October 5th, 2024:
October 6th, 2024:
Episode one, introduction, here.
Episode two, disassembly and assessment, here.
Episode three, rough body work, here.
Episode four, quarters, here.
Episode five, toe panel and rocker, here.
Episode six, fenders, inner fenders, here.
Episode seven, the doors, found here.
Episode eight, tail light panel, found here.
Episode nine - Hood, windshield gutter, back glass gutter
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Introduction
There are several rust repairs to make:
- Both lower rear quarters (this Episode)
- Wheel opening lips, both quarters (this Episode)
- Lower rear of both wheel houses (this Episode)
- Passenger front toe panel (Episode five)
- Doors (Episode seven)
- Rockers (Episode five)
- Rear window gutter (TBD)
- Front window gutter (TBD)
- Lower fender rust (Episode six)
- Driver's tail light area (Episode six)
- Driver's front inner fender rust (Episode six)
For most of these repairs I will use replacement patch panels. I purchased left and right lower rear quarter patches ($191.98 for the pair, which is ridiculous but the cheapest I could find) from Jeg's, the left and right side wheel lip patches for $84.97 for the pair from Amazon, and the rear deck panel ($89.98) from Jeg's. The toe panel, the rear of the wheelhouses, and the passenger rocker, however, will be repaired with scrap sheetmetal I have laying around, so that means total expenditure for all the rust repair is $366.93 plus my labor (actually, a lot of my labor), which is free to me.
As far as my work process, I'm going to be moving around the car doing various repairs. I do not plan to actually finish any one task immediately. One reason is because I don't want to spend extended periods scrunched over a repair. My ol' body can't handle that, so I'll alternately weld high, grind low, and cut laying down.
The Passenger Quarter
Here's what I started with:
The opening was crudely radiused by a prior owner to make room for these big ugly tires, which included destroying the wheel house inner flange. So I will be rebuilding the wheel house and the quarter lip.
In addition, the lower rear of the quarter has evidence of Bondo:
And, there is rust in the wheel house. Arrgh. This will be a challenge to save it.
Rear Wheelhouse
Before I can install the patch panels I need to fix the lower rear of the passenger side wheelhouse. The front, however, is perfect:
But oh, the back:
That is a 4" diameter hole, found under a layer of stranded fiberglass resin. Someone had simply glassed right over the hole, rust and all. In fact, this industrious person "fixed" all of the rust in the car by covering it with either fiberglass or Bondo, sometimes measuring an inch in thickness.
This needs to be fixed first, then the lower quarter, and then I can rebuild the wheel house inner flange. They all sort of come together at once and need to be done before I can tackle the the outer wheel opening patch panel.
I cut out the rust, wire brushed everything, painted on some POR15 on the interior surfaces, and fashioned a patch out of some scrap:
It needs to align with the eventual wheel house flange and interface with the lower quarter patch. After stitch welding the piece in place I traced a cardboard template and used it to cut the patch to the shape of the lower quarter.
Here the finished repair:
You can see I've already started to install the lower rear quarter patch. You can also see I added the first piece of the wheel house flange (red, top center.)
So let's look at the lower quarter panel patch.
I cut it off the rusty part of the panel and found this:
Ugh. The rust was just covered over, and the lower inch was fiberglass only. No metal.
This repair is next, because the quarter panel lip position is set by the position of this patch panel.
These are what Jeg's sent me:
Here's the cut, which I made just below the character line:
The actual seam, however, will end up being above the character line because it was damaged as well. Also, I cut it here because the best chance for avoiding warpage (besides using good welding technique) is to be close to a ridge in the metal. The stiffness of the ridge helps minimize warpage.
I wire brushed the interior area, dollied and prepped the trunk drop flange, welded up a couple of rust pinholes it had, and gave everything a coat of POR15. I overlaid the patch panel to check for interference and alignment. Looks really good. I drilled a few holes along the lower and front edges for spotwelds. After checking and rechecking the fit, I clamped it along the lower edge. I also put in a couple of zip screws on the top edge, then filled in a few spot welds on the lower edge.
So the top edge was not yet welded. Now it's time to cut and butt. If you followed the previous Lemans build you might remember that I touted a youtuber named Fitzee. His cut and butt technique is as simple as it is effective. This is why I placed the patch panel on top of the damaged area. The idea is to double cut through both panels along the top in increments of about 6 or so inches. The patch can then be pushed even with the original metal step by step and spot welded into place.
After double cutting and putting in my first spot weld I found the panel needed to go up farther, so I went ahead and ran the cutting wheel along the seam and pushed the patch panel up into place. I had to do this several times to get the fit just right.
here's what it looked like after cut and butt:
There's still a lot to do here, but it lines up well and will be easy to finish.
