Quarter Panel Replacement Tips How to Video 1969 Camaro - Lou's change - V8tv

Cars from the sixties that are still on the road today have been subject to a lot of abuse and have been beat up, rusted, and they have also been smash them repaired over the years. We found on the "Lou's Change" 1969 Camaro that both of the quarter panels were in desperate need of replacement when the car was painted before we brought it in it looked OK, the fit was a little weird in a few spots but when we started to strip away the paint we found everything I mentioned that it had been damage before, looks like it got hit in the back the tail panel's kinda wrinkled up had a bunch of holes in it from being pulled with the slide hammer and then of course the rust repairs that were in the wheelhouse is in the quarter panel certainly weren't up to the standards that we wanted to have on a car this caliber so when you do a quarter panel replacement it's a big job but we're gonna try and do a few tips to make that task go a little bit smoother. Once our car came back from the media blaster we bolted it up to a rotisserie and sprayed some epoxy primer on it and everything turned black and then we mounted on our chassis fixture which has mount points that mimic where all the factory mount points are supposed to be on a 1969 Camaro. The reason why we do this is so that we can remove panels and put them back on and be sure that all the pick up points are in the right spot but if you're going to do our quarter panel replacement in your home garage you want to make sure that all the weight is still on the suspension as if it was going down the road this is because these cars can flex and if you put the body up on jack stands and not where the suspension points are you might find that - especially in convertibles - the structure relaxes a little bit and can change and you might get the door to fit and the rear deck lid to fit real nice but then once you put them back on its wheels and everything shifts back to where it's supposed to be those gaps might tighten up so it's really important to make sure it supported properly another thing to check before you cut the panel of is the WYD the gap between the quarter panel and the inner structure by the rear side windows I when you pull the core panel of you're risking putting the new one back on and enlarging that gap or making a narrower and that size is very specific because that's a perfect size for the window and the weatherstrip and the seal and if you mess with that and don't get that exactly and the new panel is a was in the old one you risking your window not fitting not growing up and down smoothly or worse even leaking another trick that we've learned is to make sure when you ready to do the quarter panel the U bolt on all the adjacent panels make sure the doors in place and it fits well even if you're not going to use that door again I you want to make sure you got some kinda reference points when you take the core panel of you know where the new quarters gonna fit so leave the door I'm leaves the deck lid on and we also recommend: only changing one panel at a time we've seen it many times for people say well everything on the back to the cars rusty so they cut off the quarters the wheel houses the truck drops Taleban and you get this wide open space that you know nothing were lying to you can certainly put one together that has been disassemble that far for you save yourself time to time by leaving those reference points in place in our case we also left the trunk lid weatherstrip channel in place so that you know is we're putting this thing together that never moved effect we will do that right to the trunk for which supports to make sure that when we put the new quarter panels on there we knew that the trunk lid was gonna close and seal properly now you'll notice that we cut major sections out in the middle over quarter panels we left all the parameters still intact this is our reference point but by cutting the middles out it allowed us to replace the trunk floor little bit easier and the trunk floor extensions that go down to the quarter panels and do some tail panel work without having to fight working around the old quarter panel but when it came time to actually removing the quarter structure itself we had one side at a time drilled all the spot weld love the movie with the opposite fashion that the withdrawal from at the factory we ordered a set of four quarter panels from plastic industries and these go all the way to the role of or back to the tail panel and their app into the door jamb area to make sure we could do a complete repair so when I was finished you never really tell these things were done little by little we had new pieces of steel to weld to we had the Detroit speed beat up kid and some new outer wheel houses the truck for was new the Taleban have been replaced the row section was gonna stay so its original GM steel the ones we drilled out all those well and will call attachment points we've pride of the remaining pieces from the original quarter panel it's important to remember that even fall quarter panels are only outside on the structure and where the door jamb area is there's some inner structure that might also have been damaged or rusty or not welded fully we've seen them were from the GM factory these things one attach properly or they might be banter distorted so the key to a successful quarter panel install is a lot of trial fitting to make sure that every side winds up were supposed to go you might have to hammer dali that ridge especially if you drew about the spot welds and distorted the panel while you are removing the old one I am I the fictional that kinda stuff so we went around and made sure that the panel installed onto the car in a temporary fashion people room and clamps so that we could make sure that every area bit properly and sometimes you have to hammer in Dalian edge or you might have to structure or push things around a little bit to get the fifth we wanted to and once you go through all those exercises only then do punch some holes in your new quarter panel can start the world that back together throughout this test but process parliamentary put the door striker and and close and latch the door and make sure that everything lines up properly again close the deck lid make sure that looks good when we were done and we were happy with where women fed we started to replace all those screws with blood world we used the flood well technique in the door jamb area which means a one apiece the metal as a Hornet and the new want that up with weld and well through to the other panel when it just takes a little time to to a proper plug well my grind them all new gonna make sure you reattach that weatherstrip channel in the trunk lit area and the in attach it to the Taleban port bottled up or attach it to the trunk floor dropped on attention and then won the last seems to weld up is the one with the roof and again you what world all those little pads back together and that see more ground and eventually we use a a modern non lead body solder to solidify that seem the same way it was when the car was built originally but at that point you can moved to the other side and do it all over again a classic industries makes replacement panels to do an entire Camaro so if you have roster crash damage nothing is beyond saving if you take your time and make sure you do right I'm Wow woohoo you