[n20ta2]

That looks great, thays exactly what I did.

[roger1]

Originally Posted by n20ta2

That looks great, thays exactly what I did.

Thanks.

I finished the outer wheelhouse today. I added several pieces around the perimeter. Here I was working on the second to last piece:







Last piece in and all finished up. All that's left to do on the driver side is to install the quarter skin patches.





I did a little work on the passenger side today too. Got the patch welded in to repair the area in the lower rear of the inner wheelhouse. I also did some cleaning up on the outer wheelhouse to get clean edges to weld patches to.
As you can see, I had to cut more of the metal out on this side compared to the other.

[roger1]

I've worked on the passenger side outer wheelhouse at least some every day since my last post 6 days ago. It was very time consuming.





The lower rear section took the most time. Quite a bit more time than on the driver side since more had to be cut out.



Glad to have this part done so I can move on to installing the patch panel quarter skins.

[roger1]

So for the second time, I aggravated the sacroiliac in my lower back. This time I took over a week off from working on the car. And during this time I bought a special kind of creeper seat that was designed for this issue. Funny looking contraption:



Tried it out the last couple of days for short durations and it does seem to work. My back has continued to improve.
So I started working on installing the quarter panel patch panels on the p/s. I got the rear one tacked in place and have the front one clamped on and ready to scribe a line for the final cut on the existing metal.





I did have one issue where the 2 panels meet together. These panels come flanged on the ends and of course the best thing to do is not use them and do butt welds instead. So I cut those flanges off and this left them a little short necessitating an extension be fabricated and welded to one the panels.

[vertigto]

Wow...nice work.

Hope your back returns to normal quickly...interesting creeper.

[roger1]

Originally Posted by vertigto

Wow...nice work.
Hope your back returns to normal quickly...interesting creeper.

Thanks!
The creeper is helping. Glad I bought it.

I got a new goody for the car delivered today:



I won't be ready for it for quite a long while but YearOne had a price on that was so good, I figured I better jump on it. I got it for $1895 plus $46.50 shipping and no tax. I thought they had it on sale but I'm now wondering if they had it mispriced since they raised their price on it shortly after I ordered it.

Installing the quarter panel patch panels has been pretty time consuming. Several iterations of welding and planishing. It's coming along well but still have a little more planishing left to do on the rear section.
I've been using a combination of a hammer and dolly and slapper and dolly and I needed my wife's help for some of it.

[Greg Reid]

That looks great to me. The front half weld seam is practically invisible.
As for back pain, my lower back...and upper too actually...bothers me on a regular basis, sometimes chronically where I can barely get in and out of a vehicle or lean forward even to brush my teeth without supporting myself on the sink. That one usually occurs when I do something stupid...but sometimes all it takes is something like putting on my sock.
I got one of those inversion tables. I used it today actually, and even 10 minutes on it does wonders for me. It doesn't 'cure' anything permanently but any amount of relief is heaven as I'm sure you know.

[keith k]

Originally Posted by roger1

Installing the quarter panel patch panels has been pretty time consuming. Several iterations of welding and planishing. It's coming along well but still have a little more planishing left to do on the rear section.
I've been using a combination of a hammer and dolly and slapper and dolly and I needed my wife's help for some of it.

That is some nice work!

[roger1]

Originally Posted by keith k

That is some nice work!

Thanks Keith!

Originally Posted by Greg Reid

That looks great to me. The front half weld seam is practically invisible.
As for back pain, my lower back...and upper too actually...bothers me on a regular basis, sometimes chronically where I can barely get in and out of a vehicle or lean forward even to brush my teeth without supporting myself on the sink. That one usually occurs when I do something stupid...but sometimes all it takes is something like putting on my sock.
I got one of those inversion tables. I used it today actually, and even 10 minutes on it does wonders for me. It doesn't 'cure' anything permanently but any amount of relief is heaven as I'm sure you know.

Thanks Greg!
I'll get the rear portion looking like the front with a little more work. I tackled the harder part first. The area will need a few coats of polyester primer or a skim coat of filler when the time comes as I think it's pretty much impossible to install a patch panel with the quarter on the car and get it 100% perfect. My goal is to keep filler needed to no thicker than 1/16".

I haven't had any problems with my upper back but do have arthritis in my neck vertebrae that causes me pain. Been dealing with that for quite a while now. I've had a total of 7 injections but didn't get any improvement from them. This lower back pain is new over the last month or so since I've been working on these wheel wells. The creeper has helped but the pain is not gone. I may try a lower back support belt next. They are supposed to help sacroiliac (SI) joint pain.

