Feels good to have that swagger back instead of being kicked in the nuts, doesn't it?
BUILD THREAD “The Juggernaut”
- Thread starter Rktpwrd
- Start date
Absa-frigging-loutely.
Looks killer, nice work! Just for my own curiosity and learning, do you also metal finish the back side? Getting ready to do some patching work in similar areas and trying to hone techniques. Thanks for brining us along on the journey!
Sean
Sean
Thank you.
Yes absolutely I try to address the backside of anything I modify or repair, whenever possible. I firmly believe that a successful repair is one in which it is impossible to tell that anything was done afterwards. There are always exceptions of course, like if the areas in question are inaccessible, but generally speaking IMO the backsides should be addressed as well. Sometimes especially more so if the area has been heavily worked because it’s likely compromised any sort of factory corrosion protection and resistance.
With this back tail panel for example, I have been grinding the backside of the welds and plan on skimming the areas with filler and sanding them smooth for an invisible repair once painted. This is not something that a bodyshop would normally do, but then again it wasn’t exactly a normal modification or repair either.
Thanks for joining along with me on this journey!
Well, once again it’s been a while.
I’ve been steadily plugging away on getting my fabricated filler panel fitting the back end of the car since the tail panel has been repaired. This is going to be detailed and take some time, so schedule that time, grab your favourite beverage and settle in for an informative read.
I more or less started getting my panel to fit the back of the car by centering it and then clamping the outer “wings” to the underside of the trunk lid with some 1/8” spacers. 1/8” is the gap I want to have. Yes it’s a little tight, but the rest of the tolerances are very close too so it’ll fit right in.
It’s kind of a weird angle, but in these next two pictures you can see the amount of material I need to add back to my piece to make up the gap:
It’s substantial and I’m a little pi$$y about it because I originally purposely had an inch of extra material to play with, but it is what it is and now it’s all about moving forward.
Here’s a look upwards from underneath, this was a double check to make sure I had the required clearance everywhere.
More views of it clamped, but from underneath now.
The point of this whole exercise was to be able to determine the amount of material I needed to add back to the wing sections, and thankfully it worked fairly well.
With that figured out, it was time to remove the clamps and spacers for a look at the topside with the trunk open.
Ugly.
Again, the gap and amount of material needed to add back is substantial, but oh well. A quick look at how the center section fits since the repairs and adjustments to the tail panel, and it’s obvious that the fit is so much better now:
With that looked at, I re-rigged the clamps and spacers back up, made two 90 degree, wider than needed metal pieces, and clamped those to the wings and butted them up against the tail panel:
After trimming the overlap, the strips were temporarily tack welded on, and the fit checked again.
Looks good right? Not quite. What I hadn’t accounted for was that the outer ends cannot be parallel with the trunk lid, because they are supposed to sit flush with, and underneath the taillight bezels. They need to taper inwards as they meet the taillights. That’s what these notches are for:
It was close, but not close enough. The tack welds needed to be cut, and the extra material removed to facilitate this. After these adjustments were made, the fit was correct. They still sit a tad proud in these pictures, but they’ll sit exactly flush with the bezels once the fabricated panel is permanently secured to the tail panel:
Continued >>>
I’ve been steadily plugging away on getting my fabricated filler panel fitting the back end of the car since the tail panel has been repaired. This is going to be detailed and take some time, so schedule that time, grab your favourite beverage and settle in for an informative read.
I more or less started getting my panel to fit the back of the car by centering it and then clamping the outer “wings” to the underside of the trunk lid with some 1/8” spacers. 1/8” is the gap I want to have. Yes it’s a little tight, but the rest of the tolerances are very close too so it’ll fit right in.
It’s kind of a weird angle, but in these next two pictures you can see the amount of material I need to add back to my piece to make up the gap:
It’s substantial and I’m a little pi$$y about it because I originally purposely had an inch of extra material to play with, but it is what it is and now it’s all about moving forward.
Here’s a look upwards from underneath, this was a double check to make sure I had the required clearance everywhere.
More views of it clamped, but from underneath now.
The point of this whole exercise was to be able to determine the amount of material I needed to add back to the wing sections, and thankfully it worked fairly well.
With that figured out, it was time to remove the clamps and spacers for a look at the topside with the trunk open.
Ugly.
Again, the gap and amount of material needed to add back is substantial, but oh well. A quick look at how the center section fits since the repairs and adjustments to the tail panel, and it’s obvious that the fit is so much better now:
With that looked at, I re-rigged the clamps and spacers back up, made two 90 degree, wider than needed metal pieces, and clamped those to the wings and butted them up against the tail panel:
After trimming the overlap, the strips were temporarily tack welded on, and the fit checked again.
