The chassis underway, I turned to the fenders...

 

With brake job finished, steel wheels, bias ply tires and the body in place the Essex starts to look like a car again. The mock up engine still stands on the flor waiting for engine mounts etc. The "Moon tank" is a shortened air pressure tank from a truck. (February 2005)

The Essex is so colorful, that I couldn't resist making this snap black-and-white. The running board mounts were made from one-by-two inch tubing. They are much taller than stock now, thus lowering the runningboards, to get more of a lowered, rather than channeled look. The running boards themselves were cut from a fresh sheet of 1mm cold rolled steel. (March 2005)

Running board mounts clearly seen in this pic. The running boards seemed a little flimsy, so some heftier flat stock was welded to their mounts first. Also seen here is the warped rear edge of the front fender.

Here the running board is bolted to the mounts with a couple of bolts to keep things fixed. The new rear edge of the fender is bolted to the running board with three 1/4" bolts.

Fender / running board joint seen from the rear. Lots of hammer and dolly work to get this result.

Just as a comparison to the last pic, the right fender. The "quality" is about the same as the left one. An obvious "design flaw" in cars generally, is that they have two of most of the parts... Sigh!

Brand new apron in place. Only the roofline missing here, to get a pretty good idea of the final shape of the Essex. I think I'll have to do something about the wide arch of those rear fenders... (March 2005)

Go on to part seven