Well, it might just be time to take a hiatus from this thing.
To say I’m pissed off, disheartened, disappointed, disillusioned, frustrated and a couple other “dis” words, would be the understatement of the century. The rear tail panel has been a MASSIVE thorn in my side lately, and all the shortcomings with it have only come to light since I’ve been trying to fit my fabricated panel in place.
As I’ve been trimming my piece and getting it closer to fitting between the tail panel and the trunk lid, the more apparent it was becoming that something was seriously out of whack with the tail panel. First, the passenger’s side was sitting inwards roughly a 1/2” when viewed from beside the license plate opening, yet the driver’s side was still touching the trunk lid.
The dimensions of my piece are equal on each side, so how is this even possible?
So I started looking for irregularities between the two sides. Looking from inside the trunk, this ledge is drastically different from passenger’s side to driver’s:
You can see by the width of it as compared to my finger that the driver's side sits substantially further back than the passenger's, to the tune of over a quarter inch. That would explain the difference I was seeing in relation to the trunk lid.
This “ledge” is actually the bent pinch weld flange on the trunk pan, and is what the tail panel sits on, on the other side of it. So, I had to (again) drill out all the spot welds along the pinch weld, but this time, not only on the driver’s side, but on the passenger's as well to try and get some movement out of it.
This only resulted in minimal movement, it got the gap marginally better, but still nowhere near as much as I needed. Out came the 13lb deadblow BFH, and after wailing away on it, it only served to make me more aggravated. It was like the tail panel had a twist in it, so finally I clamped a 4’ long piece of 1 1/2” square stock to it and gave it the beans. Pushed in on the driver’s side, and pulled out on the passenger’s, and that finally seemed to do the trick.
Now for the next issue. With the “bump” protruding up from being level with the rolled edge on the tail panel, the trunk lid was hitting my fabricated piece when closing. Ok fine, apparently the top of the bump is supposed to be flush with the rolled edge. Make new brackets to Cleco it in place further down, and try it again.
Great, the trunk lid no longer hit, so onto levelling it. Since it has to be level to the lid, I put air in the rear bags and carefully levelled the back of the car until the license plate cutout part of the trunk lid was perfectly level. This is level with the rest of the car, because the trunk lid aligns with the quarter panels, the trunk filler panel, etc.
Here, with the plate flipped down and a light shining upwards, you can see it’s nicely square to the trunk lid.
Great, right?
Not exactly.
While it looks great from the outside here, opening the trunk lid revealed this: The passenger’s side looked somewhat acceptable…
…but this was the driver’s side:
What the actual F???
Sooo, I started looking again for any irregularities that would cause this discrepancy. What I found was incredibly shocking. Somewhere along the line, FROM THE FACTORY, the bend/brake line on the driver’s side of the tail pan for the pinch weld was put in the wrong place. It was bent roughly 3/8” - 1/2” too low. This results in the tail pan sitting that much higher on that side.
Unbelievable.
I could never figure out or understand why even the stock plastic filler panel never fit right, I had always just written it off to be crappy flimsy plastic. Now I know.
So by now, I’ve identified and corrected a couple of problems, but am faced with a really big one now. How in the flying blue hell am I going to fix this?!?!
It’s not too often I get stymied on how to move metal around to achieve what I want, but this one has me really stumped. I lost a couple of nights sleep wrestling with how to fix this, and as of writing this, I’m still not completely sure. What I have done though, is to remove the offending extra 3/8” of material from, and including, the pinch weld flange. Then I had to drop the gas tank so that I could access the spot welds behind the filler neck, and drill those out too.
This allowed the tail panel to move independently of the trunk pan, but even with all the downwards force I could exert, I couldn’t get the tail pan to sit down any farther on the driver's side. Not without a relief cut somewhere. I ended up having to make a vertical cut almost completely through on the driver’s side, making the tail panel into a roughly 2/3rds - 1/3rd situation.
With this relief cut, I could at least get the 2/3rds section which includes the center part, to move down the required amount. I drilled a hole while holding it down for a Cleco, and that’s all that’s currently holding it in place.
It’s ugly AF, but what else am I to do??
Just a little bit of difference:
Thanks GM, for your shoddy manufacturing and assembly line workmanship.
So, that’s where I currently stand. While I got the movement out of the 2/3rds section (which thankfully corrected the out of level problem), I have no idea how I’m going to get the remaining 1/3rd section to move. It’s very securely welded in place to the quarter panel, the trunk gutter and the trunk tub all in that corner, it ain’t gonna be easy however I do it.
At least now with the 2/3rds section pushed down, I was able to make my piece fit level.
So as I said at the beginning of this, I’m completely disenchanted (there’s another “dis” word) with the whole frigging thing. Time to step away from it for a good long stretch and hopefully regain some patience and develop a solution.
D.
