1990 Civic 4WD Wagon Puzzle

You're not talking to yourself. Great job with the repair and the updates!

Some of the side trim was missing/damaged before I started this project, and it's unobtainium now, so I bought some universal aftermarket moulding and trimmed it to fit. I think it turned out pretty well overall.

You did good...saved your Dad a TON of $$. That would have cost more than the car was worth if a body shop had done the work, and I dare say they wouldn't have done it anywhere near as well as you did.

That is an impressive restoration.

I'm jealous of your metalworking skills. As nedc said, that would have cost a MINT.

You transformed a turd into a time capsule. Rxcellent work.

Thank you for showing us the process. That's a really nice looking car.

nedc wrote: You did good...saved your Dad a TON of $$. That would have cost more than the car was worth if a body shop had done the work, and I dare say they wouldn't have done it anywhere near as well as you did.

x 2 . It looks better than brand new! I can remember those being new and it seemed the people that owned them then never washed them and just held them together with Honor Roll bumper stickers.

Wow hard to believe same car... I echo what the others stated Job well done.

Turned out like new. Good work, I wish I had those sheet metal skills.

Looks great Love to see that kind of work.

Thanks for the compliments guys.
When I get some time, I'll post some things about this project, like how it's held up over the past 15 months (I have the car at my shop right now for some mechanical work, and will have time to look close at this work), what I would do differently in the future, what worked, what didn't, etc...

Okay, It's been a while, but I said I'd follow up on the project and this is it.
First, how has it held up? Like I said in the last post, I had it at my house for some exhaust work, so I had a chance to look at it close. I'm happy to say that so far everything looks exactly the way it did when the car left my shop around Christmas of 2011. So I'd have to say my experiment with the panel adhesive was a success. I will add that on some of the project I used liquid nails instead of the more costly Eastwood stuff. I did this mainly because I ran out of the proper adhesive and didn't want to wait to get more, and the area I needed to work on wasn't as important as other areas. I have to say that I see no difference in the areas where I used both. I'm not saying liquid nails is as good as the correct adhesive, just reporting the facts.
So what would I do different? Well I would have preferred to not do this project at all, as the car really wasn't worth the effort, but I addressed that earlier. I'm not convinced that using the panel adhesive is a good idea in some cases. On one hand the rockers were the area that could most benefit from using that method, but were a huge PIA to do because of their size. Those are a lot of holes to drill and countersink. Then you only have a certain amount of time to work with the adhesive before it starts to set, and there are a ton of rivets to install before that happens. This method worked much better on smaller areas. I have to do two more rocker replacement projects in the next few months and am currently undecided on what method I'll use.
I'd also paint the whole car if I did it again. This was one of those projects where in the beginning it seemed to make sense to do only part of the car, but in the end would have made more sense to do it all.
Other than those things, I'm pretty happy with the result and how well it has held up. I have more pictures and feel free to ask questions about any of this if you want.