Full NOS rear quarters in Chicago

I found a listing on the gran torino forum for a pair of NOS full rear quarters for sale, the owner of them had also had them listed up on craigslist for $1000.00 for the pair. They were located just outside of Chicago Il. Considering we were looking at spending close to $1000.00 to get a pair of the tabco rust repair panels shipped to us, these NOS panels were definitely an option to look at.

The Tabco panels are a close to factory reproduction, they are door jam to bumper but they only extend half way up the panel.


The NOS panels are full panels, door to bumper, and they extend all the way up to the roof seam. They also have the channel for the trunk weather seal. and the hole for the rear side marker light.

ultimately we decided that the NOS panels would be the best bet, 37 year old original ford quality parts. Less work would be required finishing them and making them look good. Contacting the owner of the parts we were able to strike a deal for $850.00 for the panels.

We found out that he has had these panels in his possession for a few years and just moved around with him. He said that a neighbor across the road from his house had found them in the attic of the house they were moving in to well cleaning. The guy was putting them at the curb for the trash man!! Glen the guy we bought them from saw the ford label and knew they would be worth something so he took them and hung out to them. He wasn't really a torino guy but was a ford buff. he was just tired of moving these around his shop so it was time to try to sell them.

The panels were very clean, only a couple of minor surface rust spots that will clean right up no problem. There is also one small dent in one of the panels that will be no problem to work out.

I think we ended up with a pretty good deal here and its going to hopefully cut the sheet metal work in half.

The work so far.

After we picked the 72 up we immediately began working on it. We are still not sure if we are going for a total frame off restoration or not. it seams like we are leaning more to the frame off side.

the first thing we knew we were going to tackle was removing the aftermarket bucket seats and the rear bench seat, and the remainder of the carpet that was in the car so we could get a good look at the floors to what kinda work we had ahead of us. The Floors were fairly solid, mostly minor surface rust under the back seat and around were the front seat mounts. The worst of the rust was up in the front on the toe board, near the fire wall.


next to come out was the dash pad and the lower dash, both cracked and in need of being replaced. We took the dash out the hard way leaving all the components still attached to the firewall.


well pulling the dash wire harness we discovered that at one point in time the heater switch had shorted out and melted. We also discovered we would need a new bulkhead connector at the firewall. It was all dry rotted and broke in to several pieces.
We also sorted out the mess of wires spliced in to everything for the aftermarket radio that was in the car.
Well we were removing the door panels we found an original build sheet for the car. That will help us in restoring the car in part to its original glory.

With the inside of the car pretty much striped down we moved on to the exterior. all the trim was striped off the car and we began exploring the badly rusted areas. We could tell that patch work had been attempted on both rear quarter panels. This apears to be the worst of the areas to need rust repair.

















we have also began to remove the vinyl top to inspect some area's that appear to have vinyl rot under it. The area below the rear window has some holes that have rotted threw but only minor holes. We have also removed the rear window.