Ok so where are we today? Passenger front fender is straight, holes have been filled and door is smoothed/shaved, save for door handle and lock. Dealing with old damage on the quarter panel. Once the Qp was welded up I has a spot just behind the door that was low. Now, by low we're talkin' just over 1/8th inch. It's low over a 10" section. This is the area that had been hit once, looking at the older pictures one can pick it out if you're looking for it, and this was where I ground out the majority of the bondo originally.
Well so what did I do to resolve it? I tried to raise it, really I did. But finally I said f'it I wanna drive this thing some day and started to float it out. Is was coming out nice and proper. Got to the last coat I was going to lay over, and I mixed it light so I'd have more time to work out any air bubbles and have it baby butt smooth. Next morning pop out to make sure it set, nope not set yet. Waited another day, still nope. F)*&^&^%$##$^&**(())_)_!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! knowing it all had to come off now and as I'm prone to do, I went extreme and said f'it again. I went through a year of working to on the quarter to float it? mmm nope. Off it all came and back to trying to raise it. All I really did was stretch some parts of the QP. So I gave up.
Yeah I gave up thinking I could solve my issue without some advice. So I took my problem to my sounding board and the consensus was I the panel was pretty much locked in place. I should cut the through the weld at the low and see if the hip line could be raised. AYFKM? Cut? Again? More welding and grinding? AYFKM? So off we go again with the cutting wheel. once I had the slice in the QP, sure a chit the body could be moved up. The mistake was mine in not recognising it before I started tacking the QP back to the car.
I got another piece of advice, when I tack the cut back together, I need to planish it. Do what now? I can't get a dolly to the back side of the weld. There's a window and inner structure in the way. The response? Cut it out, and planish the weld, it's the fastest way to do it. Umm, I'm going to have to remove the interior to weld that back up. So, can you guess what I did? Yeah, I removed the window and tried to reach through the structure to hold the dolly one the backside. Wanna guess for how long I tried? No you don't.
So got back from my trip to bloodimore and I finally relented. Fired up the sawzall and and cut the structure out. Wow lots of access to the inside of the QP. Hey I should have done this a long time ago. The low is minimalat this point, there's light between the straight edge and the body line but so small I'm not going to bother measuring. A problem i did find was now there's highs where the metal was stretched trying to bring up that low. However having access to the back side helped with the situation. Used something called a donut dolly. Some of them are made of delrin, I used PVC pipe. It works like magic.
I got more movement and closer to the results I was looking for in 20 minutes than I had in weeeeeks. Now keep in mind I get an hour here an hour there with this thing, 4. 5. or even six hour work sessions aren't a reality in my world right now. There's a 3 year old who has the an ancestor named Adolph some where in his lineage I'm pretty sure demanding my free time. I had hoped to get the fender and door ready to go as I thought I was pretty close on the QP. Who knew. In the end still plugging away slowly dealing with my self created issues.
Tooks some time away from body stuff to replace the battery cables. Spins the big block over almost as fast as my Ram spins the 4.7,
Some day before I die.... Some day.
