Things are looking pretty good. Leaning new crafts is part of why I did this project but I didn’t quite expect to need to go so deep into sheet metal working.
To get the bulge to lay flat I ended up shrinking the metal with a torch. You heart a spot about the size of a dime to cherry red, hammer and dolly around the edge, then give it a few hammer and dolly hits right in the middle, lastly it gets quenched with water. It took about 10 spots to get it where it needed to be and to get all oil canning out. I used a contour gauge to continually check as the panel sucked in.
I also did a coupe of hours of hammer / slapper and dolly to get things flat. It’s far from perfect but it will only take a little lead to make things perfect. I’ll do a little more work on the panel and then call it a day.
In retrospect there’s a lot I would have done differently. For one, I think I could have done the whole repair through the door jam. If not, I should have just cut the quarter panel straight across to the wheel well. That would have cut the welding and warping in half.
