Hey Y'all,

Gonna try to get re-started on my 68 bird soon and need some advice on a topic. My quarters have some rust issues around the wheel and also where the louvers are. the rest of the quarters seem solid and original. Is it posible to just cut out the louvers with a few inches of margin all the way around and replace just that section? is it also possible to do the same with the wheel area? My budget is limited now so the object is to do have a good finished product as inexpensively as possible. Is this a reasonable path to pursue?

thank you in advance for all the advice. if this seems plausible, my next venture is to find some original patches so i can start working

David

If you are good at welding, yes that would work.

I may have both sides of louver area left if they didn't get taken to the scrap yard yet. I replaced the rear quarters on two '68's last year.

Let me know, price, condition, size, etc. I may be interested.

Yes, it is possible. I had NOS F-body quarters put on my coupe. The louvers needed to be added in much the way you described.

You can cut it wherever. If the wheelhouse and cutout area hadn’t been mangled, I would have removed a one-inch strip around the quarter lip. Then again, if the wheel house hadn’t been mangled, it wouldn’t have trapped moisture in the seam, and the quarter would be a mangled, rust-free factory quarter like the right side. The only reason I hacked it out was because I was starting to loose the wheelhouse to rust, something car doesn’t have, and I marked the patchwork.

As for the wheelhouse, by the time I did the Gorilla Monsoon on the mangled area, I couldn’t restore the beveled area because the metal was too work hardened. I did, however, do an excellent job at replicating the cove in the patched areas.

As for cost, the skin was a $40 roadside cash & carry purchase from someone who was using it to practice painting. The paint was $300. I did spend a couple of dollars on sandpaper. But no one else talks about what they spent on sandpaper; likewise, I’m not going to talk about it.

I guess my buddy finally hauled everything to the scrap yard. Missed by a month or so.
I will be putting new quarters on my 4 speed over the winter if you can wait that long.

let me know when you get close and we can go from there. I need to assess my car and see exactly what I need as well.

Thank you
David