Mountain Man Trails: 1967 Pontiac Lemans budget build - Episode six, passenger quarter panel

Episode one, introduction.

Episode two, trunk panel install part one.

Episode three, trunk panel install part two.

Episode four, door rust repair.

Episode five, tail light panel and rear crossmember.

Episode six, passenger quarter panel.

Episode seven, driver's quarter panel.

Episode eight, floor pan and rockers, part one.

Episode nine, floor pan and rockers, part two.

Episode ten, frame repair and prep, body drop.

Episode eleven, radiator core support and miscellaneous rust repair.

Episode twelve, trunk repair and more miscellaneous rust repair.

Episode thirteen, fender and inner fender repair.

Episode fourteen, panel prep and block and prime.

Now it's time to turn to the passenger quarter panel. This is going to be another difficult task, so I'm going to spend a lot of time thinking and planning. I don't want to mess this up.

Here's what I started with:

You can see there's a lot of rust, and it took a hit to the gills. The gills are way cool but the replacement panels don't have them. Also, the 67 GTO doesn't have them. I had planned to cut them in as I installed the replacement panels. However, I decided to put the unadorned panels in with the possibility of cutting them in later, because straightening the damage in the various gill recesses is not an easy repair. Sad. But maybe since I installed a GTO tail light panel I might end up omitting the gills and going the way of a GTO clone.

We will see...

You can also see a lot of rust in front of the rear wheel and along the lower pinch weld behind the wheel. But it's even worse than it looks. After getting the wheelwell trim off and the quarter panel trimmed back away from the wheel arch, here's what I found:

This is the front of the passenger wheelhouse.

Before I removed the rest of the original quarter I wanted to re-create the flange areas, as well as finish the wheelhouse repairs.

I made a cut around the wheel opening to gain access to the rusted out metal underneath. As I made the cut the remains of the quarter panel flange nearly fell off by themselves. Fortunately, most of the it had the remnants of the pinch weld flange. This made it much easier to rebuild it in the correct place with the right contours.

This the area just above the previous pic:

Ugh. Obviously, this all needs to be taken care of before any quarter panel work can happen.

I went piece by piece, leaving existing metal in place as long as possible so as to have a guideline for installing the subsequent new metal. I started at the front of the wheel house:

The idea here is to re-create these complex shapes in pieces. For this piece I used the rusty cut-out as a pattern, and the existing outline of the arch above it to shape the patch. I started stitch welding it in:

I left the top edge with only a single tack weld because I will be replacing the metal above. Time for the inner flange piece:

Notice the inner flange piece is longer than the previous piece I installed. I wanted to offset the seams for strength. I ground the welds down, but I'm not going to totally flatten them since no one will ever see them. But I did want to grind them enough so that the welds would not interfere with the new quarter panel.

It was at this point I realized that in order to do the lower part of the flange I would need to do the front of the wheelhouse and the rocker area. So I'm going to take a detour into this process. This area was almost completely gone, so I just made my best guess on how it was supposed to look. There was a little more of the driver's side still there, which helped guide me.

I didn't fret a whole lot about a perfect surface because it all will be seam sealed and undercoated, but I still wanted it close enough to original so as to satisfy the casual observer.

I started cutting:

The lower I went, the worse it got. You can see more rust in the rocker area and on the lower part of the flange. Using the cut out piece, I started fashioning a patch:

I trimmed it and stitch welded it in:

I also filled in the smaller area on the outer wheelhouse and reconstructed the lower flange area:

Here's the finished repair:

As usual, there will be a little more clean up on the welds. And there is a plastic access plug to install. Also, I did not put in the floor pan plug welds because it and the rocker weren't yet installed.

Now that the front area is fixed, I went back to fabricating along the arch to the rear:

More grinding:

Now for the rearmost section, which I was dreading. This part of the original wheel arch was totally gone I so had no reference to build to. And it's a complicated area.

I started with the top of the wheelhouse. Here I've started welding the patch:

All ground out:

You can see that the lower edge has not yet been tackled. And I left the patch run wild in this photo.

And here's the completed work, which included the recreation of the flange, the rusted out wheelhouse, and the wheelhouse lower extension, which was covered in an earlier post. You can also sort of see how the wheelhouse repair continues inside along the trunk floor:

I'm really pleased with the way this came out. And because my skills are increasing, this all represents a single day's work.

