One night of the Annual Cookie Assortment Extravaganza in the Colorado Melons household. Leigh likes to make sure you’re all taken care of, but I wasn’t allowed to post the video until enough time had passed for everyone’s packages to arrive

As I’ve already mentioned to one friend, we get more out of doing this as a family than we could ever possibly give away.

Jack and David received their Bushido Sei Shin Jitsu Blue Belts in this ceremony but since there were so many proud moments, I tried to capture everyone involved in the video.

Know someone whose kid is struggling with a bully or in need of a self-confidence boost? A guy or gal being harassed or succumbing to peer pressure? They should check this out:

Louder is better

With the door skin re-formed to the outside, it’s time to give this door some support and structure. For a quick review: When the front pillars are dropped down for a chop they also more forward. Since the back of the door stays where it is, this effectively lengthens the top of the door. You can usually take the vertical part of the door that was removed during a chop and reuse it horizontally across the top of the window opening. It should come as no surprise that this was not the case on this project.

Not only was the 3″ piece removed from the vertical chop insufficient to fill the gap created in the top of the door, but the 7″ stretch from converting it to a 2-door compounded the problem. I didn’t have anything to work with so I started from scratch and I started from the inside out. The first piece makes one half of the window channel and is the one you’ll see when inside the vehicle. This inside edge will hold the window weather-stripping in place and gives the window something to roll-up into.

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It’s hard to have visitors in the shop when I’m doing a lot of what I like to do. There’s just a lot of noise when the bodywork is going on and when somene stops by either conversation or productivity suffer, usually the latter. It’ll be easier when I get to the actual mechanics, but in the meantime here’s some real time video recorded in the shop around 8:22 tonight to let you see where I am… no editing. 

The white plywood is a pattern cutout from the passenger side to keep everything symetrical and the music in the background is from the Blues Hour segment of the Vintage Voltage radio show broadcast over the airwaves from the local college radio station every Saturday night.

 Enjoy!