After a short trip to the Texas Motorspeedway for the PATE Swap Meet, I picked up a '71 body from the firewall back to replace the damaged '76 body. Well not everything is perfect and the '71 body did have a little damage. The tail lamp area had some damage and was easier to replace than fix. Other projects include smoothing of the firewall and mounting the Monza Front Nose.

Smoothing the firewall has also proven to be an interesting challenge. I removed the heater and a/c box, cut off any pieces not needed to support the Monza Nose and filled any and all holes that will not be used in the future. I also cleaned up and removed any rust from the steel cage. Here are a few pictures of it progression.

The next challenge was to replace the tail lamp panel. Its was severely cracked and all the seams were stress cracked. So rather than try and add Bondo to fix all the cracks I cut out the bad and replaced it with new parts from ACI. I also attached the exhaust filler panel and smoothed it into the body rather than bolting it on like the Factory. This will give it a much smoother look on the tail end.

The last piece of the puzzle was to replace the right rear splash guard. I think what was shipped to me was a splash guard for a '74 and newer but what I needed was a '71, so I had to do a little improvising. Here's the start of the modified rear splash guard installation.