Happy New Year e28ers! Thanks for the support and kind words.
Alright, some good progress this week. Picking up where we left off, by deleting the bumper shock support to the spare tire well, I had to cap off the crossmember. It doesnt have to be perfecting sealed off as there are drain holes, and the holes in the valance that lead into the crossmember, but I didnt want to leave a gaping hole for mud to fill up. I'll cavity wax everything I can after its painted.
Gaping hole
IMG_0345 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Welded in
IMG_0347 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Tacked the corner piece in
IMG_0348 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Fully welded and ground down
IMG_0353 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Still need to fill the marker wiring holes but that can be an after work later job. Trying to knock out some bigger pieces while I have all this time off
IMG_0354 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
I thought about trying to just weld fill the bumper trim holes, but decided to cut some little squares, and the result was nicer
IMG_0355 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
IMG_0356 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Wasnt sure what I wanted to do on the right side. What I decided to do was cut the bumper tunnel off at the fuel tank bracket, which was quite rusty, and I ground all the rust off the tank bracket and left it at that. I have to balance wanting to do things well and correctly, and wanting to drive the car in this decade. So theres probably going to be some seams or areas of surface rust that the time to get to them vs the repercussions of leaving it makes it not worth doing. I dont want it to become a full bare shell rotisserie job that will never get done. So you can question my decisions, and thats fair, but this is the rationale behind it. There is a time/cost budget to this.
IMG_0362 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Painted the bracket with POR15 while I had access
IMG_0364 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Right side welded in
IMG_0389 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Still need to fill the bumper shock bolt holes, but I'll have a hole filling day and do the marker light, bumper shock, and hole saw holes all in one day
IMG_0390 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
And so we are led to my ultimate nemesis. The big daddy repair. The one I have been scared of. Most of what I've been doing will end up undercoated, rocker guarded or generally is in a low visibility location. I've been learning and improving, but issues with my fitment or welding would generally not be seen. This is different. This is highly visible, and I did not want to turn the side of the car into a pretzel. But, I was not gonna pay somebody to do this, so it was time to take a deep breath and do the damn thing.
IMG_0391 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
No going back! unsurprisingly the inner wheel arch lip was just as rusted as the outer, so they got cut off as one rusty lump.
IMG_0392 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
The first rough fit up on Thursday evening seemed pretty promising. This panel I bought from Valcas garage, probably a year ago
IMG_0393 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Little closer fitment
IMG_0394 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
The big gulp. I chose the top line, based on not wanting to be right up to the swage line, no reason to go over the swage line, but wanting to be near it. I could have just cut out the round arch, there wasnt rust above it, but that seemed like it could be a trickier fit. I'm not saying what I decided is best, its just the direction I decided on.
IMG_0395 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
For anybody attempting this, this is an important note. Although it makes the actual welding much nicer and easier, you do not want a perfect fit on the butt joint here. The outer panel is very close to the inner arch, so there is no room behind to get a dolly, so when you tack the panels, the weld shrinks the metal. If there is no room for it to shrink, it usually results in a depression or peak. The ideal situation is to tack the panels, and then hammer/dolly the welds to stretch them back out to where they were. In reality, you often dont have access to the back side of a panel, so you need to account for some shrinkage.
IMG_0399 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
This was marking out roughly where I needed to have more gap. my guestimates are not correct, the areas marked 1/16" were really around 1/32", the 1/8" were closer to 1/16". Overall a gap of .080" or so is probably adequate. You obviously dont want too much gap, as the weld gets very tricky.
IMG_0400 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
These panel clamps are really nice for things like this
IMG_0402 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
IMG_0403 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Started out with a tack every 2 inches or so. And went back around in between. Now I should have thought more about the angled seam downtowards the fuel flap. that does have some limited access behind. Not great, but you can get a dolly held in there. even though I couldnt dolly the top seam, I should have been stretching as I went. Both sides of the seam were fairly large flat sections far away from any support, bend, flange or anything. So they were more susceptible to warping. List of excuses over, I ended up with a bit of shrinkage on that seam.
IMG_0404 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
Ground down, I was overall really quite pleased. I had replaced the quarter panel, I hadnt ended up with something horribly unrecognizable, and I did it myself. Far from perfect, but some more work on the seams, it will be a minimal amount of filler involved.
IMG_0407 by
Warren Tomlinson, on Flickr
I went back in yesterday (Saturday), and using a prybar and piece of wood from the back side, to lever against the wheel well and flex out the angle seam, i then hammered the seam more. I'm down to under 1/8' of filler being needed to sort out the seam. I think I will come back at this to get the seam even better, but if it got bodywork and paint tomorrow, it isn't going to be a huge lump of filler in there. However, less is always better so I will come back at that.
Another thing you may be wondering, what about the inner wheel arch? I was just going to facbricate a 90* flange to repair it to match the outer, but I got thinking, I kind of want to roll the quarters Anyway, in case I want more tire. So I left the inner arch cut off, and I will roll the fender up to it, weld them together, and seam seal that. So thats the plan there. I'll wait until I have some suspension back in there to mount a fender roller. I could probably hammer and dolly the flange, since its only one layer of metal, or even cut reliefs in it to make it easier since I'll be welding it. But if i can roll the whole flange, thats cleaner.
How was the Valcas Garage panel? The fit was generally pretty decent. Any aftermarket panels I have experienced for other cars always are a general shape, and need a fair amount of working to get lined up. I would say this is better than many, but compared to the panels I was salvaging from my parts car, it did need work to line up. the important parts were mostly right, the distance between the swage line and the bumper depression for example, the most work was down near the door bottom and sill. I needed to reprofile that curve quite a bit, by shrinking and stretching the flanges, to get it to follow the door jamb and meet the sill. The fitment I landed on in this area is not perfect. To meet the inner arch flange on the inside, and the door jamb flange, it looks a little twisted to me, and the gap to the door at the bottom is probably 1/8" wide. The bottom is the best place to have such an issue, but I will probably come back at this and maybe build up the door jamb a bit to close the gap. I will revisit that when I'm fitting the used door that isnt so rusty.
It's been a while since I did a repair that I genuinely was unsure if I could do, and when I was done that I was driving home and really felt proud. So that was a nice feeling. The next day of course I was nitpicking my work more, but still, I did it, it's not horrible, and it can be made better before paint. Progress will slow down a little more now, I'll have to work for a living again on Monday. But i'm hoping to keep some momentum in the evenings, and on Saturdays.