How to repair a rusty wheel arch

hey fitzy here back at the game with another one rear quarter panel rear guard whatever you want to call it same difference ever have uh holes and quarter panels in long hair and the wheel wells were gone this one here had dinner and i made a new patch panel for it let me show you how i'm in stick around all right let's get started on this side now what i'm going to do here first is i'm going to uh remove everything here and take off the whole body side molding steer or junk anyway and i'm going to strip it from about here down i'll clean everything up clean up down around here i'm not going to get into the rocker panel i'm going to go as far as there because rocker separate again clean up all the backside here get everything stripped off this and grind it down so i got a full quarter panel to see how bad it is and go from there so when it comes back this will be all grounded down well i went ahead and i managed to play around with enough and i managed to get the uh the side glasses out of the car or lost one side glass out of the car to be using the the old rubber tool and the rubber is in good shape um any guys that are into this toyota stuff i'm looking for and i'll be looking for is the windshield rubbers if you have a link or know of a supplier where i can get these rubbers i greatly appreciate it uh also um some small trinkets anybody got parts cars uh that's when i'm side vince's broke off when i took it off it broke so uh you know i'm looking for small bits and pieces um for the car just cosmetic stuff anyway okay i got the quarter panel stripped off it's all stripped down and i got the rust removed i took it all down with a 24 grit just a quick recap i used a 24 grit large grinder on the flat surfaces and then after it was all removed um i turned around and went over the the heavy pitted rust with the with the cutting wheel just just then slightly using it to grind us basically all i did was this i just took that there and just went like that and scraped it across it like that now there's proper ways fellas would say wanted your sandblasted or your rolling in the car because it's going to be all wavy no it's nice and straight it's got scratches in it now i can guarantee you this car is going to be straight as a whip when it's done it's just that there's a lot of heavy pitted rust you can see it here on the car and this is where i'm too now with it so i got a good majority of it removed i'm going to be treating this metal before i do anything else with it before going any further but hold this window out i hauled it out because i seen this little spot here and then i found this like i can't believe the places that this car rocks out this is all in behind look how good the shape this is in that's mint you need to come across here and big old hole in the corner more videos but a strange had a car rush out because i was looking at the rocker panels on this car and if you look at them the rockers are good the rocker panels all the way around right there she has a spot but back there is good like i'm totally amazed at how odd this car rusted out i'm used to nothing being down here and then all this up here being mint but i'm having issues with rust around the top sides of the car and it's just like you know man oh man it's different because but anyway let's get to our project let's start making this panel as you can see again i never caught nothing out of it i'm leaving it there's a template uh there's a number of different ways that people would attack this i've tried it a number of different ways over the years this is basically the same process for repairing almost anything even a dog's leg on a car will be the same process we have this little crease here that runs along here that runs right on through the whole piece you would think that you'd be able to cut this piece and make a piece here and then bend this flange flat and it had that nice little creaser the problem i run into that is when you start changing the angles of the metals this here has a tendency to do this and there's a lot of work involved in working it and it's very hard to get a real nice crisp edge so i'm going gonna do the same process that i've always done uh which i find uh he gets a cleaner finish when it's done is i'm gonna weld right through that little crease i'm gonna make up this piece here i'm gonna make up this piece here and i'll make up this piece here and i'm going to weld all three of them together and grind them dress them so that way i'll have enough material where that creases to that i can actually shape the actual line so i'll get a nice crisp blinder if you just folded it over it it'd be folded over and it'll probably have this little thing going on in a certain degree you can actually take a bead roller also and probably run a bead through it if you could look at a roll die you could probably get down that i haven't got a roll die okay and a lot of us haven't got bead rollers i'm doing this with just basic tools with what i got kicking around and grinding on the mig welder that's it so i this is what we're gonna do first thing i'll do now is i'm gonna make this piece here the upper section i'm gonna make a panel cut it bigger and everything and just and cut it and fit it so that it rolls along here i'm gonna come down probably a quarter of an inch three eighths of an inch off this rolled edge here and joined there i'm gonna go over here about an inch and a half and down here about an inch and a half to get clear all this rust so i'm going to go cut a piece out now to fit into that all i did i took a scrap piece of steel laid up against the car like that there clamped it in place there took a marker and marked it around there to get the wheel lit so i ended up with a mark like this here around it then what i did i measured from here up to here where i wanted to which is about two and a quarter inches then i measured from the line up all along there i measured up two and a quarter inches now i'll mark all that line there and i'll cut this piece here out and i'll start with that piece there i got the piece cut out and i tested it i ended up curving the panel just a small bit to fit on that now quick little note um this is 18 gauge metal and this is probably 22 gauge metal i like working with heavier gauge steels because it gives me room to grind this panel and the fit is better and it's a lot easier when you're welding it that you run your welds from the heavier gauge steel to the lighter grade seal because trying to weld two two of these panels together 22 gauge it becomes trouble so use using a heavier gauge steel i can it can help get with the welding process so i just rolled it and i fit it in place now what i got to do now is i got to figure out this lip here as you can see that i can roll this lip down what i know is i'm going to run under trouble so i'm going to clamp this in place here now and i'm going to mark it and see for the actual lip that i'm going to cut off here's all i did is i went and curved the panel i also cut it off a small bit made it shorter didn't i needed all i'm out past we're rusted to about an inch and a half here and about an inch and a half here and i'm up down about a quarter of an inch from the upper lip which gives me plenty i went ahead and i curved the panel so i fit as you can see if you look down this hair has this sort of a curve going on so i curved it so it fit nice then i clamped it with three clamps and then i put three clank holes in because i'm going to be putting this on taking this off numerous times now when you look at it this way you can see that it just comes straight down and then it sticks off this here turns flat on us so what i got to do now is i got to creep up on it i'm going to mark this here and try to get the crease the line that i'm after to uh just this line here this is the one i got to chase come up now to try to find so i'll come up and i'll mark it and i'll cut it and trim it a few times to get it to where i like it take your time doing this part here because if he tries to get it in one cut you're allowed to cut it too short in here and then he'd be up inside the panel then you're going to start all over again so just trim it a little bit by a little bit until you start to see that upper edge to fit it nice right now you can make templates for this it's probably better uh if you want to i don't make cardboard templates it'll probably be better in a situation like this is your first time doing it if you made a nice little template of that there with that wheel arch in it uh you'd get have an easier time finding that there uh in my case i just chases i just comes up on it i'm so used to doing it i don't use cardboard templates but if it's your first time at it um take your time make a cardboard template for it so you can get it fitting in there nicer now this is my first uh cost i never haven't got it all the way up there yet so i trimmed it back now i'm going to show you something here this is the piece that i cut off the bottom of this panel here now some people say we'll just fall over the edge and get that crease just watch what happens i'm going to i'm going to line up the metal here so it's flush here and flush here and just watch the middle what goes on when i lays this flat against this panel through the gap now that was cut straight off of this panel this way but now where i'm adding it to it in the middle it has to stretch out so when when you're folding this out here to fold over this edge this panel here is one i want to go in because this here section has got to be stretched you know as you can see right here in the middle okay so i got to fit in place here now and i'm after going back three and four times taking my time creeping up on letting this line here line up and what i'm using i'm using this outrage here to line up this here because i noticed this distance remains the same throughout here up here this panel here gets wider as it gets to the top and then it gets narrower as it comes down so you can't go by this up here so i'm going by this wheel up here um so what i got now that i got that done i'm happy where it's going to be at um the next thing is now is you look at it here this panel here is not flat okay if you look at it it's got a crown on this and so that crown goes right on around that hole works if you look here you can see that it's not sitting properly on it and it sticks off a bit here on the bottom side a little bit so what i got to do now is i'm going to go back and i got to put a small crown on this all the way through that entire piece so let's go over the bench and do that so here's all i'm going to use there's a crown on my uh large voice i'm going to hold the panel i'm actually outside of it so this is the outside the panel so i didn't flip it around backwards and i brought it over here trust me i've done that because i've have to phone this up many a time but all i'm doing is i'm laying the panel flat into that little concave and i'm going to hammer it across here rotate it through between the crown and the hammer and that crown of the voice it's hard to see it there but if you look at it there is a slight crown the full end of that probably see it better on this side here there's a slight crown on that now now i'm happy with how that sits there now i went back again i come over and test fit it and then this end here was good but this end over here needed a bit more crown so i went back and repeat the same process and put a bit more crown on up here so now i got a nice roll on the entire panel going along there now that again that's something that would be hard to do if you try to make all this in one piece so now i got this piece made is in place so now i'm going to go ahead i'm going to make this piece here to come up to it and uh well do it i'll size it up using that piece there and it's not going to work because when i grinds off this hair side is going to be too short but i'm going to use it as a template i'm going to uh lay it on this piece of the scrap metal here now bring it up a bit so i got lots of room on the bottom side of it and i'm going to uh scribe along along that cut a larger piece out and because this operation don't fit good i'll just grind down these edges here so it'll fit but i'll be close to where it should be now after trimming the piece fitting it and trimming it and fitting it i got to where i likes it it's a bit longer i'm not concerned about that right now my whole goal is now is to make this to get this crease here right nice going around here i'm not going to worry about the bottom yet i i took this off and tweaked this a couple more times because i didn't like the face and like if you look down now you have a look across this way here make sure the panel is straight this way all right look across it that way right look at a number of different angles make sure that this lip is not