Tractor Supply pulled through. Yay! I spent a bit of time with a scrap of sheet steel slowly adding gas flow until the weld quality looked acceptable. I will leave it here rather than spend the money on another set of gauges that haven't been run over by a Lemons car.
It was in the high twenties in the garage. Wigwam skiing socks, four shirts, Nomex fireproof bottoms under the jeans helped a bit. Honestly, once I started with the welder, I didn't feel a touch of cold until I came inside. I love it.
I then spent A TON of time on the inner piece of the lower fender. Something nobody will ever see. I enlarged the slot I made yesterday and slowly welded in and hammered in the replacement piece to match the contours of the GM piece. Here is the result.
Then I took the welder and turned the arc up enough to weld through, and welded the two plates together while clamping them solid, effectively making it one thick piece of steel along the bottom of the fender. Then I addressed some small pinholes in the outer edge and ground it all flat. It will need filler and block sanding to be perfect, but it's pretty nice.
Oh yeah - I had a decade improvement in tune production. My wife bought me a $35 MP3 player and a cord for Christmas and Valentine's Day respectively, this rocks:
And then on to the fender. Wow. A LOT of work here. Shimming top and bottom, rotating it about the wheel center etc. First I ground off the filler I had on the leading edge of the door with the paint stripper on my 4" grinder. Then I slowly knocked the fender into place. I ended up innocently enough with one shim upper and lower. I had to enlarge the hole which is in the A pillar, since the A pillar patch either wasn't reproduced properly or was installed a little off. No big deal, though.
The leading edge of the door was addressed (wish I had pictures of this) by grabbing the door edge with a large adjustable wrench, spreading the load across the outside portion of the door with a long allen key, and bending the door a bit to match the fender. Now the resulting seam is much straighter when viewed from above, and although some filler will undoubtedly be required to flatten it all perfectly, it looks pretty darn good. See below and let me know what you think.
Now one bigger issue remains. The body crease is a bit off between the two surfaces. The upper contour is right on, as is the bottom contour, but the crease is off. Not up/down adjustment off, but the curvature seems slightly different. I think after careful investigation, that this fender is not the one originally fitted to this truck by GM. I think I can hammer/dolly the crease right now that I've properly aligned the entire thing.
Tomorrow is that, and then some work on the floor. If the floor goes well, the beginning of next week has be gathering a team of involuntary volunteers to rotate the truck in the driveway.
