We had another good weekend on the Galaxie! Saturday morning we started cutting out the rest of the lower quarter panel in front of the passenger rear wheel to make room for the patch. We had to cut part of the quarter away to get in the new rocker, and it was damaged anyway from someone sitting the car down on wheels. Why they put the wheels under the rockers and quarters instead of the frame, I'll never understand. Anyway, here's a pic with most of the area cut away, and my brother and I were working on the spot welds and getting the edges off....
Here's a pic of the area after we were done getting all the old metal off. Like everything else, we cleaned up the inner rocker, primed it, undercoated it, and sprayed the edges where we would be welding with weld through primer....
To control distortion, we decided to do a lap joint on this patch. I'm just not a good enough welder to butt weld these seams with an acceptable level of distortion. We used a pair of Vise Grips that have a special set of jaws in them to create a flange on the upper edge of our patch panel. Here's a pic of the patch after we had it trimmed down to size and flanged....
Here's a look at the first fit up of the patch. It fit really well from the get go. It's a little long so some massaging will be required on the rear wheel well lip but we did that on the other side as well......
Since we didn't have clamps with a long enough throat to clamp up the lower edge of the original quarter panel to the patch, we elected to suck the joint tight with small sheet metal screws. I used #6 x 1/2" screws. We have a pneumatic puncher tool that we used to punch the lower edge of the original quarter panel skin with for plug welds....
A small detail I almost forgot to post in here......
The lower quarter originally had drains stamped in it. The patch panel did not have these so we had to fab them to get the factory correct appearance dad wants on this. Here's a look at one of the original drains and you can see where dad pulled the crushed rocker out with a dent puller probably 20 years ago.....
First we laid out the location of the three drains...
Then we cut the "T" shape with the Dremel. I didn't get all the pictures I wanted on this. We were making too much progress and I forgot. Next we clamped a body dolly with a good crisp edge to the rocker as an anvil and then using a hammer and a brass drift, we bent the 'ears' up into position. Of course this left a pretty wide gap down at the end of the "T". My brother held a piece of copper that we shaped to mimic the shape of the drain in position and I welded up the gap. Not the most beautiful stuff but I got it done....
Much prettier with some grinding and few touch up welds....
Then the piece was prepared for installation. I cleaned it with lacquer thinner and then sanded the whole thing with 220 grit paper. Then I used a Scotch Brite type clean up disk in the grinder on all the edges where we would weld. My brother primed the inside followed by undercoating followed by weld through primer on the edges where we would be welding......