going in all the way along it's nice when i started with a flat piece of steel because then i didn't tweak it or nothing and that way it would just sit on his own so i'm happy with s2 there now so i'm going to go ahead now and start tackling that together leave the panel mounted on the car tack weld at every inch or so cool it down and then go back and start welding again it's probably best to weld this all together on the outside on the car uh because if you took it off and laid it on the bench it'll tendency to want to move uh everything is held in place here with the voice grips and whatnot so it got a tendency to keep its shape so just go back take your time weld a bit cool it off with blow gun with air and then go back and weld some more okay i got it welded inside and out you will find that when you weld it on the car when you take it off because it's very hard to control it with tendency to want to bow on you this way what i went and did is i come over here then on the bench and i took a pair of voice grips and then i clamped it in place here on the voice right and uh held like put it on the edge like that there and then clamped it here in the middle just like that and then i went ahead and welded the inside because you're dwelling two pieces of metal together and it's going to want to pull away from itself every time you're doing it so after it was all welded up i had a look i was pretty good i just had to do a small bit of dolly now but this here will have a tendency to want to curvature on you just take your time with the welding uh cool it the more heat you put in it the worse the curve is going to be it's very hard not to get a little bit of a curb so it's going to need a little bit of work so now all i'm going to do now ago i'm going to grind all this up and get this ready to fit this back on the car and dress the other side and get that nice crease in it i got the inside grind down with a stone and i just want to stop here and show you what i've got done uh on the outside here all i need to do with this i won't touch a stone on this uh i'll use i'll take my time and do this with like i have a 24 grit pad on my air grinder and i'll grind this down here now the trick to this is is to grind on the plane that you're working from so i'll always use my last one this one here to last and i'll grind this here so i'm happy with it if you look at it you can see now this is all gone flush all along here right so now what i'll do now is i'll turn the panel around and i'll start cutting this one flat like when i'm cutting this here i'm holding the ground right an angle like this and going along like this here i'm not worried about rounded outer and again i'm just holding it and getting that flat this way so then i'll hold it up here flat and i'll hold it flat get yourself try to get yourself a really sharp line going along here that way you can actually see how straight it is and how well it flows if you keep rounding it out you're not going to see it so you know always uh work it so that you got a nice crisp blinder i don't know if you're going to be able to see it there or not but uh here it is now i got to grind it down flat on this side here and i got some of this left alone just to show you what's going to go now if you look closely at it here now this line you guys see it's high here and it drops and then it goes up again i can work this line now that i can see it so i'll concentrate on getting everything like this thin and then i'll adjust it so that the line is nice and crisp rolling right along there i'll grind this side some more and i'll come back grind this side some more if i need be there's lots of material there's one reason why i got going with the the 18 gauge right so i'll go ahead and i'll finish all this off and i'll bring it back and show you what it looks like so here it is all grind up all right let's smooth that i'll finish that off with a bit of 100 or something that's all roughed in with uh 24 but uh i am happy with the line where it goes to the inside i never fully grinded that off i want to leave some meat in behind it and you can see where i re-welded it outside a few spots that i didn't like but you got you got a and you can see the shape of it all right it's not a flat piece you could make this on an english wheel and then a bead roller and what if you haven't got an english wheel yeah i'm going to be enroller what do you do you make do and there it is fitting on her so that's all one piece i'm quite happy with the way it's shaped the way it follows along so now what i got done i scribed it on the back side where the original one was now the trick with this is when you go to weld this and place the cotton ball on this here what's going to happen here is that all this here is going to fall inward so like if you had to well a piece flush to this here like i done on top the problem you're going to run into is that when you flush mount this this piece is going to stick down so when i cut this off i'm going to cut this off so it's perfectly in line with that so when i cut this off it'll fall back and i'm going to weld the bottom piece not on the outside but on the inside edge of it here like so is what i'm going to do with it and that way it'll be the same height as this here so when this all falls back in it'll just be it'll just go in there's a scribe line that i put in there now i'm not going to cut that direct up to that i'm going to just cut below it between that scribe line and the marker there and cut it off there and i'm going to when it fits down the car i'll take the grinder and i'll grind it to where i'm happy with it clamp down again and uh it's just a little bit left here now what i'll do now is i'll just take the grinder the grinder itself and i'll just grind along that there and i'll use the car as my guide to see where i want it to be and i'll grind it back until i'm happy with it all i want to do now is i got that laid here remember i grind this off flush here so i once laid a panel against this hair not against this hair right so in other words i got a piece of scrap here i found underneath the bench i went and cut it off the length and then i curved it to the shape that i wanted and i don't want this here to lay on top of this like so i want to slide this way out so i'll lay this against it here and i'll weld that right down around there because that's the height or depth that that's got to be along here you can see it here now