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LH Quarter Panel

This is what the driver's side quarter panel looked like when I started.

Here it is cut off to expose the wheelhouse rust damage I had to repair. I did not cut the quarter off until I had a repo quarter panel to make sure I didn't cut off too much.

The inner and outer wheelhouses could not be saved

After taking accurate measurements and some bracing the inner and outer wheelhouses were cut out. Again I did not do this until I had repo metal on hand.

They do not make wheelhouses for convertibles. However, you can trim down coupe wheelhouses and they will be identical to the convertibles. Refer to the article on the right. Refer to the RH Quarter Panel Installation page for additional info on how to repair wheelhouse caps.

In this picture the inner and outer wheelhouses have been trimed and fitted, but not welded in. Also the wheelhouse cap had not been repaired yet.

Here the wheelhouses have been welded in and the wheelhouse cap has been repaired. Again, refer to the RH Quarter panel page for additional info on how to repair wheelhouse caps.

NOTE: The rear trunk dropoffs should not be welded in until after the quarter panel has been installed as the repos are a little short and need to be fitted to the quarters. Here the dropoff is clamped in place only.

The inner structure needed to be sandblasted so that it could be primed. This I did in February when it warmed up to 35 degrees F.

Here it is all prep'd and ready for epoxy primer.

Here it is in primer.

Before stalling the quarter panel the inside face was masked off and coated with factory style undercoating from Resto Rick.

Here it is with the quarter panel being installed. The installation followed the same process as the RH Quarter Panel.

In this picture the buttwelding process was well underway. Observe that I kept all of the original convertible well and rear side window opening section of the original quarter panel.

The left hand corner of the convertible well opening was not as bad as the right side, but still needed repair. Here I had welded a piece of a repair panel, which appears tucked under the quarter.

Here the welding is all done and the welds are ground down.

And finally here is a shot showing the disasterous convertible well after the repairs.

And lastly here is an inside shot with the trunk hinge brace, covertible crossmember and wire hold-downs all reattached.

LH Wheelhouse Repairs

In this picture you can see the hidden partial vin stamping, which was never removed from the car during the repair process.

I had to make a small repair where the lower inner panel overlaps the upper inner panel. You don't really see this when the wheelhouses are installed.

The inner and out wheelhouse on the left side was beyond repair. The flange along the wheelhouse cap needed extensive repair.

To make the outer wheelhouse, I took a new repo wheelhouse for a coupe and clamped the remnants from the original to it.

Here is the new piece roughly trimmed next to the original piece.

The new inner wheelhouse was fashioned in the same manner. The inner has a lot of things welded to it on the car, so all of the spotweld drill holes were transfered over to it.

Here is the outboard face of the inner side panel with the wheelhouses installed and the wheelhouse cap repaired. About halfway up the inner panel you can see the line where the factory dip primer stopped. A lot of good the dip primer did on this car !

Here is a shot showing the rear side where the inner and outer wheelhouses meet. It took a lot of hours to get the repair to this point. At least it was mid-winter with not a lot of anything else going on.

And lastly here is an inside shot with the trunk hinge brace, covertible crossmember and wire hold-downs all reattached.

LH B-Pillar Repair

It is very common for the bottom of the B-pillars to rot out on these cars. This one was no different. I ended up buying a whole new repo LH B-pillar jsut so I could cut off this bottom piece and fix just the very bottom. Convertible B-pillars are actually different than coupes, as convertibles had a spring loaded wedge mechanism on them to keep the doors from binding when the body flexes due to no upper support structure.

Here the patch was welded in.

And the welds are all gorund down.