Body's off the Frame (Again). Hopefully for the last time

Its been about a year since I've posted, life continues to interrupt my progress but I have reached a milestone.  This update is a review of the body work.

First, lets review the driver's side fender.  If you go back ands look at some of the older posts, you can see my first attempt(s) at repairing the fender.  Well, as I progress through this project, I get much more confident in my skills and much better at recognizing my mistakes.  After my initial fender replacement, I started adding filler and noticed it was going to be WAY too thick.  I decided, even though it meant starting over that this wasn't acceptable.

As you can see, I made several attempts to flatten the sheetmetal by cutting and welding.  All of this just made it worse so I just decided to start over.  You can see the cut lines based on the flat part of the passenger fender.

After cutting the fender back off again using the same lines as I did originally, I used 1/8" welding wire to repair/ replace the edge.

I cut back the factory edging to good metal

Clamped and welded the new rod to the old..

After cleaning up the weld, looks like a single piece

Next, using the NEW passenger side fender as a template, identified the flat spot on the fender and cut a new patch panel.

With the center section replaced, I wasn't satisfied with the lower section of the door so I went ahead and replaced it too.

Instead of folding the metal over the 1/8" welding wire, I just tacked it and then followed it up with a fillet weld

Test fit before welding

With the new panel installed, it made the subsequent bodywork much easier.

Skipping through the many hours of grinding, hammering, shrinking, this is the finished panel.  I overall pleased with the results except right above the fender vent.  I worked for a long time on this but I couldn't really get behind it to make it better.

It'll still need a little filler but overall, its relatively flat.  This is a horizontal shot.

And a vertical shot.  There is a slight arc to the fender design.  I used the replacement passenger fender as a reference to ensure the arc matches.

Now, being satisfied with the fender, I could get back to finishing the bodywork.  Before getting too carried away, I reviewed the body lines one more time.  I printed a stepped guide to measure the gap consistently.

Drivers fender/ door gap 

Drivers door to rear fender.  I was pleased with the gap but not the roll of the door vs the fender (or so I thought) so I added some metal to the fender to match the door.  Later, after repairing the door frame, I ended up grinding most of the additional metal back out.

Passenger door to fender alignment

Top edge of the passenger door to B pillar.  I wasn't initially pleased with the vertical alignment of the door.

After working with it for some time, I am much happier with the alignment

Passenger door to rear fender

Ultimately I'll use high build primer and block sand but went ahead and added filler to the areas I know need a little more help than just high build.  Even with all the work I did on the fender, it still ended up needing filler.  I used a magnet across the fender to ensure the body filler wasn't very thick.

Having replaced both fender lights, I went back with filler instead of using lead like the factory.

Having fresh metal, I thought I'd try my hand at welding in the passenger fender using TIG instead of MIG.  Turned out pretty nice

The nose wasn't in too bad of shape except around the bumper mounting holes and the lower edge.  I hammered out what I could, did a little patch work and lead removal around the lower edge of the headlight buckets.

At some point, the car was hit in the rear on the right side of the license plate holder.  Oddly enough, the steel license plate holder faired worse than the boot lid.  

After a few more weeks of removing and installing doors, fenders, boot and bonnet (many times), I'm finally comfortable with the results and have pulled the body off to start priming and prepping for paint.