Gerahead's 71 Dart

Tonight I tore into the passenger side. I wanted to see if the same sins were hidden over there. The good news............... not rust throughs. There were a bunch of dents that were covered up, but all of the metal seems solid. Same as on the driver's side, the crease over the lip of the wheel well seems to have been flattened. I don't really have a theory on how that happened. Since the metal is all in good shape, I might just see what kind of magic I can pull off with the stud welder and a hammer/dolly. Otherwise it seems that the least painful of the options would be a patch panel. I guess that it all depends on how much metal working I want to tackle.
The mud on the passenger side of the car was even thicker, if that is at all possible. I now know why the PO sold the car, he spent all of his funds on filler! It was a treat plowing through the rainbow of colors; blue, tan and pink...... all in the same area! I used a really slick way to remove the mortar tonight. A propane torch and a 3" scraper. A torch just like you would use to sweat copper pipe fittings together. Just heat up a section of the filler (a playing card sized area worked good for me cuz it was so thick in areas) until it starts to bubble and then scrape it away. It is a ton cleaner than sanding it off because it doesn't create the dust cloud like I did last night. You end up with a pile of shavings that are easy to sweep up. The filler does burn, so wear gloves cuz the gooey chunks can be hot if they land on the back of your hand! It comes off pretty clean so there isn't much clean up to do afterward.

Now I just need to decide how to proceed. L8r

Jim