here's the outside piece and this here is up against it so this here now is the height of the wheel wellness in the car and i just tack weld it all the way down around there so now i'll go ahead now and i'll weld all that up and i'll weld the inside and i'll grind this outside here so it looks good on the outside edge and then i'll cut that off so i got the panel made up and i got the lip cut off but i made it wider i'll trim that up when i put it on the car and i have this spot here marked you see there ready to be scribed and caught and focus and you can see the other scribe line there now here in the case because because of this card i'm doing i got no winner wheelhouse uh here's now we got the piece made all i do here now is i cut up here and i cut this section out of here okay and i'd come up close to these holes here and i'd cut that off up along there and remove that piece i have it so that i can fit my new panel in place then what i would do is i go in behind and i repair the wheelhouse using the panel as a guide so i have something to go up there and i can fit it to it and have a sort of actually weld to it after the fact so like a lot of times people try to build the inner panels first i prefer to build the outer quarter panel right make the piece fit there and have it so that i can test it put it on and then i will build the inner structure to fit the outer piece that you got made now i have this much of it removed all out of the way and i still have them three points that i got it mounted to still in place so then i got a nice fit here and this here flows this way and this air flows here and then everything's going along nice now i'm gonna be doing a cutting bud up here you probably can't really do that on a car but this is the the process i'll do the same process if i had a little wheelhouse now i'll show you the trick most times you turn around and uh your wheelhouse when you're doing repairs like this here and your inner wheelhouse is bad uh your outer panel will probably be worse than the inner one so usually i take it down to where the wheelhouse is good sometimes there's probably nothing there at all and you have to make the whole wheelhouse same process but just for argument's sake if this panel here was gone this big the inner structure will probably only be gone in this section here for the inner wheelhouse so you got to make that piece all you will do is use the panel that you just made okay you'll make your piece to put it on top of this where's the old quarter pounder for this we'll use that as an example all you would do is you make an inner structure that'll fit in here and then go up and make it a little bit longer and everything hasn't got to be the same shape as this because of the wheelhouse but basically what you're going to do is you're going to make something like that same thing have a sort of fits in there so if it's in there nice and nice and and you can spot weld it after the fact and leave this a little bit long on the top here a little bit longer on the sides and then you just take that piece that you made and you'd bring it over here and you'd fit it in your wheelhouse and weld it on and that's how you'd fix that section if i ever gets one that i got the repairs on i'll do that but this is my race car and i'm putting full wheel hubs in it so this here is not going to matter on this cab position in place and attack this corner here and i attack this corner here lined up in there so this here arch looks nice and then i went up and i clamped it in place and i attacked welded it in place here so now i'm going to go ahead and i don't want to do a cotton butt in the case of the regular wheel well thing you would have to mark this and then cut it and trim it and to fit as you go because you won't be able to get at the inside of it with the wheel well in place i've talked about like start from the inside and working your way out in the case of a wheel arch wheel well or rear guard as you somehow he calls it uh yes you work from the inside out but you got to start on the outside to make the outside piece then work inside get that straightened away and then come back out again because it's a lot it's hard to make that in our wheel arch if you haven't got nothing on the outside now that you got something on the outside now you can actually you can uh form it to the inside piece of it as you're going so i'm going to go ahead now and i'm going to cut and bot all this in place here now and get this finished up have it all tackled in place all cut and bought all set up there now uh quick little note that uh when you're well doing this stuff don't go well in the stuff or your wheel wells none of that do that last because what it tends to happen when you welds down these sections here this will want to pull in and that'll give you the opportunity to close up this gap by pulling out on the panel if you weld this up now uh and this pulls in you'll never get it it'll be very hard to repair so i usually weld all this stuff do the outside faces of it first and then make sure that i'm happy with looking down just because if you look down it looks good there an hour so what i'll do now is i'll go in and i'll weld all this up solid and grind and dress it all so i'm happy with it and then i'll weld up these two sections here and then after the fact if i had a wheelhouse in it or well they mean right i always do this stuff in here last leave it all along to the last of it because if you're running any issues you can pry this back and put and poke stuff up in behind to push out on this if you got any issues here because right here and right here is where you're going to find your problems there it is all welded in finished up nice uniform shape you see a nice little lip going around her and a crown on the panel look down this way looks good over here i have one little low spot right there just pointing me i'm going to leave it alone i'm not going to get into it because the problem you're running into is you're dealing with thinner metals it starts working areas he starts blowing holes and asks me how i know all right there's a wheel well i'll weld it in place where's the join right there yeah anyway that's another one hope the tips are good and until next time you

Channel: Fitzee's Fabrications

Views: 89,994

Rating: 4.9747415 out of 5

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Id: mU46MpCXD3g

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021