The next area I replaced was the part of the quarter panel between the rear wheel and the door, that's it in the top half of this picture from an earlier stage of work.
Here's the area after the rusty/damaged metal was removed and prepped for welding:
Here's the replacement panel I made. It may not look like much but it was particularly tough to do because its subtly curved including a compound curve at the top which transitions to a flat area at the bottom. There's also compound curves on both the left and right edges so I couldn't simply use the sheet metal brake to do those, they had be formed by hand very slowly. It took me about 12 hours to form this believe it or not. It turns out a carpenter's hammer was ideal for gradually stretching the metal to create the compound curve
And here it is welded in. I struggled with this piece because even after all the time I spent forming it it still wasn't quite right and I had to force it into place to match the existing body lines. To do the top edge I had to put a 2X4 between the panel and my chest, lean into it, and tack weld it into place. Despite this still I didn't get a perfectly flush weld - I must have relaxed before it cooled or when I filled in between the tacks the heat allowed the edge to move. The top edge wasn't too bad despite this, the worst part was the panel warped at some point and now there's too much of a bulge on the left side where it should be mostly flat. At some point, maybe after I weld in the outer rocker, I'll take the oxy-acetylene torch to it and shrink that side a bit and it should come back mostly into place. As it sits it'll probably take a little over 1/8 inch of body fill to get the proper contours and although it can be up to 1/4 inch thick I like to try to get it so I need less than 1/8 inch of body fill on any exterior panel.
Topic: Priya's SX/4 project (Read 338841 times)