Week #79

Got back out to the garage this weekend and found the rear panel calling out to me to finish welding it on. The previous week I had enough time to weld a handful of spots and left a good 75% of the panel un-welded. Cranked up the welder and commenced to finishing the job. My prep work of making the surfaces fit flush to each other paid of in that all the spots welded up smooth and pretty flat... very little grinding will be required. I try to use as high a setting on the welder for spot welds as the thickness of the metal will allow. The higher the setting the flatter the "bump". I've had them actually go a little concave before... I love it when that happens! Since the welder was on and in my hand, and I had the helmet on, I went ahead and filled the holes on the rear panel that were there for some trim that this car doesn't have. The stars musta been lined up with Jupiter and all was well with the universe 'cause those holes filled real easy... with no troubles.

You know, I could've ground down the welds or welded in the bracket in the trunk or done some other trunk related thing that needed doin', but I didn't. You know what I did? Something I've been wanting to do for over 4 years... something I didn't feel I should do until the rear panel was back in place... I cut off the bulk of a QUARTER PANEL! Wow that felt good. I got my panel ripper and went to it!

First I scribed a line well within the area I know that the replacement will cover. It didn't take but a few minutes and I was staring at the rear window mechanism, the outer wheelhouse and a view of the trunk I haven't seen before. I studied the wheelhouse looking for a plan of attack. There are a couple of brackets that weld to the top surface that are a little difficult to access. After cutting away as much of the wheelhouse as I could from the outside, I drilled out about 12 spot welds from the wheel side of the "house". A few more spots needed drilling lower front and lower rear of this piece where the inner and outer overlap each other. I then too the cutoff wheel and cut from font to back just short of the seam between the inner and outer "houses". What I have left is the lip of the "house" still in place... part of which is sandwiched between two other layers and part of which is just spot welded to a single layer, either on the inside or the outside.

Well, I had done enough damage for one day...