[roger1]

The rear patch panel on the passenger side gave me some trouble to finish out. It sucked in on me in a couple of places and it was enough to pull in the styling crease. I had to do quite a bit of planishing and needed my wife's help by holding a dolly while inside the trunk. I overstretched a few places and needed to use my shrinking disc to shrink those spots back. We got it though and it's now pretty darn good I think and the entire passenger side quarter is complete.





This is the shrinking disc I use:





I've now moved on to working on the driver side and installed the rear patch panel.
Here's a progression of photos from fitting to finish.

First was to use some Cleco fasteners to hold the patch panel tightly in place in order to scribe a line onto the existing metal:



I used a Sharpie first then scratched that line using a utility knife. I then removed the patch panel:



I then used a cutoff tool to cut the existing panel fairly close but a little shy of my scribed line:



I then used the Roloc flap disc to carefully grind the metal back to the scribed line:



I then started tack welding in the patch panel. I first made tacks about an inch apart and then tacks in between after letting the panel cool:



At this point I ground the tacks down and did some planishing to stretch the heat shrinkage:



After more welding followed up with more planishing, here is the finished panel. It went well. I did not get any sucking in issue that I did on the other side:

[Greg Reid]

Excellent work.

[Brewster]

Very cool and thanks for sharing details.

[dataway]

Is it just me, or do you feel your skills are improving as you progress on this project?

[roger1]

Got the front patch panel section installed on the driver side and finished off.
Between all the work I had to do with the wheelhouses and these skins, I've got a bunch of hours in repairing these wheel wells. Me and my back are glad to have this done.





The planishing part of the skin installation to stretch the heat shrinkage was certainly not easy. But, I'm very pleased with how it all came out.

[roger1]

Originally Posted by Brewster

Very cool and thanks for sharing details.

Thanks! I do enjoy my documentation process. I enjoy the photo taking too since I'm kind of a photography buff.

Originally Posted by dataway

Is it just me, or do you feel your skills are improving as you progress on this project?

I had to think about this question for awhile.
I didn't think so but maybe. This is the 3 project car I've had that's needed patch panels. I'm definitely better now than I was on my first one.

[dataway]

It's a lot of extra work documenting something like this. I've done smaller projects and it seems like for every hour in the shop I'll spend a half hour organizing photos, cropping them, writing captions etc.

[rustedgoat]

Not to be the party pooper, but you should switch the orientation of the cinder blocks (holes facing up/down). Stronger and safer. Amazing progress and work being shown here. I actually might get out to the garage and practice some welding.

[roger1]

Originally Posted by rustedgoat

Not to be the party pooper, but you should switch the orientation of the cinder blocks (holes facing up/down). Stronger and safer. Amazing progress and work being shown here. I actually might get out to the garage and practice some welding.

Thanks!
I knew that about the cinder blocks but I didn't have any boards to put on top for the jackstand feet. Plus I figured there was only about 150 lbs on each one. The hoist from above still has some tension on it too so that would keep it from going anywhere. Thanks for thinking about my safety though.

[Andretti]

As always, enjoying the sharing of details and procedures.
Wondering why you experienced less panel distortion on the D/S quarter. Could it be you took more time between weld passes or was it something to do with having to add in the patch section on P/S because of trimming that flange which resulted in far more welding?
Think about it, crawling into a dirty trunk and damaging your hearing....
She must really like you!

[roger1]

Originally Posted by Andretti

As always, enjoying the sharing of details and procedures.
Wondering why you experienced less panel distortion on the D/S quarter. Could it be you took more time between weld passes or was it something to do with having to add in the patch section on P/S because of trimming that flange which resulted in far more welding?
Think about it, crawling into a dirty trunk and damaging your hearing....
She must really like you!

Thanks! Yup. She is fully into my work on the car and excited about it for me too. (She did have her ear plugs in btw). She does want me to paint the car Matador Red though.

Not totally sure why the rear patch section on the p/s was a little more difficult. I think I mis-hit it with the hammer and not striking the dolly behind a few times and that led to more work to correct the mistake.
The front portion on the p/s was more difficult because there was a previously repaired dent in the quarter above the wheel opening. That caused the panel to move more when I made the original cut. This is something I hadn't mentioned before. I do have it looking just as good as the driver side though.