I am still undecided on whether I will end up replacing my passenger quarter next year or not, so I want my repair patch to look as good as possible. I want to make a flange on the edges of the panel so it sets flush with the quarter panel and I can use less filler. There seem to be half a dozen different kinds of flanging tools, anybody ever use any of them and can recommend one?
Matt, I have used them and cannot recommend them at all. You will end up with a lapweld. Lapwelds eventually trap moisture and cause all your hardwork to fail. Butt welds are the best and only way I do it now. If you can keep your car in a climate controlled setting the lapwelds will last longer. The way I do a butt weld on a qtr panel is remove most of the old qtr. Clamp the new qtr. on the car. By not removing all the old qtr you have some old qtr under the clamped on qtr. You dont want to leave too much old qtr cause it can throw off your fit. I am describing outer sheet metal arears only. The bottom and wheelhouse section are different. Once all is set ( sometimes I use some sheetmetal screws to fasten it temporarily) I then take a cutoff wheel and cut through the new panel and the old panel together where there is both panels. This leaves a perfect dime size gap when done to reweld. The fit should be perfect at this point and the end result is a buttweld that cannot be detected inside or out if your welding and grinding skills are good enough. Dan
Me to i cant say they are any good nothing beats the hand fabricated patches, another thing to think about is to go to an auto wreckers and find the part you want to patch cut a fair size bigger out of the weckers car and weld it into your car I have dont this many of times its one of my favored ways of doing it it is cheap and usely fit perfect. but i had to hand fab my quaters on one of my comets be cause the only comet in the auto wrecker in my city i had already rob it of the quarters.
