1970 Chevelle Quarter Panel Repair - Widening The House

2 When we lined up the new door, we noticed the bottom edge wasn't shaped exactly like the original. This is a common occurrence with replacement sheetmetal, due to the stamping process. We'll show how to correct this in a later story.

3 Here, Tommy Barber is installing the new decklid so we can get the quarter-panel lined up. With so much sheetmetal being replaced, fitment and alignment are critical issues that have to be paid close attention to. If even a seemingly minor part like our decklid isn't aligned correctly, it'll throw off our quarter-panel alignment--which'll throw off the door alignment, which will then throw off the front fender alignment.

4 To make removing the old panel easier, Tommy uses a "can opener" blade on an air chisel to remove most of the old metal, leaving the edges left to have their spot welds drilled out so the rest can be pried off. This also makes getting to the factory spot welds easier.

5 Here's a good look inside with most of the factory quarter removed. Thanks to its salty northern life, there's not much left of the outer wheelhouse. That's OK, as we've got new metal to replace it with.

6 With more spot welds to drill, Tommy breaks out the plasma cutter and trims away most of the old outer wheelhouse. This could also be done with a cutoff wheel if you don't have a plasma cutter to play with.

7 This trunk/deck brace is spot welded onto the wheelhouse (the small rectangle of steel at the bottom) so after the factory welds are drilled out, we'll clean up and prep the piece for modification and rewelding.

8 The quarter on a '70 Chevelle goes all the way into the door opening. Here Tommy is using an air chisel to break loose the seam between the quarter and sill area after the spot welds have been drilled out.

9 Gratuitous new quarter-panel shot! Slowly but surely our Chevelle is starting to look like a whole car again. This gives you an idea of how much metal is in one quarter-panel, and its significance in the body's structure, especially in the case of a convertible.

10 Here's a good close up that shows how much of the quarter goes into the door opening.

11 In the Astroventilation area of the quarter is this galvanized steel brace. Being galvanized, this part was well protected against the rust that ate away at the rest of the car. We'll clean this up, coat it with some weld-through zinc primer, and install the new quarter on top of it.

12 Back near the decklid area, there's a factory seam that has to be drilled out. Tommy uses a MAP gas torch (MAP gas comes in yellow canisters and burns hotter than regular propane, which comes in blue bottles) to melt out the factory lead seam filler. Always do lead cooking in a well-ventilated area and with a mask so you don't inhale any harmful lead vapors.

13 When our car was assembled at the factory, too much heat was used to weld these pieces together. That is why the surface has so many dips and rises in it.

14 With the quarter-panel removed, this wonderful surprise greeted us. Damage like this is usually unique to convertibles because of leakage from water running down the top. We'll clean the area of rust, then patch in new steel where the old is too thin or rusty.

15 We set the new inner wheelhouse to start sizing things up for the mini-tub operation, and discovered that our inner and outer wheelhouses didn't match what were on the car. A call to the Goodmark tech line revealed that convertibles use a unique wheelhouse not shared with coupes and sedans. This put us into a quandary, but we were soon able to solve the problem. More on that later.

16 Here, Tommy has marked the areas of the trunk floor that need to be trimmed away for mini-tubbing. To save some time forming metal, he'll save the original lip of the floor, remove the necessary metal behind it, then weld the lip back on to the pan.

17 With everything marked fore and aft, the cutoff wheel sends sparks flying. No reminders about eye protection here, but we'll give a friendly nod to making sure the area around where you're cutting is grease and solvent free so nothing takes aflame.

18 To make enough room, the pan had to be cut back almost to the framerail. We'll still leave some clearance between the rail and floor so they won't rub together and make trouble later after the car's been finished.

19 One trouble spot with narrowing the floor is this area where a brace extends across the width of the pan. This area will be dressed and capped off before the pan lip is welded back in place.