Replacing B Pillar skin

One of the latest chronicles in my Mustang adventure has been to replace a badly dented/damaged B pillar or sail panel, whichever you prefer to call it. The damage was hidden by 1/2-3/4" filler. When it was removed it revealed a panel that could be used as landscaping for a model train set mountain range. After going around and around with a variety of fixes, I finally opted to replace the panel skin.


We start by showing the damaged B pillar on this 67 coupe. You can see I was quite literal in my model rail road mountain range description.


This is one of the few body panels that you cannot get reproduction. I called up CJ Pony parts and had them send me a replacement B pillar from a donor car in their salvage yard. I was just expecting the panel itself, but as you can see from what they sent me, they weren't messing around. That chunk of car was $175 shipped.


I removed the paint with a wire wheel on an angle grinder. There were a few small spots of some deep set rust so I spot blasted these with a panel blaster using aluminum oxide media. The leader filler along the quarter panel seam is melted off onto some foil using a propane torch. After studying the panel carefully, I plan where to make the cuts and exactly what part of the panel I'm going to remove and transfer. I mask off where the cuts are going to be with tape. I will be going about an inch below the body line, and for two reasons: the metal is somewhat reinforced here since it's near the body line, and the body line provides and easy point of reference. I will be cutting the bottom just above the seam where the quarter panel butts in under the B pillar.


I carefully remove the spots welds along the back glass channel. My preferred method for removing spots welds is making a small pilot indent with a small drill bit then cutting the spot weld with a spot weld cutter. Alternatively, I also grind the spot weld away with a pneumatic cut off wheel. The latter method provides a safer bet at leaving an intact mating surface. I cut the spot welds from the underside of the panel since I want the actual sail panel itself intact. Avoid using an air hammer in steps like these to remove the metal after the welds are cut; it tends to distort the metal too much. Instead, I use my small pry bar (about the size of a flat head screw driver) and carefully pry the metal apart. It leaves a nearly perfect intact surface.


I make my cuts along my tape, and make a final cut along the inside corner of the rain gutter and the panel is completely removed.


My cut will be wrapping around the back corner of the panel and running right along this seam near the top of the back glass channel. It provides a good point of reference for removal of both panels and installation of the new panel. The new panel over the old panel shows how both are exactly the same.


The removal of the damaged panel is going to be nearly the same. I take a DA and sand on the body line to expose it. The old panel too was taped off and the new panel is placed over the old panel for a test fit. I chopped the back edge of the sail panel off so the new panel would fit over it better and more accurately. Then I made my traces as to where my cuts will be.

The damaged panel is cut out.

This is the back of the damaged panel showing the creases from the dents and just exactly how difficult/impossible this would have been to repair without panel replacement.


I remove or neutralize rust and corrosion with a wire wheel/angle grinder followed by zinc phosphate treatment.


Now I need to replace that section of damaged drip rail molding. I cut the damaged section from the car, and cut the replacement section from the chunk o' car from CJ.

I shoot the B pillar guts with 2 coats of Eastwood Rust encapsulator.

Since too much of the original drip rail was gone or cut away, I had to fabricate a patch so I could have something to mount the new drip rail molding too. I punch a series of holes in it with a pneumatic hole punch for plug welds.

I attach the patch with plug welds and grind them down smooth.


Second picture: I then weld in the new drip rail molding.

The replacement panel too then got several coats of Eastwood Rust Encapsulator on the rusty backside. Now the panel is fit. At this point I check everything, then recheck. Then check again. I use panel clamps to help maintain spacing and hold the panel. I begin the welding process with a series of carefully placed and spaced tack welds to avoid warping the panel. It is critical to let these welds cool NATURALLY, otherwise the metal will shrink.


After lots and lots of time (mostly waiting for welds to cool) the entire panel is welded in with a series of tack welds. All the welds are ground as smooth as possible. I use a flap disk on an angle grinder and do not grind too long in one spot as I want to avoid getting the metal to hot and causing warpage. I also let the panel cool naturally after I've been grinding on it for awhile.


I finish the process by making my plug welds along the back glass channel. These welds too will be ground down smooth.


After all the welds are completed, I fill over the welds with Evercoat fiberglass body filler. Fiberglass should always be used over a weld on a body panel as fiberglass filler is waterproof and will seal pinholes. Since I lost part of the body line because it was shrunken where the weld was, I recreated it by shaping the body line in the fiberglass. This actually went considerably easier and better than I had anticipated.


I feather the filler and smooth the body line to make it match the rest of the line on the panel. I skim over the fiberglass with 3M lightweight filler to fill low spots and create a level surface. This is creamier and easier sanding than fiberglass so it's used to create a better finishing touch. Any small holes, sanding scratches, or other imperfections will be filled in with Evercoat Easy Sand glazing putty.

Full quarter panel and tail light panel finished

Today I blog about the completion of a major milestone for this car. You don't know this only because I haven't expressed it on here enough, but this quarter panel was the bane of my existence. It all goes back to LAST summer when I removed the quarter panel, then attempted--all winter I might add--to get it put on and lined up right. I was met with failure each time.

