S197 Rear Quarter Panel Replacement

[Stangra]

Does anybody have experience with, or know what's involved with replacing a Rear Quarter Panel? I'm looking at salvage chassis to rebuild and many have damaged rear quarters, I'd like to know what I may be getting into here when evaluating prospective cars.

 

[8bitmime]

Does anybody have experience with, or know what's involved with replacing a Rear Quarter Panel? I'm looking at salvage chassis to rebuild and many have damaged rear quarters, I'd like to know what I may be getting into here when evaluating prospective cars.

The whole side is one piece so changing just the rear part of it would require cutting out the damaged parts and skinning it with a new panel. If you have good welding skills and access to a body shop it's still difficult, time consuming and expensive but not impossible.

 

[blacksheep-1]

it's tedious work, lots of using a death wheel, and a plasma cutter is helpful. You have to get to the inside of the wheel house which is a real chore. What you might consider, is removing the old one ( keep some extra metal on the edges) then having a pro shop hang the new one. Then you finish off the body work. I'm sure you can find someone to do it "under the table" that is a car guy, and would help you out.

 

[ArizonaBOSS]

Yeah, you need to cut it out and weld in the replacement. Unfortunately I can't find the raw photo from when we had to do this on my car but here is a screencap from one of my YT videos: