Much like the passenger side the adventure started with cleaning up and painting any exposed bare metal that would no longer be accessible.
Took a similar pass at the quarter panel itself, scuffing, cleaning, and painting over any bare metal that wouldn’t serve as the exterior face around a plug weld.
I test fit the quarter panel one last time so that I could mark out where the tricky welds on the inside of the quarter window support structure and the bottom of the quarter window channel would go, allowing me to grind those spots down to bare metal to prepare them for welding.
When the welding finally started I followed the same approach that I did on the passenger side in starting with the wheel arch, moving to the rear along the underside against the trunk drop off, moving back to the front flange that wraps around the edge of the B pillar, then tackling the sail panel seam.
One detail that I neglected to address before welding the driver side quarter panel in place is that the original panel had two tabs on the underside of the trunk lip channel to hang the wiring harness from. The reproduction quarter panel didn’t have these tabs and I forgot to fabricate replacements in the months that the panel was conveniently off the car.
After throwing together my rendition of the original tabs I got to do some upside-down welding within the trunk. Hopefully no one sticks their head in there and looks straight up to inspect the aesthetics of the plug welds.
With those tabs in place all that was left was the tail light extension. After some last minute adjustments for fit with the trunk lid and additional sheet metal screw to get the panels as tight as possible the last set of welds was underway.
It looked pretty silly with a single taillight so I dug the other out of its plastic tub and tossed it in. The addition of the rear bumper made it start looking eerily like a car again from a very specific set of viewing angles.
Both quarters are finally done!
The rear valence will need work to line up nicely but I’m beyond tired of working on the rear end of the car. I’m going to move on and leave the rear valence on the to do list for more-distant-future JJ.