The biggest issue I was fighting was the fit in the wheel well. Since the edge of the original outer wheel housing was too shot to be used again, I cut this section off, and cut off the same section from a new outer wheel house to give a good lip for the quarter panel wheel well to mate too. The problem was I could not get the radii of the two to line up and was always met with a large gap inside the wheel well between the wheel house and quarter panel.

Finally Rosemary persuaded me to call Shaffer's, our local body shop, who is also the largest, and arguably one of the best, independent collision shops in the state. I finally took the car in there for it's second appearance (first was to get some frame straightening done) and let them deal with getting the quarter, trunk lid, and tail light panel installed. They did a fantastic job and it was worth every dollar. $1143 of them, to be exact. Let's start at the very beginning to do some review.

The quarter panel was in some bad shape due to a previous hack job of repairing it after some sort of collision damage. Of course this was revealed after i removed the paint as seen here.

So the entire quarter was removed.

This cross section shows the three sections of metal that comprised the quarter. It looks as if the middle piece of metal was the original quarter. They then put a quarter skin on it, and fabricated the piece on the top to create the body line. It is good work I must say.

The repair will require all of these reproduction pieces.

Because the rear trunk brace was dented in the middle and welded back together, I cut the entire thing out and welded in a new one.

If you noticed in the picture where the entire quarter is cut out, you'd have seen the trunk extension drop down was too worn away at the bottom to get a good weld to the quarter. I cut the drop down off a new one I had (that was accidentally ordered a long time ago, I might add), and welded it onto the old one. Also in this pic you can see the new outer wheel house lip on the old one.

...and the car with its new quarter.

New tail light panel and trunk lid fit in perfectly as well.

Finally, the real gauge of a bodyman's talent--the gaps. I'm including this pic because the door gap here is perfect and symetrical from top to bottom. Unfortunately I'm sure I'm going to have to remove this door once more. Hopefully I can get it put back on with such a nice gap.

So how did Kim, the body man doing this project get the wheel well to work out as perfectly flush as he did? He attached the wheel house lip to the quarter first, then fit the quarter. He then screwed the wheel house lip to the existing old wheel house.

Polishing stainless steel

I'm on a roll in getting these blogs hammered out. Today's is short and sweet, but makes such a catamount difference in the overall presentation of the car. It can only be a blessing that most of the shiny trim on a car--mostly that around the windows--is stainless steel. This means it will never rust, pit, or corrode, and with the investment of time, can be made to look better than new.

Polishing the stainless steel is a good winter activity as it doesn't require much...a warm basement shop, a bench, adequate lighting, a drill, and a polishing kit. I'm using an Eastwood metal polishing kit, which comes with 5 different buffing compounds and a bunch of different buffing pads, that mount to a drill.

Eastwood buffing kit

The kit comes with instructions that are pretty straight forward. I first wash my pieces with soap and water to get the dirt off, then pick out any small dents or imperfections that may be in them. Then it's on to buffing, moving from coarsest to finest buffing compound. Here's an example of what can be done:

This is a piece of window frame before polishing

The same piece after 40 minutes worth of polishing

Door skin and repair, part 3

Continuing the third installation in the saga of complete door restoration, I bring my door ever so closer to completion--or ready for primer.

To pick up where I left off last time...I painted the door. The jams, or areas otherwise prone to the elements and rust were treated with several coats of Eastwood Rust Encapsulator, which will be primed over with epoxy primer when the time comes. The interior door panel was painted with black semi-gloss lacquer. The door panel metal is stamped to resemble vinyl. Ford used semi gloss lacquer paint here as it does not fill in the grain. Before painting I had applied a light coat of etching primer to etch the bare metal.

Next came the door handle install. I already installed the lock which is a very simple procedure. The pre-drilled holes in the door skin weren't in proper alignment for the door handle bolts, so I had to hog out the holes. Since the holes were now enlarged, I had to weld shut the part of the hole no longer required so the holes were smaller than the nuts attaching the handle to the door.


The welds look big and ugly, but once they're ground down the new holes are effective.


The bare metal is covered with etching primer and the new door handle was attached to the door. These door handles are Scott Drake 'show quality' handles. They have quality chrome and are made in the USA. They are a nice unit and resemble the originals exactly.

Next the window is installed. Window installation is a tricky procedure--the first time it's done. After you've done it once and figured it out, a window can be installed easily in 15 minutes.


Next, the beltline felt and seal is installed. I used a set of Repops brand that I got from CJ Pony. I also recommend this piece. To install the beltline felt, the bottom window stop rubber bumper is removed, allowing the window to be cranked all the way to the bottom of the door, below the door line at the top of the door. This gives you room to install the beltline felts and rubber seal. The felt strip goes on the interior side, while the rubber seal goes on the exterior side. Installation is very simple as the seals merely snap into place.


I now have a nearly complete door. The only thing left is vent window installation. This will not take place until I have replaced the necessary seals on the window.

Monte Carlo bar installation

Today's blog is theoretically a simple procedure, but involves a single complication many Mustang owners have to fight: the shock towers tend to fall in and need to be spread in order to fit the bar back in. A Monte Carlo bar keeps the shock towers from collapsing in, especially with the weight of the engine pushing down on the middle of the car, pulling the towers in. Additionally, the Monte Carlo bar reinforces the front end offering better handling.

