Tonight I was installing my Hawks 5" spoiler, and while attempting to fit the passenger side corner piece, realized why my rear bumper and collision bar are off a different car (Different color than original paint underneath everything).

From the looks of it, a PO either backed into something, got rearended or attempting to drift and smacked something with the corner. It is obvious that the entire corner of the body was crumpled in and pounded back out.

The problem is that they did a **** poor job of repairing the damage off the books. not only does the taillight gasket not make contact with the body of the car as it should, but I discovered that they used bondo on the outside of the corner panel to smooth the body before painting back over it.

The problem is, there is a slight bow in the quarter panel right where the two lower bolt holes for the corner piece are. You can't tell by looking at it, but It's obvious when I tried to bolt on the corner piece and it wouldn't sit flush with the body of the car as the driver side piece did.

I don't think It's so much the bondo job causing this, but rather the actual quarter panel is bowed out slightly. How should I go about fixing this so I can get the spoiler piece to fit correctly? I'm not worried so much about smoothing out the wrinkles in the body that get concealed by the taillight/bumper, but flattening the bow slightly and also getting the taillight gasket toe seat correctly. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say sand all bondo off, beat the quarter panel back into place to eliminate the bow (What technique should I use for this?), then smooth it back out with more bondo and primer. As for the taillight gasket, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say use bondo to fill in the gap.

FYI, the stock piece never sat correctly, either.

 

The correct thing would be to replace the quarter panel. I cant tell but the rear panel may be damged as well and may need replaced. It is expensive, however, the correct way always somehow works out to be the easiest way to repair body work. If you choose the incorrect way, buy the biggest contour gauge you can find. I believe "Eastwood" sells one that is 30". Remove rear bumper (for axcess). Use driver quarter as a baseline with your contour gauge and hammer and dolly to relaxe the pass. quarter into original shape (only hammering on areas that will be covered with tail lights and bumper). Keep checking progress with the countor gauge. If you have never used a hammer and dolly research the diffrent ways of using it, Eg. on dolly, off dolly, ect, to understand how and where you are moving the metal. As with any repair make sure to restore any and all corrosion protection. With the incorrect repair I would do the repair in a mannor that no new paint would need to be applied. As you move the quarter it may knock the filler out on its own and thats just tough luck. I say to not disturb the paint becasue if you do, and require a repaint, dollar wise there is not much diffrence replacing the quarter and repairing it (with cost of tools, and your own time). I hope that all made sense. Again, I would highly recomend the correct repair, because in the long run it will be the easiest.

 

Sorry, but there is no way you would be able to PAY me enough money to convince me that the quarterpanel needs to be replaced for a differential cover sized area of damage that does not even involve the quarter itself other than the location of the damage taking it slightly out of shape from how close it was. Also having driven around with it for 4 years and being none the wiser does not speak in favor of this method either.

It just does not make any sense to go to the trouble of locating a new quarter, cutting it out, then hacking the same quarter location off my car, trimming, fitting, welding and finally smoothing for such a minor imperfection. I can tell just by looking at it that this will be a relative simple fix, however I don't have the answer because I have zero experience with bodywork.

As far as paint, the car is going to the shop in a couple months for a complete respray so we can mangle the paintjob as bad as we want and not create any problems out of it.

 

If you have no experience with bod work, why don't you wait until the car gets painted, and have the body shop handle it? At least you know that an experienced guy will be able to make it fit right.

 

That's more money out of my pocket that could go towards something such as hood pins or new badging. I'd like to mizmize the end cost by doing as much of the work myself as possible. I also don't like paying other people to do work on my car when it is within reason to do the job myself.

 

You could always just trim out the piece to fit the bow of the quarter panel. No one would ever know you did it but you....and everyone that reads this thread.

That would be the easiest/quickest way to get it fitted on the car and done.

 

That is actually not a bad idea. However I would be afraid of messing up the spoiler piece and I highly doubt hawks will sell you a replacement piece without ordering a whole new spoiler.

I'm going to pay a visit to the bodyshop that is doing the paint tomorrow and see if they have any recommendations.

 

Looks like the same that happened to mine, except the PO decided to hack out the rear third of the quarter besides and LAP weld it together, before slapping about 3/4" of Bondo over the whole mess (which is why it's gone now... Bondo cracked and let rust form underneath ) About the best thing you can do is to reshape it as best as possible if you're not going to have work done on the quarter itself. If you do have the quarter worked on, you can hack that corner out of a donor car and have it put in. As for me, I needed the spare tire well as well (yes, you CAN replace that), so I got a corner off of a donor and cut it to fit.