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Old 02-23-2020, 12:14 PM
Jeba Jeba is offline
MetalShaper of the Month October 2021
 
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Finland
Posts: 30
Default Quarter repair practice

Hello,

Long time since I posted here but I recently started a new project and thought I could share some pictures and maybe get some pointers at the same time.

I have a four door 65 malibu which the previous owner(s) have welded and beat the quarters on into almost unrecognizable shape, along with rust issues throughout the rest of the body.
The rear wheel openings have been cut and welded end-to-end with multiple patches. Seems they used a gas torch and a large hammer trying to widen the wheel openings, which didn't yield the best results:



Since I live outside the united states, new quarter skins end up very expensive once they are shipped and all paid for over here so I thought I might as well play around with some scrap to practice a bit of metal shaping to see if maybe at least I could maybe get a more presentable result until I get some new metal. I have a chinese english wheel and some basic dollies and a few hammers. Also an old manual bead roller which I should probably have tried using for this also.

Here are some pictures of what I came up with:

First I drawed a basic rear wheel opening, according to pictures of untouched quarters on 65 malibu's:

Then I beat down the heavily warped quarter and tried to wheel some crown into the flat sheet according to the rough shape.
I tried making it all the way down to the lower section also at the same time:


Then I wheeled/hammered out a flare according to my best ability from pictures:




It was at this stage that I started to realize while looking at pictures that the section in front of the rear wheel was welded way different than original, and that my panel was warping too much. So I ended up cutting of the lower parts and only try making the upper part of the wheel arch.
I hammered the lip with a 90 degree flare at the end so it would be possible to weld it to the inner wheel house (which would also need fabricating).

This was the end result where I did not have further time to spend at the moment:




It seems it is possible for me to make some basic shapes, which could be fine tuned better with more planning and maybe a planishing hammer. One of the issues I faced however were that it seemed the wheel opening did not want to stay in shape easily whilst hammering the flare, so it needed a lot of fine tuning to get it to fit decently.

Are there any tips and tricks that any of you experienced metal shapers have on shaping wheel openings like this? Would you use a tipping wheel in a bead roller to make the flare or should it be beat out with a hammer on the sandbag first and maybe wheeled in a small english wheel?

BR,
Jeba
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