After many months of commuting back and forth to school and only a couple of trips of 100 miles out of town, I have an excuse, uh, I mean a reason, to make a long road trip.
The doors on my 1970 Maverick build project are in kind of rough condition. My Maverick was a cheap version of a cheap model and had no options other than an automatic transmission. Now 46 years later it has no door skins or weather proofing or sound deadening.
It was so cheap, it only had 1 external mirror from the factory on the driver’s side. With age the square chrome mirror won’t stay where you aim it, it just flops around. I got some mirrors for it from a junkyard for cheap, but they will need refinishing and will require special modification to install because they are from a 76 Camaro.
And then there was the other problem…
Being a native of Florida, my Maverick has rust in many of the usual spots.
Someone sanded down the rust and filled in the holes
with bondo a long time ago when the car was painted green.
Big chunks came loose with my finger like this:
That needs attention!
When I started sanding away the bondo to fix the rust blisters,
the hole got bigger and bigger. This is what is left of the metal
when all the old bondo was removed from the door pictured above.
Too much rust for me to want to mess with it!! Time to look for some doors.
My dad found a great pair of doors on eBay for $250. No dents or rust. Dual sport mirrors and nice door skins!
Only one catch, local pick up only and they are located in east central Illinois, My dad researched shipping through Greyhound, FedEx, UPS, and figured out it would be several hundred dollars cheaper to just drive up there and get them.
Here’s the route we took:
2240 miles in 35 hours.
We stopped only for fuel and one 30 minute stop north of Chattanooga for some Zaxby’s on the way there and one 40 minute stop in Nashville for some Waffle House on the way back.
The doors were in excellent condition!
We put one of the doors on the car just to see how it would look before we had to tear apart the front end to repair rust damage in the cowl area, but that is another story:
Rides and Drives wants to know: How far have you gone for that special part or to buy that special ride? Let us know in the comments section.
map images from Google Maps
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