While I was waiting for the POR-15 to dry, I started on the right side trunk work. Here you can see where I removed the cover which connect the wheel house to the floor and makes room for the gas fill tube. It is in such bad shape, I will probably attempt to make a new one. Maybe just the thing for my new HF English wheel.
I cut the wheel house bottom off from the gas tube opening to the floor/seat back channel. You can see the end of the channel at the far right. Immediately to the left of the channel is the body mount bolt hole reinforcement stamping. That is the next part I have to figure out how to remove.
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I welded in the lower front patch for the inner wheel house. If you look close, you can see some of the rosette welds I put in and ground flush. They attach the panel to the floor and run down at an angle from the left to about the middle, then straight across.
There are five more holes for rosettes. Three run at an angle and are for the drain chamber panel which still has to go on. The other two are vertical and you can see the tab from the inner rocker panel behind them. I will wait to weld the inner rocker panel to the wheel house until I have the outer quarter panel/rocker panel lined up correctly. I will then weld the inner rocker panel to the outer, then put in the rosette welds to the wheel house. After that, the drain chamber panel will go in.
I also rosette welded the inner rocker panel to the floor. After grinding flush, I gave a coat of black POR-15 to all the areas which I will not be able to reach after assembly. The three arches cut out of the inner rocker panel will allow water to drain out of the drain chamber. This inner rocker panel pinches between the outer rocker panel flange and the drain chamber flange.
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If you look at "Inside Quarter Panel Repair" on 05-28-07, you can see how grungy this stuff was. I started with a heat gun and a putty knife to remove the bulk of the factory rustproofing (sound deadener?). Then lacquer thinner, brake clean, and carb cleaner to clean up the remainder. Then it was out of the garage to scrub down with a Scotch pad and POR-15 Marine Clean. Soak with Metal Prep for about 45 minutes and rinse. Finally, a little abrasive blasting on the really tough stuff.
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If you look back to the entries on 9-6-06 and 9-10-06 and look real close, you will see a small tube at the front of the box. That's the drain. As near as I can tell from the hole in the original floor, there must have been a tube running down to the chamber under the floor. The tube I welded to the box was a short piece of 3/4" steel tube I found in the scrap bin. At Home Depot, I picked up a 10' length of vinyl tubing which fits over 3/4" steel tubing. A trip to O'Reilly yielded two grommets with a 1" hole. They are Dorman part number 42317. Not sure what they are supposed to fit. They say GM and PCV grommet. They also work for quarter window drains on 41 Chevy two door sedans! Once it goes together for good, I will use a hose clamp up at the box and probably urethane the grommet to the floor and the tube to the grommet to keep things from falling apart.
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I had to replace the bottom of the inside quarter panel. I attempted to duplicate the original as close a possible based on the rusted mess I had to use as a guide. This included the "tunnel" which passes over the floor ridge. The spot welds look a bit clunky, but I wanted to make sure I had good contact with the floor. The underside is blistered nicely, so I do have good penetration.
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