Working on the lower Quarter Panel rust

 These are pictures of the right and left lower quarter panels.  Both sides have rusted through.  My plan is to cut out the lower 8 inches of the panels and replace with a repair panel.  I am trying to hard not to have to replace the entire quarter panels as this is a huge expense in money and time.  I have an unlimited amount of time, but not money.

Here I have cut out the passengers side.

If you look closely you will see that under the quarter panel is the inner and outer wheel wells.  I don't see a drawing tool in the blogger so I cannot point them out.  But both the inner and outer wheel wells contained rust in the area where the quarter panel overlapped them.  In this pic the rusted areas have been cut out.  The remained wheel wells are solid and rust free....only surface rust that can easily be delt with.  Before I can weld on the new quarter panel patch these two areas must be fixed.  I will be fabricating steel patches for both areas that if I'm successful with make the wheel wheels like new.

Above is a couple pics of the patches I made.  Very difficult because they both have multiple bends and curves in them  but I think these came out good for not having any metal bending tools.  Once the quarter panel patch goes on these will not be seen.  Having fun with my new welder!

In this pic I have preped the area behind the quarter panel patch.  This involved scrapping and ginding rust away and painted with black rust encapsulating paint.  You can see the patch panel laying ready to be welded on after the paint dries.

Here is the patched quarter panel.  This is where I am leaving it for now.  Later I will come back and apply grind the welds a little more to get them smoother and apply some compound to match the quarter panel curves.  Should be an invisible repair job.

On the drivers side I found a similar problem and am having to make a similar repair.  Here is a pic of the rusted metal that I cut out of the wheel wells.  You can see the odd ball shapes and imagine the difficulty getting a piece of metal to bend like these.  Its not easy.  I actually have to cut reliefs in the metal when it has to bend two ways or it will just crumple.  After the shape is formed the reliefs cut trimed even and welded back together.

The drivers side repair is not complete yet but I am working that tomorrow.

After that I am going to go get the engine from storage and install it into the frame with the transmission and see that everything fits.  I also want to put a battery on the engine and see if the engine will turn over ok because turning it by hand seems a little too difficult to me and I want to know if I need to take the engine back apart to make sure I built it correctly.  My neigher says its fine but I need to make sure.  It will be easier to get the engine back out with the body not on the frame then waiting 6 months to find out.

I also may be taking a little break from the car and building a display case for the hole in one ball.  The golf course gave my a pin flag as a trophy that I want to display with the ball.  Took me 50 years of golf to get this so its important to me.

Back to the car.  After the engine test I will go back and fix the remaining rust.  That will probably take a couple months.  The the body will go back on the frame and I will start working on the final body work which involves sanding all the paint off the car repairing any dings and dents and applying a couple coats of epoxy primer.  I expect this to take me into winter.  At that point the car will be ready for the final paint job which now I am expecting to do in April when the weather warms back up and before the bugs come out.

Of course prior to that I need to get the other parts ready to paint.  Like the doors, new hood, trunk etc.  And now that I'm thinking of it the drivers front fender has rust repait to do.  I better get busy.  If all those parts are not ready be April we will still paint the main body and I will be able to work the smaller pieces one at a time to get the painted later as time and weather permit.

So Lee, start planing for April.  If we are only doing the body we will need 3 or 4 days for that to finish the prep, put on 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of blue, and three coats of clear.  That all have to be done in one day so long day.  Then we take a day off and then come back and sand the blue smooth as it will have orange peel and maybe other defects to fix and then comes the difficult polishing job.  The sanding will make the shiney paint dull looking and we have to polish and buff it until it shines again.  Then 30 days later you have to come back to wax it.  Maybe at that time we will paint the remaining parts.