1962 impala quarter panel to center filler panel seam

RosharonRooster

RosharonRooster

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Looking for advice on the best way to prep this before bodywork stage and what products to use?

It's a reproduction quarter panel and a reproduction center deck lid filler panel. The 2 sections are spot welded underneath. They are in ecoat. But I will be taking it all off and using epoxy. Should I be putting any type of seam sealer down in there or use any type of filler? What about mig welding the seam up? Will i ghost back after paint?.

Thank you
 

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I just looked at the pictures and the sections look uneven in the pictures. They are even but the radius of the bends of metal are not sharp.
 
I put quarters on my 70 GTO and used 3m panel bond in that area. It filled it in pretty nice. Underneath where its welded I felt I could not get it right. I'm just a old maycanic but felt this was best for me and my talent level.
John
 
My guess is you want it smooth without any seam. I’m sure it was leaded originally. If it’s fill with weld, it shouldn’t ghost at all.
 
Just completed quarters on a 62, and was lucky enough not to have to replace that center section, made the cut about half an inch to the outside of it and butt welded quarter there. There was a visible seam from the factory that had some kind of seam sealer in it, most definitely not leaded or totally smoothed over...would think panel bond as suggested in that thin crack tooled by hand after welding the underneath seam would duplicate the original.
 
My rear deck panel on the '68 GTX was installed in similar manner. The welds are under the panel where the seams butt together.
It took some "adjusting" but I finally got them to line up properly. I used seam sealer for the exact reasons Chevman mentioned, to prevent cracking and it was how the factory did it.
 
Those unwelded joints on the exterior are that way for a reason--that's your expansion joint take-up. Tying the masses of the two quarter panels together into one very large and with a narrow band with solid exterior welds is not allowing for expansion/contraction considerations. Factory used seam sealer for this.
 
First gen Camaro guys have eliminated the seams, and report success without cracking., which was done on convertibles.
I’m more inclined to leave the seams, as DAT stated for expansion and flex.
It may not be as important to a full frame car, but it does look odd to me when they are eliminated.
 
Two part seam sealer that flows would fill the void well. There are several threads on here with different recommendations. Norton comes to mind as a good one.
 
I don't know if I agree with the comments about expansion and a seamless panel. OEM's did what they did for economy. Look at the handmade European cars. Nearly all of them had continuous no seam panels. They did not lead seams. If you are wanting to have it seamless, the key is to join them together correctly. Meaning a single panel thickness across the joint. Leaded seams ghosted some, filler will ghost some, filling it with weld will ghost some. Only way would be to join the two panels with a fabricated piece that matches the two panels, weld it on both sides, planish if you can. 1/4's are done this way a lot. That seam would be no different. It does take some effort to do it correctly though. Any filler is not going to work, just as welding it solid there won't work either. You will get ghosting to some degree.

For anyone wanting to learn more, do a search here keyword: "ghost" username: MP&C Robert has gone into a lot of detail about this.
 
bmenard said:
Sounds right, all 55-57s I’ve worked on had lead. Never have touched a 58-60.
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Not sure how this would affect the way Chris suggested, but my thought is that the factory change over might have happened along with, or shortly there after the change over to the unibody.
 
Chris_Hamilton said:
Leaded seams ghosted some, filler will ghost some, filling it with weld will ghost some.
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If welded seams will ghost, then why is welding in a piece any better? I feel like overthinking could be happening here, myself included. The OP is asking about seam sealer recommendations.
Chris, I’m sure you have a good recommendation for seam sealer, along with part numbers.
 
Big Dave said:
If welded seams will ghost, then why is welding in a piece any better?
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It's about rate of expansion. If you have a blob of weld in the middle of the seam there it will expand at a different rate than the thin sheetmetal at either side. If you cut out the seam area and replace it with a piece to make it continuous then there is no difference in thickness of material there and therefore everything will expand at the same rate.
 
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Big Dave said:
Chris, I’m sure you have a good recommendation for seam sealer, along with part numbers.
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I have been using 2 part seam sealer for the last 15 or more years. I find that most of them work similar. SEM, Lord Fusor are two I've used a lot of. All of them are similar. They all make various seam sealers leveling, heavy bodied etc. I like the standard or heavy bodied for most things. I really can't recommend a single part conventional seam sealer as I haven't used any in years. My apologies.
 
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