Looking For Rear Corner Body Panels

not critical functionality, but important to me none-the-less

 

Another good technique is to heat it with map gas and bump with hammer/paddle. Light bumps, circle heat - not too much, I have also used wet rags to then get it to pull back into shape after heating and bumping.

That's what I did on the rear corners of the '63 build. Got them good enough for me.

 

I ordered a replacement panel from classic...going to go that route...chatted with them on the phone, and I will still have some metal massage work to do along the top as their panel comes to just a bit below the 1" step-out (the same one that makes the bow notch)....He said if I could either butt weld it, or I could leave a little extra hanging down and overlap it.....we'll see when it all get here and I can take some measurements on how much to cut out.....
Until then...I decided to relocate the filler neck to the rear panel...I got it to fit decently above the reverse light and just below the top of the inner fender - even left just enough room for the hose to overlap on the filler neck. Just have to figure out the filler hose/tube.

 

That is pretty much how I expect to do mine....just to a much lower finish quality. The seam with the taillight panel won't be all that nice either as some of it got bent, and the area has an old repair of mine from years ago to the lower piece by the body mount that got pulled apart when it got crunched....I am going to order the Warrior 1/8" corner armor to go over the top as well....My hope is that the body panel repair/welded seam on the outside quarter is further rearward than the corner armor so the armor it will overlap and both cover it visually, as well as I think it will be a bit stronger to get some mounting bolts into the original side panel than just into the repair panel where it would add additional stress to my repair welds if it gets impacted.....

 

I ended up just making a homemade version of the intermediate filler hose with two pieces, and added in the metal sleeve to join the two sections of hose and it also has the vent hose nipple welded into it. I have some old intermediate filler hoses salvaged from the JY when I got the tank etc, they were just too old and hard to try re-using, and I think I like the metal sleeve nipple better than the OEM set-up with the nipple going into the hose and using a flat washer and gasket to seal. I tried that method on my first filler and I could never get it to seal permanently (even with gas resistant RTV).


ok - about done with this for now...can't do much until I get the new repair panel in and have time to work on it after returning from a big trip over the next month....but I am pretty happy with how the new fuel filler location turned out. This is really the way I wanted to do it when I originally did the rear tank add....going to drive it over to the other side of town while we have a break in the snow for a day or so (don't want to deal with putting the top on) and park it for a while in my father's garage. Between this project and what turned out to be an easy o-ring fix-up for our double barrel carlson raft pump it actually feels like I accomplished something...and then I look at the 58...