Now, finally, it's time to turn to the preliminary work to test fit the quarter skin. The replacement skin turned out to be a 1966, though it was described as fitting a 67. However, it was delivered to me with a message on the invoice that said it needed to be modified to fit a 67.

It was also delivered to me like this:

Yep, those are boot prints. Someone stood on the box. There was some damage to the panel but it was something I thought I could fix. However, since I ordered an undamaged panel I reasoned I was entitled to receive one. So I called the shipping company and they said I needed to call the manufacturer. I called the manufacturer and they said I needed to call the retailer. I called the retailer, Jeg's, and they asked for pics, which I sent.

Within one day I received a confirmation email that they were reviewing the case, and the day after that I received a phone call indicating that they would be refunding me the entire shipping cost, $158.99. This was stand up behavior, earning my undying loyalty.

Here's what needs to be modified. The black area behind is the 1966 panel:

It is quite different from the '67 at the back. The rear portion of my OEM panel will need to be retained, so I cut off the last few inches of the replacement panel.

I taped out the cut lines:

And made the cuts:

Wow. This is scary. It feels like a major surgery that could go really wrong. I left plenty of metal around the perimeter, which will be cut back later as I cut and butt the replacement panel.

As mentioned, some issues need to be taken care of before continuing. The dent to the gills carried damage up above the belt line:

It will eventually be cut out when the new panel goes in, but it needed to be brought back into shape so as not to interfere with the placement of the new panel.

I hammered and dollied this back into shape:

And the door gap is also out of whack because of the hit to the gills:

I held a short piece of 2x4 horizontally inside the quarter area, against the jamb, and beat on it with a hammer until the gap began to close. There is an interior brace at the door jamb so it took a lot of banging to move it. You can also see in the above pic that I taped out the horizontal body lines, both on the original panels as well as the replacement panel. This is crucial in order to line up the new panel.

Here's the result of 15 minutes of arm-numbing hammering:

This is now the factory gap, which is too wide for my taste. I may decide modify this later, but for now we can proceed.

There are other things that need to be done "B4" the quarter panel can be installed. Lest I forget something, I wrote out a list:

Let's get started on the list.

B4 #1 and 2) I sanded all the weld points to bare metal. But I didn't punch plug weld holes along the flange behind the rear wheel because I bought a spot welder from Harbor Freight. And I cleaned up the flange on the original trunk drop panel and dollied it straight.

B4 #3) Since I'm keeping the last few inches of the OEM quarter panel, I fixed a little bit of rust under the bumper:

B4 #4) The rocker panel flange. This is where the quarter panel spot welds to the rocker. I removed the remnants of the old quarter and cleaned up the area a bit:

This revealed some pin holes of rust, but it wasn't as bad as I feared. And, the damage was restricted to the outer flange area where it meets up with the quarter.

It's fortunate the inner area wasn't rusty. This is actually a continuation of the top surface of the rocker panel, a key structure that extends from the wheel house all the way to the firewall. The replacement rockers do not have this interior structure, they only have the outer flange.

After thinking about it a little I decided I didn't want to weld up each little hole, and I didn't want to bend up a piece to replace the rusted area. I landed on a creative solution. Creative for me, anyway. The replacement rocker had that flange. I decided to cut it off (I wasn't ready to replace the rocker) and used it to re-create the lower half of the body seam. Then when I get around to installing the new rocker the two pieces will reunite with an easy weld.

It also gives me a clean interface between the rocker and the quarter panel.

I made the horizontal cut on the old rocker, about an inch below the turn-down, and welded in the piece of the new rocker:

Now to address the quarter panel half of the equation.

The new quarter panel was for a 1966 as discussed above. It had an extra long area at the rocker, designed to go all the way to the rocker's pinch weld flange. Maybe 66s were different than 67s in this area? Anyway, I cut off this part of the new quarter panel and adapted the flange from it to form the new upper flange. I did some shaping to make it fit on top of the just-completed lower flange, drilled some plug weld holes, sprayed some weld through primer, and welded it in:

It's a little hard to see, but viewing from the bottom up we see the original rocker (rusty brown), the flange cut from the replacement rocker (silver), and the bottom flange of the quarter panel (black).

Now it's finally time to dive into quarter skin with a test fit:

You can see where I had to cut the tail of the new panel. Again, lucky for me this area was pretty good. You can also see how the replacement panel extends lower than the rocker. This is what I cut off to adapt to the top flange of the rocker seam.

