55 car rust repair Part 4: Rt side front section of rear wheelwell

[Daves55Sedan]

There wasn't much left of the bottom of the right rear wheelwell at the front. I had to cut out using a drill with cutoff wheel and a Dremel tool. It had also rusted thru a little section of the bottom of the rear doorjamb at the curve near the end of the stepplate. I cut that out, welded a new piece of metal in and duplicated the last hole for the stepplate screw. That piece was a challenge to hold in place for welding. I used some magnets to hold it flush with the existing metal and it was enough to get a weld started, then removed the magnets and welded it all around. I ground the welds smooth and finished it off with a little bit of fiberglass epoxy. At the backside, I cleaned the rusty area as best I could, sprayed rust reformer, primer then a enamel overcoat on the backside which would eventually be hidden by the new wheelwell patch piece.
Rwhltub1.JPG
The new patch piece for the wheeltub was made using a cardboard template. I cut and fitted the piece so that the new piece would be welded flush with the existing wheelwell as pictured below.
Rwhltub2.JPG
As you can see, the new patch piece was gradually bent around to the fenderwell opening to match the contour of the factory design. At the top of the patch, I left enough extra metal for flanging so that it would slide in under the cutout and hold the top flush with the cutout, while clamps were used to hold it in place at the bottom. Prior to the final fitting in-place, I primered the backside of the patch with self-etching primer. After welding, I ground down the welds some and filled in the seams with JB-Weld. I applied grey metal primer on the exposed side, then used Black-Jack roofing caulk to seal the edge at the fenderwell outlet. I cleaned up the entire wheelwell underside and ground off little rustspots with a sanding disk, spot primered the bare metal then applied enamel overcoat (base color of car) to match the factory pattern.
Rwhltub3.JPG

[Daves55Sedan]

For all those Fordbarners who are following this ten part body repair series, there will be an appendix (separately) after the last post of the series covering the complete finishing work (fiberglass epoxy, bondo, primer and paint coatings with photos.
The final finished photos are not posted in the individual ten part posts, they are only at the end of the series in the "appendix".

[Daves55Sedan]

In case anyone following this series was wondering why I had not posted subsequent parts of this ten part series lately, it is because, I was ripping some Masonite shims on the table saw to set the car door on (which I had removed) and carelessly hovered my left hand near the spinning sawblade while I picked up another piece of material from an adjacent table with my right hand and sliced some very deep cuts through two fingers of my left hand. So I haven't been able to do much lately. I wanted to get stitches but was unable to get any treatment for a few days after it happened, so the pieces of finger had already started growing back together with a big gap between the outer flesh and they said they could not tear it apart and fix it right.
Luckily, the finger joints do still work, but it is not recommended to bend the joints yet as healing is trying to take place across the joints, so I may need to wait a while longer before I can finish the series.

[frank long island]

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the car can wait you need those fingers I did a similar thing with a right angle grinder and a flap wheel sanding disk went across 3 fingers to the bone that's gonna leave a mark