Rust Never Sleeps - Tech

This shot shows the repair panel with the old fender skin laid on top. I used the old skin as a guide to mark where I needed to trim the new panel. As I said before, trimming is not required; it's just the way I decided to go about it.

Here's the two panels side by side; you can see the marker lines on the edges of the patch panel, but I only trimmed the front and back, not the top.

The trimmed panel was placed over the gaping hole in the fender and positioned. I lucked out and my trimmed edges lined up remarkably well-things gotta go smooth once in a while.

The clamps hold the sheetmetal in place and with enough of a gap to fill with weld for a good, solid seam.

In years past, when I was redoing those typical rot-infested Northeast cars, I invested in a set of these cool sheetmetal clamps from the Eastwood Company. They come in pretty handy for patchwork, and I think they're still available.

Once in place, I tacked a few areas around the perimeter of the panel to hold everything together. Once the metal cooled, I went around the panel and began to finish weld a little at a time, letting the panel cool so it wouldn't warp from too much heat.

You can see the less-than-glamorous backside of the fender and the welds all around the perimeter. This took quite a while to complete, as I tried to keep the heat and warpage to a minimum.

And here's the almost-finished project. The panel is in place, all sewn up, and the grinding handled. Now all I have to do is rebuild the rotten portion of the inner rear support and give the outer area a skim coat of filler and it'll be time to tackle the other side. With this example wrapped up, let's take a look at what EMS has to offer in the way of quality and selection for the hot rod and custom car crowd.

Another pair of much-awaited panels offered by EMS are upper and lower headlight panels for '58 Fords. The headlight bucket-mounting panels on these models are notorious for rotting away and this panel perfectly replaces the OEM piece. The upper panel fits under the fender cap and is fabricated to fit the fender side like the factory original.

EMS panels are manufactured using only the highest-quality steel and each is stamped with tooling manufactured right here in America. The '49-52 Chevrolet door bottom-repair kit includes both a 20-gauge outer-skin section and an 18-gauge inner door bottom-repair panel for a complete and correct repair.

One of the best things about EMS is that not only do they manufacture the outer skins of popular panels, they also offer many of the structural components needed for really correct repairs. Pictured here is a rear inner quarter-panel for the '57-58 Ford 300.

Another thing I like about EMS products is the fact that they're actually designed with the do-it-yourselfer in mind. In many cases, EMS designs in steps, recesses, and flanges that aid in their installation-the pros may choose to trim 'em off, but us hobbyists will, nine times outta 10, benefit from these fitment options.