I'm working on my dream car, a 69 Charger R/T. Part of the dream was that the awesome body wasn't so awesome when I got into it. The rear 1/4s have patches but are so bad that I will have to redo them and the valance corners. I guess that I will have to remove the good valance to get to the corners?

Any advice on this would be helpful. I have done a roof, floor, and various patches with success with a gas mig welder but this is pretty complex to me. I will drill out the spot welds and try the fancy Eastwood panel aligner things to line up the patches but:

What order do I do the job? 1/4 patches, corners then valance. or corners, 1/4 patches and valance?

Can I reuse the old valance if ok or buy a new one. I figured if I just drilled the spot welds that I could weld them back together.

Is there a good way to line the corners to the valance to the 1/4s? On some cars I see a small thin gap on each side of the corner. Yet on other cars I see a gap between the corner and the valance and a raised line between the corner and the 1/4.

I'm sure more questions will come to mind as I go through it.

Thanks,
CAC

Well,I think I will cut out the makeshift 1/4 patches and try to salvage the rear valance corners. The bodyman welded the 1/4 patches to the valance corners, maybe they are save able.

It's been a long time since I worked on a Charger, but here goes:

Yes, I'm pretty sure the rear valance has to be out of the way for removing the corners.
Yes, the order would be corners, valance, quarter patches.

If you have good corners they'd be worth saving & reusing. They're the key part in getting that area as it should be.
I've made new ones in the past, but I've seen really nice repops in the last couple years. I haven't actually worked with them, but they look very nice.

You have to carefully test fit all the parts and get them properly positioned relative to each other before welding the corner in.

What you're seeing on that corner to quarter seam is seam sealer... on some cars it was a neat tidy job and others it oozed out, giving that raised string look.

Yes, you can reuse the rear valance... yes, reweld the drilled out spot welds.
The rear valance repro's that I've used were pretty nice and fit well.

Hope that helps,
Rick

The original assembly sequence was quarters installed first, followed by the valence corners, then the valence, and finally the tail light panel.

Also keep in mind the Charger Specialties repop corners are junk. The dimensions are way off.

I haven't tried the AMD ones yet, but they look much closer to OEM.

Thanks for the responses. After staring at it for a couple hours today and sanding the seams, I know one can be saved with a small patch, but the passenger side corner has to go.

I think that I can install it without removing the rear valance, or at least I am going to try.

Okay, so the corner to quarter seam is suppose to be filled with seam sealer and the corner to valance seam is suppose to not have the sealer?
Dose anyone have a pic of what the corner to quarter seam should look like?

THanks
CAC