Looks good right? Not quite. What I hadn’t accounted for was that the outer ends cannot be parallel with the trunk lid, because they are supposed to sit flush with, and underneath the taillight bezels. They need to taper inwards as they meet the taillights. That’s what these notches are for:
It was close, but not close enough. The tack welds needed to be cut, and the extra material removed to facilitate this. After these adjustments were made, the fit was correct. They still sit a tad proud in these pictures, but they’ll sit exactly flush with the bezels once the fabricated panel is permanently secured to the tail panel:
Continued >>>
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With the amount of material needed figured out and the adjustments made, it was time to fully weld the wing pieces and metal finish them out.
This is an extremely time consuming process with tacking, quenching with compressed air, and cutting the end of the welding wire off for the next tack, plus moving the welds around constantly, but is well worth it in the end when the panel has nearly zero distortion afterwards.
After this was done, I next pushed the ends of the wings upwards and back so that they sat tight up underneath the taillight bezels and then drilled some holes for Clecos at the outer edges through the tail panel and wing flanges. No pictures of that, but I didn’t really think it was necessary.
Now that I had the wings fitting the body nicely, it was back to clamping the fabricated piece to the underside of the trunk lid with the spacers again.
This time, to start building some stand-off supports for the bottom. I chose the outer edges of the reverse light housings, and just made some simple little tabs to fit in the opening between the panels:
Tacked, with two Clecos holding it from the inside:
Another double check afterwards, and the gap is still there and still consistent. So far so good.
Perhaps the trickiest part was to get the center section perfectly flush with the underside of the trunk lid. This required quite a bit of fussing and tweaking until I got it just right, and then marked the Cleco holes for drilling. This isn’t the greatest picture, but it’s the best I could do:
Wing flanges done? Check. Lower stand-offs done? Check. Gaps still consistent? Check. Time to tackle the center section gaps to the tail panel. Pretty much the same procedure as with the wings, make bent strips of metal, mark, cut, and tack them on, then test fit once again.
It doesn’t look too bad in those pictures, but if you look closer, I wasn’t happy with the slight gaps that were still present. This is because the tail panel isn’t perfectly flat and straight, so some adjustments needed to be made here as well.
Hence my notes of the changes to be made, and where they needed to be:
You’ll note that all the pieces I’m adding back in all have flanges on them, and that they all face inwards. This is to provide a clean, seamless and invisible method of attaching it to the car. I had originally intended to fully weld it to the tail panel, but as things are progressing and I’m seeing how well it’s starting to fit, that very well could change. I’m now seriously considering making this a bolt-on piece. It would be very easy to do by simply substituting nutserts for plug welds.
Hmmm. TBD.
🤔
Continued >>>
This is an extremely time consuming process with tacking, quenching with compressed air, and cutting the end of the welding wire off for the next tack, plus moving the welds around constantly, but is well worth it in the end when the panel has nearly zero distortion afterwards.
After this was done, I next pushed the ends of the wings upwards and back so that they sat tight up underneath the taillight bezels and then drilled some holes for Clecos at the outer edges through the tail panel and wing flanges. No pictures of that, but I didn’t really think it was necessary.
Now that I had the wings fitting the body nicely, it was back to clamping the fabricated piece to the underside of the trunk lid with the spacers again.
This time, to start building some stand-off supports for the bottom. I chose the outer edges of the reverse light housings, and just made some simple little tabs to fit in the opening between the panels:
Tacked, with two Clecos holding it from the inside:
Another double check afterwards, and the gap is still there and still consistent. So far so good.
Perhaps the trickiest part was to get the center section perfectly flush with the underside of the trunk lid. This required quite a bit of fussing and tweaking until I got it just right, and then marked the Cleco holes for drilling. This isn’t the greatest picture, but it’s the best I could do:
Wing flanges done? Check. Lower stand-offs done? Check. Gaps still consistent? Check. Time to tackle the center section gaps to the tail panel. Pretty much the same procedure as with the wings, make bent strips of metal, mark, cut, and tack them on, then test fit once again.
It doesn’t look too bad in those pictures, but if you look closer, I wasn’t happy with the slight gaps that were still present. This is because the tail panel isn’t perfectly flat and straight, so some adjustments needed to be made here as well.
Hence my notes of the changes to be made, and where they needed to be:
You’ll note that all the pieces I’m adding back in all have flanges on them, and that they all face inwards. This is to provide a clean, seamless and invisible method of attaching it to the car. I had originally intended to fully weld it to the tail panel, but as things are progressing and I’m seeing how well it’s starting to fit, that very well could change. I’m now seriously considering making this a bolt-on piece. It would be very easy to do by simply substituting nutserts for plug welds.
