After getting the widow out, I started scrubbing at the rust. The left side of the back deck was not too bad, with just a few small holes that can be easily repaired with some creative welding. The right side, well that’s a whole different story! At first I thought there was a lot of rust just on the deck and the more I scrubbed, the more or should I say, less metal I found. Eventually, I found that almost the entire back deck in the right corner was rusted through!
But that’s just the beginning. I then attacked what I thought was a bad repair job of replacing the left fender. There was a noticeable bump on the back panel between the trunk lid and the window frame about four inches inboard of the right fuel filler. I took a chisel and started working on this area. Soon, layer after layer of body filler started coming off until I found myself looking at a piece of metal that I thought was welded to the body, but found out was glued! After prying up the metal, I found a four inch hole going from the trunk seal lip up to half way up the fender! This whole was filled in with some sort of black foam, glue and body filler!
OK, so now I’m thinking this guy didn’t know how to weld and was just trying to get the fender replacement to look right. Unfortunately, the foam and body filler did a good job of holding water against the body, rotting it even more.
Reviewing the crease weld that is used to hold the window in, it looked like there was another piece of metal welded there and reinforced with some pieces glued to the back deck. I thought these were to help support the fender which had been replaced but that the window crease was pretty much complete.
Well, Monday night I got ambitious and decided to find out what was under the metal plates glued to the back deck. I should have gone to bed because I couldn’t have a nightmare as bad as what I found. The glued in panels hid about a pound of body filler that was used to build up the entire window frame! The metal around the crease weld was glued in and held in place with body filler. The entire section of the car was filled with filler! Once the material was removed and I could see what was left I realized that this whole section of the car was totally rotted away!
So, what I thought was a poor fender repair now appears to be a very crafty, and successful attempt at hiding a huge defect in the body by one of the previous owners! How this part of the body got so rusted is beyond me. It makes me wonder if something was left laying on the car that held water against the body to rust it through like this.
So, now what? On the good side, the metal being gone will make it much easier to get into the parts of the car where more rust may be. The bad side is that the metal being gone allowed water to run into areas that could compromise the car structurally, particularly around the C pillar and where the wheel well attaches to the rocker panel. If this area is rusted, the body is done with because the only way to fix this is put the body into a jig, cut and re-weld. Way beyond my skills, space, desires and budget!
What I have at this point is repairable in several different ways. I can find a donor car, but I suspect that they will be as rusted as this one is, I can manufacture rough body panels as replacements and weld/Bondo/lead them as a repair or I can build an armature and fiberglass them in. One of my friends suggested carbon fiber which would make a very interesting looking race stripe! You do have to laugh or you will cry!
