Day 42 – Outer Wheel house 4, Lower Valance and Taillight Panel

Today Travis was back in the shop and we ripped through a lot of tasks today.

First off Travis and I assessed the wheelhouse and decided that we need to re-fit it, clean up some of the old welds and hammer and dolly the seam back together. We then turned our attention to the lower valance. We first leveled the frame by running a straight edge and level across the frame rails and using shims on the jack stands to adjust the level. Once the frame was level we took readings from a few places on the car and they all said the same thing, the rear passenger quarter panel was low. We then rolled a table over and used a bottle jack to jack up the rear passenger quarter panel and weld in the trunk-to-lower valance supports.


Once this was done, I got to work on removing the taillight panel and Travis got to work on the aforementioned wheelhouse.

Once he got the tack welds in for the wheelhouse and I got the taillight panel removed, we went ahead and fitted the new trunk lock bracket to hold the taillight panel in place at the top , and tacked it to the lower valance to hold it from the bottom. While these panels are OE replacements they still require some manual persuasion to fit correctly. As you can see, it’s starting to look like a back end of a car.

Day 39 Inner wheelhouse 2 / Tail section 1

Today Travis got right to work on finishing the patching for the passenger side (see previous post). He did have cut a bit of the fender out of the way so he could access both sides of the wheelhouse.

I began work on the rear tail section. I removed the lower valance by using a spot weld drill bit. I pre drilled the holes with a 1/8” bit, while this proved to be much faster, the pilot hole was too big so the bit would move around while trying to drill. This left for somewhat of a messy removal. I would not suggest this tactic if you plan on keeping either panel. I, fortunately, am replacing both so it doesn’t really matter. After the panel was removed I found some pretty serious rust damage on the rear frame on either side. I will have to figure out what I am going to do about this before I can move forward.

Day 38 - Inner Wheelhouse 1

Today we removed the rear differential and leaf springs. Now we could take a look to see what needed to be done on the inner wheelhouse. The Chargers rear wheelhouse (or inner fender) is split right down the middle lengthwise creating and inner wheelhouse and an outer wheelhouse. Due to the water getting into the trunk, the rust climbed up the inner wheelhouse about 2 inches or so. I could get 2 new inner wheelhouses, but considering that 80% of the wheel house is still good, it makes sense to save the $250 and patch the hole with sheet metal. I am going to be replacing the outer wheelhouse on both sides as they are not only rusted through on the bottom but also along the outer edge that contours the Quarter Panel.

Travis was left to create 3 pieces to patch into the area between what was left of the inner wheelhouse and the new trunk pan. Travis first created a pattern out cardboard that would fit, and then transferred it to sheet metal. Once cut out of the sheet metal, he then cleaned up the edges on the grinding wheel, used the pneumatic hole puncher to create holes for plug welds and finally flanged the inner wheelhouse so the patch panel would fit flush against it. Travis will need to repeat this process 2 more times on this side to finish the patch work.