QUARTER PANEL REPLACEMENT IN FRONT OF THE WHEEL

The quarter panels in front of the wheel well need attention. As this is a convertible, this area was filled with tons of leaves and dirt. It also did not help that the area right at the lower doors edge was previously repaired with bondo. Both of these situations allowed water to accumulate and thus rusted out the panel and unibody. That rust area you see there on the rocker (passenger & drivers side) I could push in with a screwdriver, nice and safe especially for a convertible.

Note: I had to repair both sides of my car so you will notice I have pictures from either side of my car so don't get confused. Some of the pictures came out better than the others and I used the best ones for the site.

The most important thing I can suggest to anyone is to buy subframe connectors in case things like this are lurking below your pretty paint work.

To repair this area I found a 72 Scamp 2 Door in the scrap yard that had similar bodylines to the 68 cuda and I carefully cut out the spot welds to obtain this panel. The scamp panel is considerably longer than the cuda in this same area so it must be cut down and modified to fit.

Ok lets fix the unibody. I took a piece of 16 guage sheet metal and made this patch that wraps under the whole rotted area.

Then I welded it in.

Note: The car is now white as I had it sandblasted and painted certain area with white urethane paint which is very cheap compaired to other colors. This will keep the area from rusting inside and also the exterior until I block sand the entire car for final paint.

Here is another shot of the scamp panel. I also I cut it pretty close to fit the area, sandblasted it, primered it and punched a few holes to rosette (plug) weld the panel to the car beforel I run a full final weld along the edge.

Ok this picture is of the passenger side panel tack welded in. Time to check for fit and straightness before we get too far down the welding road. I threw down a coat of zinc weld through primer to provide some sort of metal protection in the seam. The weld through primer is a $#%#$% to weld through. After I get the panel tack welded just right I will remove the exposed primer and wirebrush the metal clean for final welding. I cannot stress enough that welding is far easier with clean metal.

All right, I welded the panel in and ground down the weld, looks pretty good but it isn't done yet.

After the entire panel is welded and the welds ground down I used some 60 grit paper to remove most of the paint in the area. Next step is to use a 36 grit paper to score up the metal a bit and lay down a nice coat of waterproof body filler. I am using Evercoats Metal to Metal Aluminized filler for this area. This filler is waterproof and silver in color. It sands nicely and its waterproof, exactly what you need in an area like this.

Another shot of the panel. As you can see I made the curve of the wheel well pretty good and the panel is real straight too. In order to kep the panel straight I would weld about 2" and then hammer/dolly the area flat, weld another 2" and hammer/dolly again and so on and so on.
For the edge you see here I drew a line inside my longer Scamp panel using the inner quarter panel housing as a guide. I then cut down my Scamp panel so it was about 1" longer so I could bend it up into the wheel well. I then cut slots in it to facilitate bending it. Once I got the bend I needed I welded the panel slots up which also welds them to the inner quarter housing. After all is welded up I used my grinder to smooth down the welds.
Not bad looking and this is with no bondo applied yet!

All that is left is to spread a coat of filler and sand it down. Prime and paint. All done!

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