I put tape on the body lines to line them up. They look good:

The replacement panel had a top horizontal flange and a door jamb flange, but I cut them off. You can see that in the above pic.

I did this because they interfere with the panel's positioning. The flanges create a stop point that prevents moving the replacement panel to the proper position. With the flanges removed the new panel can be easily adjusted into where it needs to be.

You can see I did leave a portion of the flange for a zip screw near the door. This particular tab is almost vertical, but I also left a tab in the middle near the sail panel. That one just needed to be re-bent, since it was horizontal and could have kept the panel up too high otherwise. For the rear I just put a zip screw through the panel:

I have a I have a good line here as well. The lower line at the front is also good:

As mentioned above, the bottom edge of the replacement quarter previously extended all the way down covering the rocker panel to the rocker pinch weld. I cut off the bottom few inches of the quarter but left it long until I could work through the connection between the rocker and the quarter.

B4 #4) Covered above.

B4 #5) Covered above.

B4 #6) I wire brushed the sheetmetal and POR 15'd all of the inner structure.

Looks pretty good.

Now the B4 list is complete and I'm ready to actually install the replacement quarter.

Since I'm mentioning cut and butt again, I'll walk you through how I did that process. The first thing I did was install the panel on top of the existing metal, lining up my tape lines and ensuring the panel laid flat against the car. I vice gripped the wheel opening flange in a couple of locations as well, not pushing hard against the wheel opening.

I put a tack weld every 6-8 inches along the top edge, making sure the two surfaces were tight together.

Here's how it looked:

You can see where I marked out my future cut lines with tape. I also added some arrow marks so that I wouldn't forget which side of the tape to cut on, and made more marks at the corners to tell me where to stop cutting. Also, there is a horizontal internal brace just about where the sail panel ends next to the trunk lip, so I marked that out so as to remember to not cut too deep at that point.

Now, remember that the new panel is overlapping the old. The idea of cut and butt is to cut through both panels at once, holding the angle grinder at about a 45 degree angle, and cutting along the tape line only 6-8 inches at a time.

I began to cut and butt the top seam at the door jamb but didn't like the way it was laying down, so I cut the spotwelds on the front vertical seam. I then double-cut down that seam about 8 inches, which allowed the corner of the replacement panel to be pushed into place. If I had not did this there would be a change in angle between the old and new metal along the top seam. So cutting a few inches down the vertical seam from the corner allowed the corner to come even:

So the new panel is now suspended only from the top, which lets it just hang without tension or binding anywhere. Cutting and butting the top edge was extremely easy now, because it began to naturally fall into place without bulging or twisting.

I kept going from the front and double cut about 8 more inches horizontally. I pushed the new panel into flush position and added a couple of tack welds, making sure the two surfaces were flush before welding the next one. I also removed the new panel's waste material as I cut.

I then repeated this process all the way to the rear of the car:

As I was cutting and butting I realized that there might be a problem getting the inside pieces of the waste material out because they are connected together at the corners. I was able to reach the waste metal to make diagonal cuts at the corners. That allowed me to remove them once I was done cutting and butting.

When I do the driver's side I'll need to remember to do this before tacking in the replacement panel.

After the top edge was tacked and looking good I released the vice grip in the wheelwell. Then I pushed the panel in to where it seemed to want to be, watching both ends to see when they made contact with the old metal. I figured that this was the right position for attaching the wheel well flange. I put a vice grip back on the wheel lip and tack welded the front and back edge overlaps. I then cut and butted the front and back edges.

I did the lower flange area behind the wheel with my new spot welder.

I pulled the 7 1/2 foot long waste piece out through the tail light opening and the three shorter pieces as well (door jamb, tail light vertical piece, and the rocker piece).

Here's the tacked in panel:

It lays nice and flat, there are no ripples in the panel, and the body lines line up nicely with the original panel. This makes grinding the welds a lot easier, and also should mean very little filler is needed.

I finished up all the stitch welds and ground them flat:

And a couple of thin layers of filler:

And some primer:

The door jamb area:

And the lower front seam:

This is the reuniting of the replacement rocker with its flange. Above that the glazing putty conceals the cut and butt between the upper flange and the quarter.

It's hard to see, but I still need to build the cap for the end of the rocker in the wheel well.

Now for the tail seam: