Just got back from my Tuesday night body shop class at the local polytech high school. My ongoing project is the Formula.
As you may know from following this thread, the car had NOS GM quarters put on it back in the 1980s, when they were still available. Unfortunately, at the time, the trunk drop offs were not available and the body guy did an amazing (though completely incorrect) hand-made version of drop offs. He used the existing trunk portion and then hand-made a flat panel and brazed it to the edges of the inner quarter.
Now that the aftermarket has finally come out with the reproduction trunk drop offs, I decided to replace the hand-made ones myself. (after I got an crazy estimate of several thousand dollars per side to replace them at resto shop).
The wonderful thing about this polytech adult education course is that you pay $400 for 12 weeks (every Tuesday night) and you get to use all their tools and expertise of a professional body man who is teaching the course. It is an amazing time!
Here is the before shot of the handmade boilerplate inner quarter:
And after I used a cutting wheel to remove the major section and then a grinder to grind the edge of the brazing off, where it mated to the outer edge of the quarter panel.
Since the far end of the hand made panel was properly welded and mated to the inner quarter structure and matched the flat section of the new repro dropoff exactly, I left that in place and then made mounting flanges from a two-inch section of the prior hand-made drop off.
Instead of drilling and welding the dropoff in, we decided to use what a lot of modern body shops are using these days: structural panel adhesive. This stuff is amazing. It seals the bare metal and provides corrosion protection between the panels as it bonds them together with an adhesive that is stronger than the steel itself.
