Work continued on the passenger fender this past week.
After getting the fit pretty close I welded tabs to the patch panel so I could screw it in place to make the final fitment and tack welding in place easier.
After a bit more tweaking the shape I have it fitted up and ready to tack weld in place.
All tacked welded in place but I had a bit of a setback here. While planishing out the tack welds to prep for fully welding the seam I found an area (circled in blue) where I should have made the patch panel bigger. The original metal was a lot thinner than I thought in this area so a 2 piece patch panel it is.
So I formed up another patch to go up high enough to get rid of the super thin metal.
Here I have most of the area for the new patch cut out. By cutting out just the middle it makes it easier to form the patch as you can hold it up from the backside as well as the front side to check the fit.
Here it is fit up and ready to tack weld in place. Just using magnets on the back side to hold this one in place.
Tack welded in place ready for final welding.
On this one I fully welded and finished out the seam between the 2 patch panels before doing the rest of the seam so it is basically one bigger patch panel at this point.
And finally all welded up and finished out. Finishing it out was a process of planishing the weld seams, hammer and dolly & bulls eye pick on the low spots, knocking down a few high spots and then using a vixen file and shrinking disk to smooth it all out better. So this fender is ready for prep and epoxy primer once we get some weather in the 60 degree plus range. That will be a few months yet around here.
Overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out. At least it is way better than what I started with!
As promised here is a shot of the bullseye pick that I made. Don't look at the crappy bends on the tubing as it was some scrap that I had on hand but is very thin wall and kinked more than it bent. I did make the pick end removeable so I can make different tips if I need to. Also I need to add a return spring eventually, or just build a whole new one with a bit heavier tubing. I does work pretty well though as it makes getting those pesky little low spots a lot easier to smooth out, as you can hit the exact spot you need to knock them up a bit.
So my next project will be fixing a rusted corner on the dashboard and getting that ready for primer.
Brian