Tips for DIY body work??

[Josue]

As some may have read, I'm a collision tech by trade. Been doing it full time for 7-8 years now. I've cut my teeth on MANY MANY complete paint jobs and even a handfull of slight restorations over the years, against my will pretty much. LOL Nothing to the extent of a complete, intensive restoration like the one I'm about to embark on though. (see sig) Usually, it was just some exterior patch work, and lots of mud. At the shop I was just at, I mudded the doors, top to bottom, edge to edge, and 1 fender on a '67 Comet Caliente, and hung them after paint. Did the same thing on a '56 Chevy too...

With my dad's '69 Firebird convertible, I'm gonna need to do the whole 9. New quarters, trunk extensions, inner quarters, floorboard work, firewall, etc. Was going to do skins on the doors, but to save $, I'm just gonna straighten them. I can get them pretty straight, and he doesn't need 100% show quality perfection.

I'm fairly confident that even though I've never done a ground up resto like this, I can still get it done. It's only metal right! haha I'm still looking for any tips you DIY'ers have for doing body work on these old cars. And if anyone's a body man as well, how do they differ from the new cars? I see all the pics on here, and it all looks like the same process for the most part...drill some spot welds, clean it up, fit the new part, weld it in, done...

I also had a question on the quarters. I always fit the adjacent panels before welding a new one on at work, but with this Firebird, everything is off, it's just down to a shell. Common sense is telling me, that I need to get the doors mounted and in the right place, to get my quarter gaps right....but, I'm not sure how far I should go with that? To get the door gaps good, should I mount the fenders too? The subframe is off, so I'd need to mount that, then the core support, then the fenders, and probably the hood to get the fender gaps good too. Or can I just get the door gap good and even with the rocker and then get good gaps to what's left of the quarter jamb? (only putting skins on) I see some of the builds on here, and people have their cars on jigs and all kinds of other stands/dollies, and it looks like they welded everything together without fitting the entire car like I'm thinking I have to....unless they just don't show that part of the process?

Naturally, if I can get away with doing less work, then I'd like to go that route, but I have no problem with assembling the whole car...it'd give me a change to get all the parts fitting right anyway. I just don't want to be doing it 50 times...LOL