PReal

Well, I've had my car running well for around 2 months and I decided to go ahead and pick up the sheet metal locally to do the body work on my car. A little under a grand later and an SUV full of steel, I'm about to embark on my first journey into body work.

I am replacing...

Fenders
Door Skins
Rear Quarter Panels
Front and Rear Valences
Taillight Panel

I've searched through the chonricles of the classic's forum and read a lot of info. I will remove the passenger fender tomorrow to begin removing the door to replace the door skin...

Here goes nothing...


And the guys I bought my panels from have almost convinced me to do the paint myself as well...

Parker

tempoffroad

take your time, measure, and then measure again. weld slow and one panel at a time it will come together. good luck and keep the pic coming.

Adrenolin

Did the fenders, doors and quarters all need replacing or could you have patched them instead? I had to patch the front lower corners on our doors, the rear lower corners on the fenders, 1 patch to the front lower section of a fender and still another patch to the passengers quarter. One door bottom looked like swiss cheese there were so many pinholes in it but 30 minutes with the welder, some careful grinding and a coat of POR-15 inside and out they are as solid as they were new (perhaps more so lol). I did replace the drivers quarter but that was due to a PO bad attempt at bondo. All these where fairly small patches and were easily cut out and welded in.. others use body adhesive instead and no welding at all.

My point is that with less then 50.00 bucks into sheet metal you can fix a lot of the bad areas pretty easily. Patching a small section thats bad is easier then full panels. Regardless of how good the repops are.. nothing fits like original parts.

That said... good luck and let us know how it all works out! I'm so glad that part of ours is finished.


PS.. sorry but I just had a discussion on how our society has moved from repair to replace over the past 50 years with a few people. Everything today is disposable and very little is actually repaired anymore. It started out like

"Got my car repaired today"
"What was wrong with it"
"They replaced the alternator"
"So.. what did they repair?"

Thus the discussion started..

PReal

I really need to replace everything....

The front fenders are damaged and rusted. Not worth the effort to repair.

The doors have creases from the 40 year old hinges allowing them to hit the fenders. I purchased new lower hinges as well. I will repair the top hinge.

The rear quarters are both destroyed in front and behind the wheel well. I will cut the old quarters off below the body line to maintain the integrity of the body lines. There was old **** carpet and padding that was stuffed in the pockets inside the trunk on the quarters. They trapped moisture and casued the rot.

The front valence is destroyed from rusted bolts.

The taillight panel is bent inwards and is very rusty around the rear lights.

The rear valence has a huge hole in it from my wife's uncle backing into a pipe in the woods when he was in the woods with a lady friend in 1978.



I plan on taking a lot of pics.

109jb

One thing I like about replacing big panels is that it gives a chance to see the big picture of what is behind the big panel. For example, I re-skinned the doors on my 70. They had the lower corners rusted out and I had thought about just patching them. I chose to go with complete skins and I am glad I did because I found problems inside that needed addressing that I wouldn't have seen before. Same with my quarter panels. This probably isn't a big concern if the car is from a place where salting the roads isn't practiced, but mine was a midwest car and was full of rust. That rust spreads and it seemed like everything I opened up revealed something else that needed to be fixed.