Thread: 69 F(ed) body hack

Guy must have deep pockets for all this body work.

About that many! Seriously, I could use a beer or two. Not like that though, yawn in technicolor! I hope to take this apart once only, for coatings, welding prep, and fixes on the structure here and there. The decklid, already on and off a dozen times but its on hinges now. That panel, I can mount by myself.

Today's arguably dramatic Camaro episode begins with 'junk in the trunk. Folded myself into the back of that thing again several times this rainy morning, with the ol' bum drillin hand aching up a storm. Heres what went down-

I fussed around re-leveling my measuring setup and the car's body. Measured twice and took a small breath of anticipation before dropping the filler panel in place. Erg, the car was maybe a half inch too wide. Thats when I grabbed all remaining available clamps and screws (also took a few out to allow quarter movement) and dove in.

A fair amount of force was required to bring the quarters in to meet the filler panel edges. In the end as you see, they drew up OK and are held by two screws each side, through the downward flanges at that joint. This joint is seperate and free from, from but adjacent to, the joint where the downward flanges of the package tray and hinge supports connect.

After all that, the window opening was true to within 1/8". Meaning the previous scenario still exists but the difference side vs side is only about 1/8" at the worst spot. Good. Now I took a deep breath of anticipation and we held the decklid up there...





I laughed heartily. It ain't so much the cars or the guys doing these things, its the dadgum parts. They all seem to have the same problems built in. Somewhere in time and space, a reference vehicle was off somewhat perhaps? I just had to laugh. Because I'm looking at something that is obviously a stumbling block about these cars. Every guy must run into this, the wide side gaps that is. I tried a junk OE lid too, same thing.

So I stared and pondered for a short time...



...then the answer suddenly became obvious and I had it going my way in minutes. After of course bringing boss and camera into play first...

CHOP CHOP!





Can you see where I chopped then overlapped the quarters at the tail panel flange and brought the corners inward? IMG_9998 illustrates it best in the poor lighting. Shhh- I / we just learned something handy here. The root of the problem is loose stamping at the rear edge of the quarters there. The flat eyebrow area was anywhere from 1/2" to 1-1/2" wide, see previous pics for reference.

I simply took the screws out of the jamb's back corner, chopped the eyebrows, drilled new screw holes in the qtr jamb, offset from the old, then used a pick tool to pry the quarters inward and re-screwed into the new position on each side. The right was farther off than the left, and the photos above have the lid flush left so all the gap is on the right.

Here is the new gaps from the top. This is probably close enough to work with on the sides and theres plenty of fine tuning left to do, but...





This pic shows a flaw in the new filler panel too.



This right front corner fits too tight.



This one's a tad loose-



I assure you it felt good to be that far along when 5 came. Not a bad day!

I finished welding up the quarter blah blah blah. Didn't get a pic of the welds at the drip rail, those were tense and I kept them only lukewarmish if you know what I mean. No warps though.

Down at the front of the wheelwell on the rearward end of the rocker there was a mess. I had been stuffing rust converter in behind it all along, and now was the time to fix. It was really mangled looking, I tapped around on it and tacked it before pic to avoid the barfys.



I just kinda listened to music for a spell while playing bodyshop and then there was this.



Then I remembered to take a flash pic inside the front of the quarter looking down at the rocker. Even if only half of those stuck, I'm satisfied. It only had about half that many.



Then I ground the row of welds everyone is tired of looking at on the tail panel behind the bumper. Then I started eyeballing that left quarter...



Big ol wide gap at the top. I took some measurements and established the quarter as the culprit. The outside edge of the notch for the U-seal was vertically flush with the flange for the window fuzzy on the other side, but not on this one. So the quarter stuck out a little too, at the top corner.





So, I thinks. Then I chops.



Then I bent, the edge only, forward.



Cut it all the way through at the top and just set the gap like I wanted-



In that pic, you can see that the top of the quarter now aligns with the door. I had to push it in. Then I trimmed the old edge that was sticking out past the face of the panels and tacked patches in. I don't want to stick this to the inner so I'm being careful and may just tack it and finish with the panel off.. I do have a screw holding the inner to the outer for no suprises later.



It will work out, you'll see-

BAM yup!

Caution! Wet paint...