Managed to get that pesky door to kinda sorta fit.

 Sorry for repeating a lot of stuff, but the focus of my concern is getting these panels to line up, specifically the doors. This is probably one of the biggest problems most guys face when working on these old trucks and mine is no exception. In fact, it is probably worse than most, as at least one of the doors didn't belong to the truck. 

I've got a panel beater lined up to do the tuff stuff for me and hopefully paint the thing in time, but for now I am slowly slogging away at the little bits.

Good news with the aluminium shroud. I have a guy called Nathan making me up a custom shroud to accommodate the Davies Craig 16" thermatic fan. He is even fitting it up for me, and might be ready by the weekend.

Still no news from the engine builder. Two months already and no sign of when he is going to start working on it. He even asked for more money the other day and I found that very strange as he already has 7 grand deposit and hasn't started working on it yet. Got news for him: balance on completion. 

Why do I have these problems? Why don't things flow smoothly with this project? It must be me. I must have a t shirt on that says, "let's sting this loser" or some such thing. Well, I AM being a little melodramatic, after all, I found James and Nathan in the one week. 

Anyway, enough rambling!

Some success with getting the door on. Still gonna need a lot of work, but might not be the nightmare I thought it would be.

Further to the tailgate saga, I coughed up and bought a nice rivnut kit with the correct 5/16 18 rivnuts and a big 16" tool off Temu. 

I've had mixed success with this company, but I have been shopping around to find an imperial mandrel to suit and I just can't find anything from Bunnings or Supercheap or Total Tools etc. Actually, I think I did find one locally, but it was like $180, and this one I bought was less than half that. I hope it lasts a while. It came with 10 piece mandrel set.  I then forked out on an imperial rivnut kit from eBay.  I wouldn't have had to buy all this stuff if the technique offered by Mar-K was effective. Maybe it was just me again, but I did everything the instructions suggested and still managed to stuff up both rivnut installations. Well, at least they are fixable now. 

This weekend I plan to do some serious fitting up of panels and getting the truck as together as possible. There is a good chance James is nearly ready to receive the truck. Check back soon guys for more updates, and thanks once again for your valued support.