Hmmm. TBD.
🤔
Continued >>>
Last edited:
Skip ahead a little bit past the welding, grinding and metal finishing of the top pieces, and now we’re addressing the sides. These were pretty easy to do because I already had temporary pieces made and Cleco’d in place for the test fitting process.
I just kept the pieces Cleco’d in place, marked the edges, cut and welded them on.
In this next picture I’m planning ahead for modifying the top middle for aesthetic and functional reasons. The two black lines are where I’ll be cutting the top section out and replacing it with a wider one.
More on this later.
Today I started working on the last pieces, the 4 curved corners:
But first another quick look at the overall result so far:
I started with the top of the passenger’s side, I wanted to see if I could make the necessary piece and get the required curvature with my shrinker. It was VERY complicated and difficult, but it turned out fantastic:
You aren’t getting any tighter of a fit than this!!
One corner down and three left to go. I’ll be back at it again tomorrow, so we’ll see how much further along I can get.
All for now gents, thanks for the continued support and interest.
D.
I just kept the pieces Cleco’d in place, marked the edges, cut and welded them on.
In this next picture I’m planning ahead for modifying the top middle for aesthetic and functional reasons. The two black lines are where I’ll be cutting the top section out and replacing it with a wider one.
Today I started working on the last pieces, the 4 curved corners:
But first another quick look at the overall result so far:
I started with the top of the passenger’s side, I wanted to see if I could make the necessary piece and get the required curvature with my shrinker. It was VERY complicated and difficult, but it turned out fantastic:
You aren’t getting any tighter of a fit than this!!
One corner down and three left to go. I’ll be back at it again tomorrow, so we’ll see how much further along I can get.
All for now gents, thanks for the continued support and interest.
D.
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Love the attention to detail D, it's such a pleasure as always getting to follow along your thought process when problem solving.
Question:When looking at the last few pictures, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to water running down the trunk side channels. I'm not completely sure how that goes with the original panel, but I'm just wondering if there's any chance of water pooling or just staying somewhere it shouldn't, especially maybe if you make this a bolt on and don't have a nice welded fillet that closes the gap and lets the water run down and off the panel.
Probably a complete non issue, but it just popped into my head so I thought I'd ask 🙂
Question:When looking at the last few pictures, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to water running down the trunk side channels. I'm not completely sure how that goes with the original panel, but I'm just wondering if there's any chance of water pooling or just staying somewhere it shouldn't, especially maybe if you make this a bolt on and don't have a nice welded fillet that closes the gap and lets the water run down and off the panel.
Probably a complete non issue, but it just popped into my head so I thought I'd ask 🙂
Your fabrication, welding and metal finishing skills just amaze me Donovan. After your work is done, everything looks completely seamless. Nice job!
Thanks very much.
Obviously I can’t speak definitively yet, but I don’t think it’ll be much of an issue if at all. There’s not really any place that water can pool as everything is pretty much vertical. If you trace the trunk weatherstrip channel with your fingers it’s angled downwards as it reaches the flat areas on the tail panel. This should cause any water runoff to drain straight down the face of the tail panel long before it reaches the flat section which is really the only place it could possibly pool.
In addition, if I decide to make it a bolt-on piece, there will always be a slight gap between the panels no matter how hard I try to get them to sit tightly together. This will promote drainage as well as long as the gap doesn’t get plugged up with dirt.
I understand what you’re saying, but I really do think it’ll be a non-issue either way. Thanks for the question and the potential concern though, it’s input like this that a guy might not always think of and is greatly valued.
If I decide to make it a bolt-on piece, it’ll greatly simplify the work to be done moving forward. As it stands now, if I weld it on I’ll have to figure out how to paint sections of the tail panel and the backside of the fabricated panel ahead of time (as certain parts will be inaccessible afterwards), yet still leave sections bare metal to enable the pieces to be spot welded together. It can be done, but will require a lot of forethought and planning ahead.
However if I make it a bolt-on piece I can simply perform all the necessary bodywork to both pieces, paint them inside and out, then simply bolt them together. Ez-peasy.
I dunno yet. Still weighing the options and pros and cons of each method. Community input and opinions from the forum are appreciated as always.
Thank you Jeff. I’m really starting to think I missed my calling in life as I really do enjoy the challenge of metal working and fabrication. Understanding how metal moves and what can be done with it is just something that seems to come naturally to me. Some of the bizarre ideas and solutions I come up with to the individual challenges that pop up along the way would probably make most people question my sanity.
Haha
But hey, as long as they achieve the desired results, then maybe they’re not such crazy ideas afterall.
Right? 😏
