As mentioned elsewhere, the Galaxie's driver rear quarter was ruined in the accident. Jeff had a friend of a friend attempt some bodywork, but the result was "less than optimal". The repair process this guy did made me feel physically ill, nauseated, to look at. Jeff had procured a -perfect- rear quarter to replace the crunched quarter, but the f.o.f. talked him into letting him try a patch .
Bolow is the sad result. This is the hole in the perfect panel.
I have no pics of the crunched panel after the "patch" job. Just imagine the worst bodywork you've ever seen, and you'll get close. Jeff mercifully cut the panel off before I drove up to help.
There was one good spot on the crunched panel and I cut out a square to patch the patch hole in the perfect panel. The piece that was originally cut out of the perfect panel was ruined.
I spent some time on the test fitting, trying to keep the gaps as small as possible. Halfway there in this pic.
The patch welded in with minimal distortion. There were few spots I thought it would shrink and I got on those with the hammer and dolly while they were still bright orange. There was one spot that distorted and you can see that directly under the patch.
I test fitted the quarter several times finding the tight spot that had distorted/shrunk and was causing the slight pucker. Put the panel on, flex the distorted area, pull the panel of, beat with hammer, repeat.
More on-dolly hammering, and some shrink hammering in one spot, too. There's the Squire in the background. It was hot in Sacramento, about a 100 or so. Hey, I'm wearing one of my Fangler shirts, too! At this point the distortion was gone. It took about an hour's worth of panel beating, five or six test fittings... and, finally, it was perfect. That old time early 60s Ford sheet metal is thick and soft.
I just used a mig and filled all the cut out spot weld holes with rosette welds, it seemed like there were about 90,000 spot weld holes. It was hot as hell in the shop, and no fan on during the welding of course, so I decided to forego the welding shirt. Result: arc burned arms, plus a couple bonus spatter burns. I also forgot to wear my shop-rag/bandana during part of the welding (but only set my hair on fire once). Afterward, the fender fit perfect and all the gaps were just right.
Jeff got busy with the grinder cleaning up the rosettes, and sanded the paint around the patch down to prep for a light skim coat right after this pic. The body line runs true through the patch, it all came out pretty darned good. It will be 100% invisible after the skim.
