Here are some pictures showing the body work. I will not go into any detailed description of the body work but will for the most let the pictures speak for themself.
The trunk floor had rusted away totally and I replaced it with the complete and perfect floor from the 4 door parts car.
The left quarter panel had the usual rust issues common for all 65 to 68 Mercury full size cars. Lucky me had a set of good lower quarter panels on the 4 door parts car.
The right hand quarter panel needed some work as well. I also had to replaced the end piece because of an old collision damage. . I found more rust on this side than I found on the left side. It seemed to me as they forgot to spot weld the wheel well with the quarter panel at the factory leaving a gap where dirt and moisture could find its way into the quarter panel. Not much else to do than to fix it and to get those missing spot welds in place.
The left side door jamb and inner structure had some old collision damage that needed attention.
A pretty common problem on these years Mercury are body panels that are mis- aligned. On this car the RH quarter panel was not properly attached to the door post, and as a result made it impossible to have the doors adjusted so it would line up. The solution to this problem is to drill out the spot welds to loosen the panel from the door post and rea attach it in the correct position. It takes only an hour or so, but makes a whole lot of difference on the car when finished.
The first picture shows the rusted out area I had to deal with in front of the wheel opening. The picture in the middel shows it after I had it fixed. It came out pretty good and you can also see how nice the quarter panels lines up with the door now. The picture to the right shows the panel between the trunk lid and the convertible top. It is very common to find hidden rust here caused by condense water trapped under this panel on the 65 to 68 Mercurys.
The doors looked to be in pretty good shape. They both had some rust in the lower corners, but nothing I believed would become a problem. Now, that turned out to be a little optimistic I guess. The passenger door just needed the lower corners fixed, while the drivers side door had serious hidden rust and could not be saved. The door that was on my Parklane convertible turned out to be trash as well because of an old collision damage. Luckily I had one more door that I bought from a rusted out Monterey in Indiana a few years back. It was also dented and it had some rust in the bottom but it was repairable. The originalS-55 door had rust in different places than this door so I ended up taking the best out of each door making one good door.
OK, I guess that is the end of the heavy rust and body repair work.
Now for the easy part and that is to decide which body parts to use for the rest of the car. My 4 door parts car had an excellent trunk lid, and that is also the only one I have with no rust, so it's an obvious choise. For the hood I have two nice ones, but decided to use the one from the 4 door because it has the correct date stamps for the S-55.
Although I know very little about the 4 door parts car I have found that the previous owner drove it very little with is near 54K miles since new. Maybe it was owned by an older driver with limited driving skills, as this car has been in several accidents. Luckily for me it also had a rather heavy front damage at some point and the fenders, front bumper and complete grille were replaced with new parts .
For the front fenders I needed a little more thinking as I wanted to use the original fenders from the S-55, but when I found that the parts car had a set of almost new fenders still with the red primer and parts numbers on the underside that really made change my mind. Who can resist a set of near NOS fenders? Not me.
The metal in the rear foot well and under the back seat was bad as well and I decided to replace the whole section with a floor that came out of a 2 door sedan from California.
I do make it sound easy, don't I? Well, in fact it is easy.