This bar is a stainless steel Scott Drake bar. Several benefits of this bar is stainless steel as opposed to chrome (won't rust or pit), has oval bolt holes for the fender skirts allowing for install flexibility, and square holes for carriage bolts for the top of the fender skirt.

The actual procedure itself was relatively straight forward. I jacked up the car a few inches by placing the jack in the middle of the engine bay cross member. This allows the weight of the tires to pull the shock towers out. I then placed a porta power between the shock towers and widened in miniscule increments until I could fit the bar into place. The bar was secured on one side to the side of the fender skirts (it uses the same holes as the coil spring cover), and drilled out the holes in the top of the fender skirt. For this I used stainless steel carriage bolts that I polished to match the luster of the bar. The trick is to not completely tighten down the bolts until the bar is completely mounted. Moving on to the next side, the bar wanted to pop up a bit and not sit flush on the metal, but once the nuts were tightened on the bolts it pulled the bar tight up against the metal. And the finished product is what you see here.

Fenders primed

This is old news, as in it was the bulk of what I did this summer. I was surprised to see I haven't posted the progress on the fenders yet, so here goes.

The fenders have been a long, frustrating process. From the aspect of being rust free, they are good, solid--virtually perfect--fenders in that regard. From the aspect of being dent and ripple free....not sooo much. There were many small low spots or imperfections all over both fenders that I filled in with either plastic or fiberglass filler depending on the need, or just glazing putty. To put it briefly, I began overzealous with the filler and filled anything and everything. After I thought I was ready to start spraying, I decided I was then not happy with the amount of filler (basically out of fear of filler contour I might get in the final product) so I then proceeded to remove 70% of the filler I put down and put more effort into working out the low spots with a hammer and dolly. While painstaking, it was definitely in my favor as some of the low spots I was able to completely work out and required little more than a skim coat of glazing putty. By now this is probably boring you all, and you might not have even read this because you've already skipped down to the play by play action.

These first two pics basically show what we're starting with. This is the filler I put on the first time before I decided to go and take most of it off. Much of the filler on the top was then reduced to small skim spots.




I used the infamous Southern Polyurethanes (SPI) Epoxy primer to shoot on the bare metal. SPI is best known for their epoxy.


For this first painting step, I was working with both fenders and the cowl. This is after shooting them with epoxy. I shot two coats of epoxy with 30 minute flash time in between coats.

I then filled in minor imperfections with a skim coat of glazing putty. This pic was actually before I sprayed the cowl. I originally had the entire cowl and both fenders sprayed with Sikkens Washprimer, but after seeing some rust starting to come through that, I decided to sand it all back off and go with Epoxy, which is considerably more durable and corrosion resistant.


After the epoxy was on, I laid down some SPI 2k filler primer. The Epoxy needs to be sprayed within seven days so I had to plan my timetable ahead to make sure I could get on all the coats in the right time frames. I sprayed on three coats of filler primer at a time. This stuff is great and is very thick. It fills in very well and sands easily to boot. Here I have applied a guidecoat to the cowl and am blocksanding it smooth with 180 grit.


Of course I wasn't happy with everything after getting my final coats of fill primer on. I could still see some weird contours from the body filler that weren't natural for the car so once again I sanded off all the primer in select spots, removed the filler, bumped out the low spots better, and filled again.


After redoing everything, I again had to shoot the spots I fixed with epoxy followed by filling primer.

door skin and repair, part 2

Part two of what looks like will be a three part series... After the door skin was fit, I finally got around to getting it permanently installed. To do this, the edge of the door skin is hammered down flat against the underside of the door, where it is then welded to the body of the door.

Picking up right where the last blog ended, all the rust was removed with a wire brush on the angle grinder, shot with a few coats of rust converter, and then shot with two coats of Eastwood Rust Encapsulator as seen here.


I could not find a reproduction insulator that goes between the door brace and skin, so I fashioned one out of cork that was the same thickness as the original insulator. I straightened the original staples out and then reused them. I then reinforced it by wrapping duct tape strips over all stapled areas, and finally a duct tape strip ran the entire length of the cork to cover it and hopefully prevent some degradation. The verdict's out on how well it will hold up.

The edges of the door skin were then hammered over and welded to the door. I ground the welds down.

The completed door skin.

I had a problem with getting tons of tiny little dimples across the bottom from the dolly, even though I was trying to be careful with it. I ended up pushing hard on it with my palm and using that as a dolly.

Next step in the repair was to fix this rusted out lower fron corner of the door.

The offending area is cut out.

A new piece is fabricated from scrap metal I saved from the trunk lid. I pounded this on a large pipe to give it a round contour that matched the contour of the door.


The piece was then welded in. It wasn't a perfect fit and there were some big gaps on the bottom and right side, so I had to fill that all in with the welder, leaving it less than pretty, but I've seen much worse weld jobs.

But after grinding down the welds it looks almost as good as new. It won't be in a visible spot and will receive a skim coat of fiber glass filler to cover up any pinholes where the welder didn't completely fill in.