55 Wagon Progress

[MP&C]

Been playing catchup for a while since my cross-country venture, time for some long overdue updates. Finishing up on our tailgate, the last stainless pieces of the puzzle came from McMillan Rod and Custom in WI. Pretty good source for polished stainless trim pieces...











We had emailed them dimensions for existing holes in the tailgate, and the welded studs were spot on.

















All our stainless parts added for a test fit/pre-drill/pre-screw of all the hardware to insure they'd go in straight during final assembly. Here's my contribution to the upholstery effort on the car....

















And our tailgate installed....











And our update would not be complete without the requisite back up and punt moment. As we were closing the tailgate there was a slight binding as the tailgate was all but closed. Hey, you know my luck by now. Seems our trial fit in bare metal showed no issues but now we had multiple layers of paint that didn't want to play nice. The hinge notches in the bottom of the tailgate skin were digging into the inside of the hinges..











At this point a hinge is an easier repair than a completed tailgate, so the hinges were milled down .080 on that face and the countersunk holes deepened that much as well..











Then about three rounds of epoxy, block, repeat to eliminate the casting flaws, and on to the organic green kandy basecoat once more...











And then groundhog day, install it once more, with much better results this time.