Got some more done over the past week or so. Fenders and header panel are in primer, fenders are painted black inside and mounted (hopefully) for good now. For primer I used a 2K urethane, cost $170 for a gallon but this stuff is AWESOME! I can actually handle the parts and knock them around without worrying about chipping any off, don't need to worry about it coming off with masking tape, I'm never going back to cheap primer.
Before any primer I had to get the passenger fender fixed. The support piece along the mounting flange was too far gone, along with some of the flange. Fabbed up a patch for the flange and took the support piece from my old fender. Here's everything tacked together.
Since I had removed the center part of the rad support that the header panel mounts to, I had to make a new one. Mounted it to the header panel, mounted the header panel and tacked it in place. It leaves about 1/8" clearance to the rad, just enough to slip on some rubber edging or to get out the rad if I need to. Should look pretty nice when everything's together.
Here's everything together from the rear. I finished the hood hinges and primed them with the fenders, they look way better now. After some spot putty to smooth out the welds and a coat of semigloss black they should look pretty stock. Also got the lower mounts finished, nothing crazy but I think they'll look like they belong once I get everything painted up nice.
And here's how I left it this morning. Fenders are lined up to the doors, next is lining up the hood. You can see how bad it is even in the picture but that's why I changed it to bolt-on hinges. Slot some holes and I've got it centered. The worst part will be getting the curve of it to line up with the fenders. At some point it looks like something really heavy hit it on the drivers side- it's low in the center and high front and back. Plus the front corner is bent up over top of the hinge. Gonna need some persuading to get it back into shape.
This weekend's plan is to get the rust fixed on the doors and the hatch and get a coat of primer on them. Once that's done I can pretty much park the welder and get ready for priming and block sanding till about May...