Thanks for all the suggestions, and you guys were right on track.. I took some pictures, looked inside and found the culprit.. But let's back up a second and look at this one, it should have been my first clue. Where the second mark was not as round, looking at it now does show that it is rather symmetrical.
The Halo is approx. 3" away from the handle hole..
Measuring that distance on the inside shows.....oh wait....what's that bare metal?
As soon as I saw this I realized there had only been one thing inside that could have caused it... the painting fixture..
This was made to hold the tail gate in correct alignment as on the car for painting. I had radiused the lower bar but failed to do so on the top one. A check of the skin with body sweeps shows that a #15 sweep is about correct, so it was used to verify some relief grinding on the top bar...
As added insurance, some truck cap gasket seal was added to further isolate the issue on both top and bottom bar....
On a positive note, glad to find this issue in the primer stage.... So as a lesson at my expense, if you're making fixtures to hold body panels insure there are no pointed edges that may cause any outward dings.
Thanks again for the suggestions!
