those on car now.
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04.07.2023 - Window regulators
Both front and rear windowrequlators were missing a teeth or two.
So building new gears... But before that all the parts went into acid path.
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04.07.2023 - Sandblasting and painting the seats, roof mechanism and the front fenders
Roof mechanism, seats and the front fenders went through the sandblasting and painting line.
So these are now almost ready for refurbishing.
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18.09.2023 - Sandblasting and primering running boards and front inner quarter enforcement panels
Front inner quarter enforcement panels, running boards and more was sandblasted and primered.
Some of these parts still needs some attenttion before they are ready to be installed.
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28.09.2023 - Frontend repair panels
Got the repair panels to rebuilt the frontent sparewheel section.
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03.10.2023 - Front inner fenders
Frontend of this car was in really bad condition and the spare wheel section and front inner fenders needed to be totally rebuilt.
Rebuilding the front inner fenders was taken care of.
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10.10.2023 - Spare wheel section
Spare wheel section of this car had vanished during the years.
Now the whole frontend is being rebuilt. Here the spare wheel section is getting together again.
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27.10.2023 - Rear H - apron
Rear apron was all rotten and full of holes so it needed some attenttion as well.
since there was not so much left of the original part the whole panel was replaced.
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01.11.2023 - Doors: the condition and preparation for the repair
Doors aswell was in quite sad condition. Luckily Virtanen makes really good repair panels for ribbed doors.
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02.11.2023 - Door hinges
The doors and A pillars of the car was in so bad condition that lower hinges we nowhere to be found.
Luckily the donator early oval wreck was found in forest near by and the hinges of this car were still there.
Yearly oval has different hinges than the later ones so these are not so easy to find.
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02.11.2023 - Floor panels test fit
Test fitting the floor panels with body just to make sure everyting still fits.
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05.11.2023 - Test fitting fenders, running boards, front lid and the engine lid.
Test fitting the parts again just to make sure everyting fits before continuing.
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08.11.2023 - Door repair panels
The door repair panels and few more bits arrived.
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13.12.2023 - Rear outer quarter upper sections
The panels lying under the roof canvas had seen some moisture during the years and needed some new metal.
Replacing some rotten sections of it.
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10.11.2023 - Doors: the cut!
Now that all the parts for the door job had arrived. Let's make the cut!
Quite a big parts of the doors needed to be replaced because of the huge amount of the rust.
It is hard to imagine what these doors have seen during the years.
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15.11.2023 - Dent fixes
Since car was stored in multiple chuncs in the "warehouse" (tent outside) of the previous owner.
Some dents are abiously here.
Here pulling dents back in their original shape.
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17.11.2023 - Rear heating pipes
Rear sections of the heating pipes needed to be rebuilt since there was nothing left from the originals.
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14.11.2023 - Doors: outer skin
Slip in the new outer skin of the doors.
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13.12.2023 - Rear inner quarter
Again the rear inner quarter upper and lower sections were all rotten.
Replacing some sheetmetal on these sections.
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16.11.2023 - Doors: inner center enforcement
Convertible has (ofcourse) different door structure and the inner center enforcement had to been rebuilt.
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18.11.2023 - Doors: inner panels
Door inner panels jumps in.
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22.11.2023 - Front inner quarter enforcements
The lower section of the front inner quarter engorcement panels had vanished during the years.
Now repairing and rebuilding them back to their original state.
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27.11.2023 - Headlight bucket repair parts
Making the repair parts for the headlight buckets.
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29.11.2023 - Heater channel enforcements
Convertible has these enforcement panels underside of the heating channels.
Was lucky enought to found NOS parts while collecting parts for the vert.
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30.11.2023 - Rear inner quarter bottom plates
Early oval (and split) convertibles has totally different looking inner quarter lower sections.
These include the bottom plates which seals the sections. Nothing was left from the originals so new ones were built for this car.
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06.12.2023 - A and B pillar lower corner supports
Convertibles has supports on the lower corner of the A and B pillar.
Again nothing was left from the originals so these are build from the scratch.
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09.12.2023 - Front and rear hood J channels
J channels for front end rear lid seals were in totally rust.
All the old channels were removed and replaced with the new ones.
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21.12.2023 - Welding and grinding the doors and rear quarter welds
Welding the doors and rear quarter panels.
Panel welds were then drinded flat.
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10.01.2024 - Door upholstery panels
Door upholtery panels were made out of thin plywood.
Again convertible panels are different ...
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