The left quarter panel was the most damaged, so I was eager to tackle that part first.
There was a crease where you see a thin blue line in the
picture above. That was from whatever caused the crease, not anything I
put there. The body line that runs along the entire side of the car is
pushed in. And you can see where chunks of Bondo have been knocked off
just over and behind the wheel opening. The missing chunks were over a
1/4" thick.
Here is a closer view from another angle. I started out by punching holes along the crease where you see the thin blue line. I used an awl like punch, sort of like an ice pick, to drive a hole in the metal just slightly larger than an eighth inch. Then I screwed the screw of my dent puller in and, rather than use the slide hammer of the puller, just gave a strong steady pull on the whole thing. That way I didn't stretch the metal, or over pull it. I worked my way from the ends of the crease inward, so that by the time I got to the middle it took almost no effort to pull out the last little bit of the crease. Yahoooooo...... this is going to be easy!!!
After that, I did the same thing along the contour line that starts at the forward edge of the wheel opening and goes straight back. It had been pushed in almost a half inch, and was one of the places where the Bondo had been knocked off. It is the rusty looking brown spot just aft of the forward edge of the wheel opening. So far, so good. Piece of cake.
At the bottom of this view are the holes used to pull out
the pushed in contour line. Near the top are 7 holes used to pull out the
crease. Just below them are 3 holes used to pull out the pushed in body
line. The large hole is where the moulding attaches.
No stick on mouldings on this classic!
After you pull the dents, dings, and creases out, the next
step is to grind off all paint, rust, old filler, or anything else, until you
are down to bright shiny metal. Otherwise the new body filler will not
stick. As I was grinding the old paint & Bondo off, the view below
began to appear.
A vertical seam?
Directly over the wheel opening?
That's definitely NOT supposed to be there!
I followed the vertical seam upward with a grinder to a weld
that made it obvious, someone had replaced the forward half of the quarter
panel before.
OMG, those look like POP RIVETS!
Someone had installed a patch panel with pop rivets.
HOW SAD!
Poor little Nova.
Notice you don't see any grinding marks where there is no
Bondo. That's because moisture got in behind the filler and created rust,
which caused it to not adhere properly. I peeled this area clean of
filler by prying it off with a putty knife. This is why it is so
important to grind down to clean shiny metal before you apply filler.
It was going to be a day or two before the owner could
come. I figured if the left quarter panel was in sad shape, maybe I
better check out the right one.
In 1963 Chevrolet was using good old fashioned laquer paint on their cars. It is very good paint and buffs out to a high gloss. But when you try to grind it off, it doesn't really come off. The friction of the grinding disc just sort of melts it. The paint smears into a sticky, clumpy, mess. The only way to get it off the car is to just keep grinding away. It took over a half a day to get this quarter panel cleaned off, as you see it in this picture above.
After a lot of back breaking grinding, I had all the paint
off.
Things did not look good. In this view of the dog leg portion of the right quarter panel, just in front of the right rear wheel, you can see two areas where a patch panel had been pop riveted into place.
Here is a close up of the lower rear portion of the right
quarter panel, another patch panel using pop rivets.
Notice the hole near the bottom.
In this close up view below, you get a good look at the pop riveted patch panel around the right rear wheel opening. Also note the rusted through area along the contour line toward the left edge of the picture.
This is a good example of how NOT to repair a car. If
you are going to do repairs to the body of a car, you are going to need certain
equipment. You have to have an enclosed shop with a smooth concrete
floor. You need good lighting, and a fairly good sized air compressor.
And for the type of repairs we are looking at here, you need a welding machine
and the skills to use it. This person either didn't have one, or
didn't know how to use it. Whoever did this should have taken the car to
someone with the skills to weld the patches in place.
Why am I so against using pop rivets? The problem is
moisture. You lay a patch over the rusted out area and drill holes
through it and the original metal on the car. Then you install pop rivets
through the holes. Lastly you apply body filler over the whole area and
smooth it out. The problem is that moisture seeps it's way between the
two pieces of metal from the back side and into the body filler. The
filler acts as a big sponge, holding the moisture in and allowing rust to
form.
Here you see most of the right quarter panel has been cut
away, and is laying on the floor.
As you can see, there is a large hole in a piece called the
trunk floor extension. That will have to be patched up.
In the view below, the left quarter panel and outer wheel housing have been
removed. The new outer half of the wheel housing has been clamped into
place using vise grips. If you look closely, you can see part of the leg
of one of the jack stands just in front of the tire. A second jack stand
is at the aft end of the frame rail. And a jack is under the axle.
When you remove this much structure from a unibody car it is important to keep
it supported to keep from bending or warping the body.
In this shot below, I am welding the outer wheel housing to the inner quarter panel.
Here the outer wheel housing has been welded in, and the welds have been painted with self etching primer.
I also primed the area just above the wheel housing because it had a little surface rust.
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