 |
| Daniel applies the finishing touches to the inside of the fender |
The lack of posts does not indicate the lack of work on our little Mustang.
We danced around the obvious long enough
until one day I admitted to Daniel that we could avoid it no longer: it was time to weld the rear quarter panel in.
Having the panel out was nice because all of our sand and debris from blasting could just blow out the side. However, I could tell that Daniel was getting a bit demoralized at our progress, so I rolled out the welder, put my big boy pants on, and we began to fit the panel in.
 |
| Ready to be closed up |
I warned Daniel that it could be quite a time consuming process to fit the fender, as we only had one shot to get it right. I measured every
 |
| Let the fitting begin! |
point I could think of, comparing to the other side, and slowly we shaved sheet metal until our joints met as perfectly as we could get. The reproduction fender fit fairly well, at least for our purposes. Even my home grown inner fender repair seemed to line up pretty good. The only real fit issue came at the back corner, where I finally deduced that the rear of the car must've taken a pretty good hit in the past, no doubt associated with the crumpled old quarter panel we removed. In fact, the back panel that the taillights mount in was pushed inward a good half inch, which wasn't apparent until we began fitting the fender. I attributed some of the misfit to the aftermarket fender, so ultimately both the fender
and the rear panel suffered the abuse on the hammer and dolly.
 |
| Fit, trim, repeat..... |
After a couple of hours of fitting and trimming, it was time to take a breath and tack her in. I was still apprehensive of my rusty welding skills, as I don't feel like I've yet got the little MIG welder dialed in right. Luck was with us, though, as my spot welds seemed to flow nicely and the fender slowly became one with the car. I'm sure I used about a pound of wire that eventually got ground off, but in the end we were both quite pleased. Whew!
Once that hurdle was crossed, we took advantage of the dry, cool winter weather and began blasting the underside in earnest. As I suspected, our blasting continues to reveal more and more rusty
pinholes hidden under decades of dirt and paint. Emboldened by my fender welding success, I've been making small patches and eliminating the larger holes. Smaller holes will be filled with seam
 |
| Tacked in place and coming together |
sealer or body filler and shouldn't ever be a problem again.
One decision that I wish I had made earlier was to give in to the fact that it's better in the long run to spend the money on a replacement part instead of spending hours trying to fabricate this or that little piece. In my effort to keep our costs down, I didn't think of that until this past weekend, when we began blasting the other rear fender and exposed a bit of rust at the bottom (where you would expect it to be). My first thought was "How am I gonna fabricate that curve." By the grace of fortunate timing, I got an email from CJ Pony Parts that day advertising their sheet metal on sale, and found out I could get that whole piece for under $20. The light came on inside my sand-clouded brain, and I realized that by spending a few extra buck we should save hours and hours, of which we have less and less.
 |
| Time to get down and dirty |
We've gotten about a third of the underside of the
 |
| Keep going Daniel, you're doing a good job! |
car blasted and primered. The weather makes it much more tolerable to be crouched under the car in a hail storm of sand and dust. To date, we're just about out of the trunk area. We've got another beautiful weather day here, so our hope today is to blast up to the rear seat area, inside and out, so we can begin to focus on welding our new floor pans in.
