Dave, you have hit the nail right on the head with this one. No the quarter panel skins are not quite the full answer however, in the hands of a proper body/metal man they can be installed to absolute perfection. I learned a long time ago that when you can't buy what you need you just make what you need. I was doing 68-69 Coronet body panels before anything was available. And trust me when I say that after so many patches it soon becomes an art form. It really irks me when I browse some of these high dollar resto shops and the first thing you see is the original quarters have been cut off without any regards to just repairing what's there already. Yes it will always cost more to do it this way but you still have the integrity of the unibody intact and no ugly insides where the skins have been installed. Yes I can also install the skins with little hint that it was even done when you run into that case when the panel is so damaged it is beyond repair but a lot of the quarters I see can be saved. That's the differance between a restorer and a regular body shop. As a restorer I am always concerned with saving as much of the original car as humanly possible. Here's a great example. My customer bought a very clean 69 R/T charger out of Montana and it did have a very shoddy repaint and some hideous body work to go along with it but it was truly a rust free car. I completely stripped the car only to find the right side quarter had been hit between the door and wheel opening and it was full of dent puller holes and bondo 3/4" thick. The customer thought a new quarter panel was needed. After much discussion I got him to slow down a minute and just let me do my thing. Next thing you know I have all of the damage worked out and the holes welded up and a good amount of shrinking. Surprisingly it only took a little bit of body solder to bring it all around and you would never know it was wrecked. I did go over the whole car and massaged everything that was wrong and then applied a fresh coat of F5 green metallic and my customer was a happy camper! And the car still retains all of it's own sheet metal! By all means get on the phones to you AMD reps and tell them what you need but then maybe there are a few of you out there that just need a good metal man.

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