Passenger Wheel Opening
As mentioned, Some prior "customizer" did violence to the wheel openings to make room for some ugly truck tires. Now, I couldn't find anyone who made the repair panel for the Lemans/GTO. So I bought a pair for the same year Chevelle. I was hoping they were close enough so that I could modify them. I reasoned that I could choose to spend oodles on new quarter skins and spend weeks installing them (and of course modify them because they are only available for a '66). Been there, done that, out of the question. Or, I could improvise and adapt. That's what I choose.
And actually, when they came in the mail I was pleasantly surprised. The wheel opening was pretty close to the same contour. But they are too short, so it's time to cut and stretch them.
Since the half way point of the opening is sort of flat, that's where I made my cut:
I cut off the rolled lip about two inches away from the butchered opening all around the perimeter to get rid of the curved portion of the original panel. I then drew a level line below the belt line which approximately corresponds to where I want to position the divided panels. Satisfied with the test fitting, I temporarily positioned them with zip screws:
Each end of the patch panel matches up with the existing curve pretty well. I just needed to fill in the gap.
First I shimmed out each side of the gap until they were aligned, then spot welded a piece of scrap in the middle, above the wheel lip area. I didn't fill it to the top because I am going to use only the bottom three or so inches of the panel.
I then made a piece to complete the underside flange, the part that will connect to the wheel house flange. Lastly I made a piece to create the peaked character line. Over to the vice for a little bending and shaping, then welding and grinding.
So it took a total of three pieces. Here's how it looks:
This will work.
Wheel House Flange
Now it's time to reconstruct the wheelhouse inner flange. As mentioned above, I had already put in the first piece of flange when I was fixing the rear of the wheel house.
In order to get the wheelhouse to line up correctly with the outer quarter I screwed the patch panel back on the car and got some narrow strips of sheetmetal from the scrap bin. I clamped each piece inside the patch panel's wheel lip, and it was pretty much a straight shot all the way across the top. I was able to form the entire flange from three pieces.
Now I needed a way to keep the pieces in place because I needed to remove the patch panel to weld everything. So I cut up some pieces of clothes hanger wire, spaced them vertically along the gap, and tacked them into place:
I actually thought this was pretty clever. Having endured a less than successful recreation of this flange with the prior Lemans, getting this part to line up exactly right was one of my highest priorites.
Front:
Back:
The connection to the Chevelle patch panel is really quite good here at the rear.
Having established the proper contour of the opening, I began filling in the gap:
And here's the completed wheel house:
And some rust prevention:
Now I'm ready for the cut and butt of the outer patch panel. I rescrewed it into position and double cut around the circumference incrementally about six inches at a time, pressing the patch panel in even and spot welding as I went. I also made sure the waste piece did not fall down into the trunk drop area.
Here's the result:
It lines up pretty nice. You can see how at the front I will need to create the rest of the lip.
For this I created the flange that spot welds to the wheelhouse flange, then started making the rest of the lip:
1/15/25 The wheel opening has a sort of flat area that gradually disappears into the lower part of the quarter. But after comparing what did here to the driver's side I decided to modify what you see above. I needed the transition to die out at a place higher up on the quarter, and to modify the shape of the original lower quarter a bit to make the old and new blend together better.
So I reshaped the transition and cut out a little more of the original quarter:
You can see the the flat part of the lip dies out much more gracefully. I like this much better.
I started shaping a patch:
After I got the right shape I stitched it in:
Ground smooth:
Not bad.
For the back lower edge I actually didn't need to create a transition but I did need to make the transition smooth. Here's a photo from the top of this post, but this time we can look at it for how the quarter patch panel interfaces with the the wheel lip and the original metal:
I Z'd the lower patch panel because I thought I wanted to use more of the original shape of the wheel opening, but after doing the driver's side later I discovered that this was not necessary.
After I put in the wheel lip patch it was such a good fit that all I had to do was stitch the area together and grind it smooth:
I have yet to finish up the welding on the lower patch panel, as you can see.
Next I completed the welding all the way around the wheel lip and ground it smooth:
You can't really see it in this pic but there is some minor warpage just about where the flash reflection is, and another place dead center above the opening. Even though I was careful to quench and not let heat build up it still happened. Dang. And, all along the horizontal part of the weld seam the original metal puckered out, creating a sort of valley with the weld in the bottom of the valley.
I wonder about this panel because I didn't have this problem with the first Lemans. Maybe it's a different alloy or something, I don't know. But in any case I just added to the work I needed to do.
Here's where the shrinking disk really justified its cost. As I have experimented with it I've gotten better at how it's best used. The amount of area to shrink, where to shrink, how long to run the disk on the panel, all this has a learning curve. In this repair I started at the center and ran the disk on the pucker just slightly above the weld line, back and forth in a four inch area for maybe ten seconds, then immediately quenched with water.
The area shrank! I moved rearward and shrank the next four inches, continuing along to the point where the seam turns nearly vertical and the pucker had faded out. Amazingly, as I reworked it the warpage gradually faded out as well. Even the "tin can" effect started to disappear and the panel started to firm up.
