Bodywork Update 2

Last Tuesday Dad and I stopped by Mario's shop to see how he was progressing with KITT. He had both rear quarter panels down to bare metal and had not found any unexpected surprises.

The one large obvious dent I was concerned about turned out to be not as bad as I had feared. Mario said whoever repaired it had done it correctly and that it wouldn't be any big deal to make it disappear. You can see the dent at the five o'clock position around the fuel filler opening.

Mario only found one area directly behind the driver side rear wheel that had rusted through. He cut this out and replaced it with sheet metal. Everything else was just surface rust. Mario asked if I would bring back the rear side marker light bezels so he could fit them and make sure everything would fit flush.

I stopped back yesterday to check on the progress and brought the side marker bezels with me. Mario has made some really good progress getting everything smoothed out. 

Here you can see the area that rusted through. Mario already fit a new piece of sheet metal into place and you can see the filler smoothing out the area.

You can see the filler evening out the factory weld connecting the top with the rear quarter panels.

Since my windshield is in like-new condition I chose not to remove it for paint, so Mario has it masked off so that he can sand down the existing paint to bare metal.

The passenger side looks great too, and with just a little filler in some low spots it will be ready for primer.

I think the most remarkable repair are the corners where the quarter panels meet the rear bumper. This was dented in on both sides from a previous rear end collision. You can see from the pictures below that there is no trace of the damage now.

Mario has a few areas like this one marked with a pencil because they still need a little more filler to smooth them out.