So I bought this one today.

Ok, time to get serious again! It has been too long since I have been able to make time for this car. It took several hours just to get my head back in it and figure out what I did last and what I should do next. I confirmed that the outer wheelhouse was good to go so I continued the stitch welding on it which is almost done.
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Just before that I revisited the belt line and noticed that the driver’s side had lost its gentle arc which probably flattened out when I cut the quarter skin off. I set up the laser across the back of the car to make sure that I get the position of the rearmost point of the belt line where it should be and I’m glad I did because it was about a half inch higher than the passenger side.
It looked worse then the picture shows.
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The bodywork in between the rear belt line and the opening for the trunk lid looked particularly bad and this was a good time to figure out why. Kinda like pealing an onion. I buzzed the paint off to expose the factory lead joint and quickly determined that I needed to get the lead out to straighten out what wasn’t so “carefully” done at the factory. I look at this detail on this car and my silver car to see that none of them are great but this corner of this car was particularly bad. It is a very complicated and tight spot so it is understandable that it would have been hard to get it done perfectly.
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In this case it probably didn’t help that there were about 3 spot welds that missed the mark!
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Here’s how I pulled the driver’s side down to get it level. In the end it required a longer 2 x 4 but I got it down and it stayed there. :thumbsup:
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Since the belt line is relatively flexible I felt like I wanted to get that arc at least close to where it should be before installing the panel.
I tacked in this false work which will be easy to knock off after the quarter is installed and the belt line looks great.
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Of course now that I tweaked the back of the car into symmetry another complete test fit of the replacement quarter was necessary including the skirt. This has got to be right!
Thankfully it fit as well as it did before and will still require some fine tuning/trimming here and there before final install.
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Next will be doing the rust repair on the replacement quarter assembly and a little work on the trunk floor in the car, both of which will be easier to do before final installation.
 
Got these cut out and the new metal cut to fit. A little more prep and they’ll be ready to weld in but there’s one more small patch in that area that I still have to get after. I used an original piece of metal from my ‘68 Road Runner for that small funky shaped patch.:)
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And here’s what happens when a carpenter with limited metal forming tools is tasked with forming a complicated patch panel.

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I haven’t welded it in or even cut the old one out yet but it looks like it will fit very nicely and it’s repeatable!:usflag:
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