68' Chevy II build thread

[Crossbreed383]

Well, It would appear I'm the worst at updating my own thread but will try to get back to it.
The car is actually a lot further along but I'm going to still bore everyone with the process pics anyhow
So in my last post I had mentioned early on about the hidden issues .
When I took off the right rear taillight I noticed it didn't fit well in the taillight panel.
I also had mentioned this was the 1st( and last !) car I have ever bought sight unseen.
It seems the car had been hit in the right rear and there was overlapping metal visible when looking at the right rear quarter from inside the trunk. It looks like it was hit diagonally in the quarter at an angle and it pushed the quarter, taillight about a 1/4" forward, and put a nice vertical split in the quarter panel around 10" long . The fix appeared to be pounding the metal in and then applying some, ok , a ton of Bondo to make it look presentable . The fact everything was pushed slightly forward explained the slight overlap in the metal .Ughhhhh
So at this point I needed to decide if I was going to replace the quarter or try to fix it .
Since this car came out of the West Coast and was about as rust free as a 50yr old car can be I decided to try and spend some time fixing the quarter.
I lost some pics along the way but here is a pic of the quarter after welding the gap shut and starting to do some hammer and dolly work.

[Crossbreed383]

The next step was trying to work the corner of the taillight panel and quarter back to get alignment of the taillamp housing and fix the arc of the rear quarter edge.
This was harder than you'd think as the Nova quarter panel shape is a compound angle as it curves out at the middle in the vertical position but also curves inward at the reads edge of the quarter as well .
I bought a profile gauge, and using the drivers side as a template and a hammer and multiple sized dolly's , I was able to work the metal back to shape.
At one point while working the rear taillight panel something hit the floor.
It ended up being a piece of Bondo that was shaped in a right angle to make the RR lower outer corner of the taillamp panel. This piece was about 1-1/2 thick in some places...
I then had to hammer the edge of the quarter rearwards and it wanted to split, from being thin, so I had to hammer, and weld and grind, then hammer and weld an grind. You get the picture ..

All told , I spent probably spent close to 25 hours fixing a 14" x 14" area .
In retrospect , I could have found a patch panel for the quarter considering the time taken to fix all this . But it is still all original metal still for whatever that is worth and there was zero tin canning and it felt as solid as the drivers side was .
And my stubbornness may have played a small role into the decision to forge on as well , ha ha ..