doctorwayne's New Years Resolution Challenge...

[doctorwayne]

With all of the new roofs in place, the next step is to remove the original car ends. For this, I used a utility knife to repeatedly score the interior faces of the ends close to where they meet the car's sides. I cut right through, as I didn't want to unduly stress the remaining structure of the car.





The rough edges remaining on the interior of the car bodies was dressed with a mill file, leaving the interior face smooth:



The same file was then used to cut the exposed vertical ends to approximately a 45° angle:





Likewise, the new ends were dragged across sandpaper to impart a similar angle on the edges which were to be mated with those on the car:



All of this filing and sanding generates an enormous amount of styrene dust, requiring frequent vacuuming to prevent tracking it all over the house.
After removing some material from the top of the new ends (they're slightly too tall for the lowered car body) the ends are cemented in place:



Once all of the new ends are in place, the interior of these angled joints will be strengthened with square .125" styrene strips cemented in place.

Only fourteen more ends to do, then it's on to new side sill construction and modifying the Central Valley floors and underframes to fit.

Wayne