Dad and I set to work pulling the gas tank out and cutting the trunk pan out. I had a replacement Goodmark trunk pan and a replacement driver’s side rear quarter bottom patch panel. Before you know it, we had the rear glass out and no trunk floor in addition to having a chunk out of the driver’s side rear quarter. There was an incredible 5/8ths of an inch layer of Bondo on the driver’s side quarter from an earlier accident that hadn’t been pulled out properly!! I knew there was some Bondo but this was really egregious use that someone on the island should be ashamed of! At any rate, Dad and I spent a lot of time on the hammer and dolley together, me inside the car with the dolley once we had removed the interior, and he on the exterior hitting the rear quarter. After some hammer time, we welded up the holes and had the rear quarter in shape so we figured we wouldn’t need more than an 1/8th inch of Bondo on the worst places. Then it was just a matter of a few days worth of sheet metal fabrication, welding, and grinding, followed by some a little paint preparation, painting, and re-assembly.
We used the PPG Deltron system metal prep (DX579 Metal Cleaner followed by DX520 Metal Conditioner) and primer (DP90LF Epoxy Primer in black). In the trunk, I also laid down truck bed liner over the epoxy primer for a durable, easy to maintain finish. Under the truck pan I spayed 3M undercoating. I cleaned and metal prep’ed the gas tank as well and covered it in 3M undercoating before re-installation. I bought a steel brake line for a gas return line for the sending unit, and Dad bent it and we drilled a hole in the sending unit and welded the line into place. All the welding and painting was complete before Dad had to leave but the rear window glass was still out, as was the rear interior, and gas tank, so I had to put these back together by myself. It was in putting the rear bumper back on the car that I realized during some previous collision the rear bumper had been bent, and it was not possible to line up all of the bolt holes that held the bumper in place, regardless of how the brackets were aligned. Although a new bumper isn’t very expensive, shipping to Hawaii from the mainland is, and I have another problem—the Recon stickers are on the rear bumper, and I’ll need to go through the entire process again if I have to remove them to place on a new bumper. I know this because I asked the Recon people when I finished the process what I needed to do if I ever got the bumper re-chromed, and they told me they have no mechanism for putting the stickers on a new bumper for me (even if I presented at their office with the car and new bumper together) and that I would have to do the entire Recon process over again if I got the rear bumper re-chromed. I guess unfortunately even the best of bureaucracies are still bureaucracies.