Y’know, Project Purple Pig is just about the rustiest car I’ve ever had the “pleasure” to work on! Considering I’ve replaced the entire floor, both doors, the hood, both front fenders (hurrah, I finally found a good pair at the L.A. Roadsters Father’s Day Show swap meet! Though, if you’re the guy I bought ’em from, I do need the hood you tried to get me to buy!), the inner and outer rockers, the lower rear panel, some of the roof, the lower cowl braces, and now the lower quarter-panels, there’s not a lot left of the ol’ girl!
EMS supplied the repair panels for the rear quarters, as well as a rear panel and the rear section of the trunk floor, the latter two of which we’ll install in an upcoming issue. Unlike some “repair” panels I’ve had the misfortune to install, these were actually a very nice fit. Unfortunately, once I cut the old sheetmetal away, I realized the rot in the wheel housing on the driver side was way worse than I thought, and a good proportion of my time was spent repairing this. While it’s relatively simple to fabricate tricky curved sections like this with a shrinker/stretcher, I didn’t have one available to me during this job, so I improvised by making a hammerform from 3/4-inch MDF. But I’ll bet the majority of you don’t own a shrinker/stretcher either, so here’s how to get the job done with basic tools!
Once I’d repaired the rusted-out sections and put right the badly botched old repairs to the upper quarters, the installation of the EMS panels was straightforward. They fit nicely, were the correct length, the door gap is perfect—even around the lower corner—and I’m looking forward to getting the rest of the bodywork completed. So the quicker I let you check out the captions and pictures, the quicker I can get back out in the garage!
16. With Sharpie marks for illustration purposes, I hammered the crowns around the top of each dent, while using a pry bar up inside the quarter to apply pressure to the center of each dent. Hammering the crowns allows the dents to pop back out somewhat.
OK, so it’s not finish-welded but the quarter-panel is looking respectable once again. Next: installing the rear pan, trunk floor section, and wrapping up the welding and panel fit.
