Saturday, December 29, 2012

Right Rear Quarter Trunk Corner Repair - Part 3

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.   I headed down to Lexington, Kentucky to visit my daughter and her family Christmas Day afternoon.   It was the first time that my wife and I have spend Christmas Day with her at her home.  We took two vehicles since my wife was going to stay with my very pregnant daughter until she delivered.   I came back on the Thursday after Christmas since I still have to get ready for my Sunday obligations.   It also gave me a day for the midwest blizzard to pass through Indiana.   Thanks to the wind, there was only about 4" of snow evenly distributed in the driveway.   The snowblower made fairly quick work of clearing out my 80 feet long runway...er, driveway.

I stopped by Thrifty Supply and got a new bottle of Argon/CO2 and another spool of .023 MIG wire.   I figured I'd have a few days as a bachelor and could carve out some time for the fastback.   There was also another snow front scheduled to move through the area Friday night.

Waking up this Saturday morning I found that the "chance of flurries" dropped over 6" of the white stuff.   That was my first task so that in case of emergency, I could get my 89 year old mother-in-law in and out of the house.   Here's the look after snow removal...


The wind started to whip up and started drifting onto the driveway.  Such is life in the flatlands.


I took off to the office to finish up my work.  While there, I got a phone call from my wife that my daughter delivered her son, Simon Josef Clayton.   He finally decided to show up...all 8-1/2 pounds and 20-1/2" of him.  After my work obligations were done, I made some calls to let family know of the joyous occasion.  I headed home but stopped at Lowes to pick up some grinding bits to get the corner welds cleaned up.   I got the heater fired up while I grabbed some lunch.  Then hit the garage.

This is where I left things off...


The challenge will be the corner, particularly cleaning up the welds on the inside corner.  My 2" sander can't get in there, hence the grinding stones.

To save you the boredom of the tacking, grinding, tacking, grinding, etc.  I'll just show you the finished product...


It's not perfect, but it's as close as I can get without over stressing and fatiguing the metal.  The various size and shape of stones worked well in the corner.  There will definitely be a skim coat of Metal-to-Metal body filler. Here is the view looking from the rear of the car looking forward...


...and here is a view from the front of the quarter panel towards the rear of the car...


I wanted to check out how the newly repaired right side compared to the left side.   Here's the passenger side corner...


...And here is the passenger side after the metal work...


All in all, I'll take it.  It's better than rust and when it's finished, it will be as good as new.

I couldn't end without a picture of the newest member of the family...


Mom and baby are doing fine.  I'll be heading back to Kentucky tomorrow afternoon to celebrate New Year's with my new grandson and  "Grandma".   The icing on the cake today was my Alma Mater, the University of Louisville beat the UK Wildcats in the most heated rivalry in Kentucky basketball.   It's been a full, productive and blessed day.  No complaints from me.

Have a safe, happy, and blessed New Year.



8 comments:

  1. Congratulations on all fronts Dennis! Happy New Year to you and your growing family!

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    1. Thanks Sven. Happy and safe New Years to you as well.

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  2. Congrats on the new mustang lover, and that corner doesn't look half bad. It's coming along great!

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    1. Appreciate the comment Grant. I'm done with this part of the body and moving on to the next. Yes, more rust repairs, of which you'll become intimately familiar with. :-)

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  3. Not bad Dennis, you should be happy with that. With all the compound curves you are fighting there, that is about as good as it gets. Flame on!

    rj

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    1. Thanks RJ. I found an old article in Muscle Car Monthly where they did a similar repair to a GTX. I think I did at least as good as that repair looked in the photos, and I didn't have a shrinker/stretcher either. So I'll be satisfied with this repair and move on to the next.

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  4. That finished up great Dennis! Congrats on arrival of little Simon!

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    1. Thanks Alex. I'm pretty pleased with Simon and the bodywork. I hope youhave a great new year!

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