Did someone say progress?
With some time off work I was finally able to put some reasonable hours into the car for the first time this year, and some good steps have now been made.
First off, and most important of all - I got a new piece of carpet! I picked it up for pennies at a village fete, it's wide enough to fully cover the gravel area to the side of the car and was long enough to cut in half and give two pieces about as long as the main body section. Happy days!
Any way, back to the serious stuff, after a bit of fettling at the front section, I was able to get the drivers side rocker panel 95% welded in. There's a couple of holes at the front door jamb where I need to get the door off before I can get to it, but the rest is done. I've still got to grind the welds back and primer over them, but that will wait for another day.
With that now in, I was able to focus on patching the inner wheelhouse panel. After mocking it up in place I could see that the floor/underseat panel needed extending along the lip.
A rough shape was cut and offered up, tweaked and then welded in place.
That, along with the edges of both panels were then cleaned up and zinc primed ready for welding. I used my butt weld clamps in anger for the first time, to ensure a nice even fit around the panel.
I tacked in between the clamps, then jumbed back and forth between them to extend the weld without warping (good practice for when I get to the Quarter panels). Clamps were then removed and the rest of the runs completed. With the panel join completed, I then filled in the spot welds along the lower perimeter.
I didn't completed the full panel front to back though. The front section needs to be welded from inside the car, and there was too much junk in the way, so that would be cleared later and welded another day. (still pending...) The rear section didn't quite fit where I'd cut (bad cutting) and will some metal removing from the car side, but there is also another section of the same panel that needs replacing, so I will do both of those at the same time.
As with the rocker panel, the welds haven't been cleaned up yet, and I will wait until the rest of the welding is done and do them all at the same time.
Before attacking the rearmost section of the inner wheel house, I wanted to know how much of the rear quarter I could safely remove and still be able to cover with the patch panel. Offering up the panel as it was didn't help as it was being blocked by the door's chrome trim. This was removed, after carefully extracting the weather seal first - It did split around one of the plastic clips, but I am hopeful it can be re-used. I do have spares if it can't.
With the chrome out of the way I tried again, but also, now the rear window glass was in the way. Having taken the glass out a few years ago, I knew this wasn't going to be a quick job, but it was necessary, so I got on with it. I'd already pulled the trim off, so the first task was to remove the filler panel. Getting the screws out was simple, but gettting the panel out whilst the trunk lid was still attached proved more tricky. I'd got myself in a bit of a mess, having moved the panel but not enough to get it out, but too far to be able to fully open/close the trunk. It took a fair bit of wiggling, but it did come out - note to self - remove the trunk lid next time.
With that out of the way, I discovered it was really easy to use a sharp knife along the lower edge from the outside. Using a narrow blade I was able to get it right around the corner too, being able to bend it slightly as the angle changed. That was half the job done with relative ease - it was now the more difficult upper section that had to be tackled from inside.
You may remember that the inside was still storing a lot of the interior pieces, including the seats. This was all pulled out and given a quick clean up, before being re-located to a freshly vacated area in the loft. With a relatively clear interior, I was able to clean it up a bit more, before climbing in to attack the window seal from the inside. It was a lot tougher along the top and needed a heavier duty blade, as the thin one was bending too much for my liking. Even so, it didn't take long at all. I was well chuffed at around 40 mins of cutting to get it fully out, about 10% of what it took last time!
With the glass now out of the way, I was able to get a real check done on the size of the replacement skin. I was pleased to find that it extended right up to and just past the trunk edge, confirming that I could take pretty much as much of the quarter out as I wanted.
Armed with this knowledge I cut out the section of quarter immediately around the section of inner wheelhouse that needed to be replaced. I need to but a bit more, but have already got a much better view of what needs to be cut out.
More next time...