King of Sting 1970 Mach 1: Oct-Nov, 2012 Outer Wheel Houses

Oct-Nov, 2012

Rebuilding the outer wheel houses and trunk close out panels.

To help facilitate the fitment of the 12” wide tires in the back we have already rebuilt and added 2” to the inner wheel houses and now the outer wheel houses must be dealt with. Actually cutting out the old outers and welding in completely new sheet metal from Trent’s generous AC unit contribution. Again, I have to say this metal is perfect for all this fabrication work. Another aspect of this particular project would be to add some close out panels to those areas in the trunk that drop down into no man’s land into the space at the bottom of the quarter panels. This should make the trunk a more pleasing visual experience.

Part of the quarters had already been cut off in preparation for their replacements, but that will happen later. This allowed ample access to do the work on the outer wheel houses.

Dad worked on drilling out the spot welds on the braces that connect the outer wheel house to the sail panel structure while I was busy with the cutting wheel, slicing and dicing the outers right on off, out, gone. Off to the scrap pile you go outers!! Included in the scrap heap were the trunk drop offs that had to be removed to make room for the new close out panels.

For the trunk close out panels I used the edge pieces of the AC unit since it had a pre-bent 90 degree flange of 1”, this let me clamp it right up to the trunk drop off area for welding. I cut this piece to fit tightly to the tail light panel so I could weld it up there, and just left it big towards the outside with plenty of material to trim when the quarters are fit in.

The original outer wheel house bends down in a rounded fashion towards the quarter panel fender lip which would cut into the outer edge of the tires so the game plan here is to rebuild this panel making it run straight out to the quarter panel. In this fashion it will not impede the round rolling rubber of the rear tires. In retrospect after doing all the mini-tub work I kinda wish we would have just built complete tubs, but what we did do definitely served the purpose and works great.

I measured for the length of material I would need to reach from the trunk close out panel all the way up and over to the front of the quarter by the back of the door, I also left plenty of material towards the outside here to trim when the quarters were fit in just like with the trunk close out panels.

I took my time to weld these in as I did one side one evening and the other side the next evening. Then I ground down the welds to smooth them out and dad applied a coat of POR15 to seal everything up. Now this area is ready for me to weld in the quarters.