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Progress Update
So this week I made more time to work on the 39. The first thing I did was get the rear bumper and brackets off so I could get a better look at the lower quarter panel in that area. It took my long breaker bar to get the bolts loose but surprisingly the bolts all came loose without twisting off.
The opening for the bumper bracket was pretty messed up and you can see how the fender doesn't line up very well to the quarter panel at the bottom.
After some straitening it out and welding in a new piece at the top it looks much better. Found some rust at the bottom outer corner where the fender and quarter panel meet so a patch is in order. At this point the fender is fitting better to the quarter panel as well. After checking this fender to the passenger side fender it looked like the fender had lost some of it's curvature during the repair process. I got it better by doing some shrinking with the torch on the fender flange and made a few small relief cuts on the flange to put a bit more curve in it at the back. Also at the front of the fender I used a hammer and dolly to stretch the patches I did earlier to add some curve there so the fender fits the body much better from front to back now. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of any of that work on the fender.
Fitting up a patch for the rust and damage farther up on the quarter panel. By patching this I should be able to adjust the fit to the fender at the same time.
Marked out the area to be cut out and replaced.
The old damaged metal cut out.
After a bit of fine tuneing the patch to the opening it should be ready to tack in. The extra tab on the patch was to fold over and fix a few rust pin holes on the inner fender. It ended up being a pain to get it to fold over and still get the patch to fit right so I ended up just cutting it off and just welded up the holes with a copper back up piece. After I media blast every thing to get epoxy primer on everything I may come back and patch that area better.
Tacked in place with the fender bolted back on to adjust the fit to the fender before tacking it in to the inner fender.
Fender back off and tacked in to the inner fender. Really a pain in the butt taking the fender on and off but almost done!!
All welded up and the welds ground out. Looks pretty good except for the lower part. It's almost impossible to get a hammer or anything else in behind there to hammer out the weld joint.
With the fender bolted back on "again" everything lines up pretty well. Time to call it done and move on.
This is where I left off today working on stripping the paint off the passenger side quarter panel and fender. Looks like a bit more rust to repair on the quarter panel and fender on the lower edges but not near as much bondo on this fender so that's good news.
So this week I made more time to work on the 39. The first thing I did was get the rear bumper and brackets off so I could get a better look at the lower quarter panel in that area. It took my long breaker bar to get the bolts loose but surprisingly the bolts all came loose without twisting off.
The opening for the bumper bracket was pretty messed up and you can see how the fender doesn't line up very well to the quarter panel at the bottom.
After some straitening it out and welding in a new piece at the top it looks much better. Found some rust at the bottom outer corner where the fender and quarter panel meet so a patch is in order. At this point the fender is fitting better to the quarter panel as well. After checking this fender to the passenger side fender it looked like the fender had lost some of it's curvature during the repair process. I got it better by doing some shrinking with the torch on the fender flange and made a few small relief cuts on the flange to put a bit more curve in it at the back. Also at the front of the fender I used a hammer and dolly to stretch the patches I did earlier to add some curve there so the fender fits the body much better from front to back now. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of any of that work on the fender.
Fitting up a patch for the rust and damage farther up on the quarter panel. By patching this I should be able to adjust the fit to the fender at the same time.
Marked out the area to be cut out and replaced.
The old damaged metal cut out.
After a bit of fine tuneing the patch to the opening it should be ready to tack in. The extra tab on the patch was to fold over and fix a few rust pin holes on the inner fender. It ended up being a pain to get it to fold over and still get the patch to fit right so I ended up just cutting it off and just welded up the holes with a copper back up piece. After I media blast every thing to get epoxy primer on everything I may come back and patch that area better.
Tacked in place with the fender bolted back on to adjust the fit to the fender before tacking it in to the inner fender.
Fender back off and tacked in to the inner fender. Really a pain in the butt taking the fender on and off but almost done!!
All welded up and the welds ground out. Looks pretty good except for the lower part. It's almost impossible to get a hammer or anything else in behind there to hammer out the weld joint.
With the fender bolted back on "again" everything lines up pretty well. Time to call it done and move on.
This is where I left off today working on stripping the paint off the passenger side quarter panel and fender. Looks like a bit more rust to repair on the quarter panel and fender on the lower edges but not near as much bondo on this fender so that's good news.