More Roof Repair - just kill me now

This is a long one. So I decided to tackle the welding in the patch panels on the swiss cheese side of the roof. This side made me apprehensive and I admit I procrastinated on it. Till now.

Just to recap.... yuck

I thought about how best to tackle this. My main concern was cutting too much of the roof structure out at once and experiencing metal spring back from the initial stamping process. I decided to tackle the largest section first.

This was round one of many on this hand formed piece of metal. Actually this piece of metal is from a donor galaxie roof skin. I wanted this to ensure it was the same thickness, material and temper in order to minimize any problems in butt welding this together.

But the best laid plans of mice and men......

Initially I had tried to form this using a spoon and exhaust pipe to form the roll over to the side.

I had some success but the roll over wasn't smooth no matter how hard I tried. Now I have bought DVD's from master body craftsman to study and for the life of me I couldn't quite "get it". Now these extremely talented fellows do show how to build elaborate pieces using just a few basic tools. There is one fellow who made brass radiator shells of Rolls Royce quality using a rock and a tree branch. Ok I am being facetious but you get the idea.

After struggling with this for a couple of hours I gave in and bought one Harbor Freights finest....

Even though it's a cheap Chinesium thing, 15 minutes I was done and it smoothed out the roll over really nicely. Next was to cut a big scary part out of the roof.

So I cleaned the metal innards and used weld through primer.

So I thought I was doing good, but even going slow and taking my time with short welds produced distortion and warping. Moving on...

The lower corner piece proved to be really challenging due to the curves involved. I had to make a steel die to form the window inlay in.

It's not pretty but it will work.

Now this part I found really interesting.

There's an inner rounded back up piece to that seems to catch any water that leaks past the metal pieces in the corner then funnels that down onto another small tray with a funneled stamping that allows the water to pour on the outer wheel house.

This is like the game of Mousetrap I used to play as a kid. This is borderline crazy in a car. Now here's a radical idea Ford, why not make the window area actually seal?

It's bad enough there's hardly any protective coatings on the inner structures of these cars and the space between the outer wing/fender and the outer wheel house usually accumulates dirt, dust and debris that holds moisture. Now add a drain/gutter purposely adding water to that and it's no wonder why 99.9% of these cars have rusted rear wheel arches. (shaking head)

continued in next post.