Rear tail gate rust repairs. In this case it was a complete custom made lower skin and I repaired the top skin, a good example of my body metal working skills. This being an air bagged suspension custom car, it was decided that the tailgate did not need to open, because the ute floor sits so high there is no advantage to the tail gate opening. This saved another 100 hours or more work in framing and sheet metal work to make it to open.  It also looks more customised.
   
While this car is radically customised, I kept to the same body lines of the original tailgate and just enhanced them a bit.  The tail lights are original but sit in recessed buckets with clear covers, which further keeps the original look and still be totally kustom and be rego compliant. Same goes for the lower indicators, these would normally sit in the rear bumper and are a prominant feature of the original look of the car. So now it is instantly reconisable as a Toyota Crown but totally improved lines.  The pic below shows the sketch I showed the customer on how I thought it needed to look and the upper tailgate skin in its raw original state, removed and cut down.
   
There are some more before pics in the photo section above.  The tail gate was toast, along with all the lower rear sections of the qtr panels. However the upper tail gate was quite complex and would have been a very time consuming job to reproduce it accurately. It had curves top to bottom and from side to side and on the top it curved from side to side.  So I decided to fill the centre section with a custom made filler piece and english wheel the dents out and restore its shape.  I made a die to fit in the pullmax to make this filler panel so I could follow the curve, and have the wide swage shape, it worked out great.
   
The lower section is all me, custom dies for the pull max, laser cut frames for the tail lights, recessed number plate and rolled rear pan. All kustom touches that you would usually see on a US styled mini truck or pickup.  This is what I could see in my head of where it needed to go, in order to be really cool looking.
   
There was some difficulties in where the edge of the top original section meets up with the original upper qtrs that wrap around, of which I have reworked since this pic above. However what you don't see here is how bad those upper qtr panel edges were, that curved metal section into the tailgate skin were badly dented and out of shape, heck most of the car was a basket case.
   
All work is done at our standard hourly rate + parts + materials