Upper Fender Apron Repair 2

While still awaiting my new right front inner fender apron, I continued my repairs to the rust spots on the upper shock tower area where it mates with the right rear fender apron. This one was going to be more tricky since I wasn't removing the entire inner fender apron this time. This meant that I had to cut out patches for the upper (fender apron) and lower (shock tower) sheet metal.

This is how it looked before the repair. The upper shock tower metal is underneath the rear inner apron panel. The rust is where they overlap in the middle of all of the spot welds (the dips in the metal around the rust).


I cut out first a larger section from the top metal (the fender apron) and then a smaller section from the lower metal (the shock tower) . The shock tower metal was of a thicker gauge (14 gauge) than the inner apron (20 gauge).

First I patched the shock tower with a 14 gauge sheet metal torque box section I had laying around and sprayed it with weld-through primer.

Then I cut a patch out of 20 gauge sheet metal. I actually cut it out of the Canadian repro right front inner fender panel I was unhappy with in an earlier blog entry. Note the holes drilled for the "plug" welds. I drilled them in the same location as the original and then cleared the primer off of the area below (on the shock tower) where I would be making the plug welds later.

I welded in the inner fender patch and then plug welded the holes and then ground the whole kit-n-kaboodle down . Notice that I kind of skipped to the end here so to speak. Well, I had some trouble learning how to weld the 20 gauge sheet metal and things got ugly requiring some patching and extensive grinding. No need to show you EVERYTHING I do right? ;-)

And then hit it with some weld through primer although this particular area didn't have to be weld-through, in fact I should have used metal etching epoxy primer instead.