But even though the warpage was almost gone the whole area had recessed inward about a quarter of an inch. I needed to body work the panel, but access to the back of the panel through the trunk is very limited. I would have to innovate.
I loaded the trunk with a piece of steel plate, a three foot 2x4, a piece of wood closet rod, and a piece of 1x6 pine, along with a hammer and a heavy mallet. I didn't know what exactly I would need, but since I'm old I didn't want to get in and out of the trunk a dozen times.
Using these various implements as pry bars, hammering points, and levers, I was able to access nearly all of the damage and work it outwards. The rest of the damage I was able to reach from inside the passenger compartment. I put a straightedge on the panel and was pleased to discover than the panel was less than 1/8" away from flat. I know that's not flat or metalfinshed, but sorry I'm just not that good. This amount of remaining damage can be filled with a fairly thin amount of plastic filler and it will be a lasting repair.
Here's the first application:
Just out of curiosity I put a straightedge on the unsanded filler, and by George it was nearly flat.
So I sanded it out and gave it another thin coat then sanded again. It's really close, so I started spreading spot putty. I was pretty happy with the result, so I moved on to the back of the panel.
Happily there is access to the back of this part of the panel. I did a bunch of hammering and dollying around the letter holes because a prior owner had pounded recesses for each hole so he could fill them with plastic filler. I suppose that's easier than welding them up, but it also caused wider damage to the area.
The area just in front of the bumper had taken a hit, so that needed work as well. I also ran the shrinking disc on a pucker just below the letter holes.
Satisfied with the contour of the panel I prepped it and spread a thin coat of plastic filler. Oh, I forgot to mention a part of the process of working plastic filler: Rasping.
As the filler cures and hardens there is a stage where the filler is still soft enough to run a rasp over it, but not so wet that it pulls the filler off and it balls up. Running the rasp over the slightly cured filler allow you to shape the filler and remove ridges. This is a real timesaver.
So here's the panel just before I started prepping for primer:
I got a couple of wet coats of primer on the panel:
Surprisingly good. A couple of days later I sanded it out with a 12" Durablock and 120 grit. Most of the primer gets sanded off, and this tells you where your highs and lows are. Primer will stay in the low areas, and filler will show in the high areas. I patched in glazing putty where there were flaws, sanded it out and primered it again:
Although it's hard to tell, this is a vast improvement over the previous pic. There were some pretty substantial repairs made to this panel, but it's really starting to assume the proper shape and contours. I still have a long way to go before it's totally flat, but this represents real progress.
Driver Quarter:
It's basically the same thing as the passenger side, so I'll pretty much just post pics. Here's the before:
This side was less rusty than the passenger side. I wire brushed and coated it with POR15:
Sigh. I found rust on the back of the wheelhouse:
I marked it, cut it out and made a patch:
I ground it smooth:
11/9/24 I cut and butted the lower quarter patch:
Now, this time I did not weld the bottom first. I vicegripped the lower edge and stitched in the top. I think this worked better because I could pull away the lower edge and remove the waste a lot easier.
Patch divided and test fitted:
I should note that I got a little smarter for this side. By creating a longer tongue the two pieces overlap and are easier to line up for welding:
The piece at the top is just temporary to keep the gap properly located.
11/12/24 As with the passenger side, now that I have the patch panel modified and fitted in place I can build the wheelhouse out to it. Here's the finished wheelhouse:
POR15:
And the patch panel cut and butted:
I blended the transition into the front of the quarter:
Welds ground out:
I had a serious problem with warpage on this side, so much so that I got disgusted with it and worked on other parts of the car for a couple of months. Over that time I've been thinking about ways to correct the problem since backside access is so limited.
I've been sporadically running the shrinking disc on it, which has yield good but not total results. I've also been working from inside the trunk prying with pieces of wood and pry bars. That has also helped, but not enough.
As of this writing I will continue to work the panel (with patience), hopefully getting the panel flat.
Conclusion
Although perhaps not many cars have suffered the indignity of radiused wheel openings, many certainly have rust in this area. I chose to fix it rather than replace the panel. Would make the same choice again? Would I use the 67 Chevelle patch panels again? With this particular car, probably not. My quarters had quite a bit of other damage. That made for a lot of work which could have been avoided with skins.
Just doing the wheel opening itself required a lot, A LOT, of shaping and modification. This repair is not for novices. Plus, if you want to use the original Pontiac wheel opening trim it won't fit.
I chronicled the replacement of the driver and passenger quarter panels for Lemans #1. That was in no way easy, either. It's probably a little bit faster and required less body work. But quarter panels aren't cheap, and they're not easy to install.
Bottom line: The amount of other damage should be the determining factor. I should have bought the skin, or better, the whole panel.
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