I have a 69 that needed full rear quarter panel replacement, truck pan and rear valance replacement. These have all now been replaced.....the trunk lid sits 1/4" inch off on each side (additional space). The quarters and valance appear to line up properly as per curves, etc.

Any ideas on what went wrong or how to fix? This is my daily driver practice car before touching my 69 convertible and I want to get this right. Thanks for any help!

Winston_Rodney
So. Cal Home Speed Shop

I replaced both quarters,trunk floor,tulip panel and tailpan on my 69'. My trunk lid has some additional space on the sides as well, maybe 3/16 of an inch more than the stock gap. Did you use a repro trunk lid or the original? If you measure the two, the repro is slightly narrower than the GM version. What I plan to do with mine is to weld a 1/8 inch steel rod to the very edge of the trunk lid to fill the gap. This will not only fill the space, but will also result in show quality, tight gaps. Contrary to popular belief, GM panel gaps were never great to begin with. My original Z with GM metal has a roughly 3/8 -1/2 inch gap at the bottoms of the doors, and only about 3/16 less gap at the trunk than the 69 in question with all virgin GM sheetmetal untouched. These gaps are far too loose for my taste, so out comes the MIG and the steel rod. Thats the only way to get it right at this stage. You did not do anything wrong. These parts just take some tweaking in varying degrees. Even NOS panels need minor tweaking- don't let anyone try to tell you differently. Its all part of the fun...no... the JOY of tinkering with our first gens! :):):)

The gap in my repo quarters was sort of an arc compared to the OE trunk lid.In other words when the gap was nice at the back edge it was wide in the middle on both sides.What I did was weld tabs on the gutter where the seal goes after I welded them to the quarters then pulled everything in with a ratchet strap.Then the middle gaps were nice but the back edge was tight.I then ground the trunk edge and ran a bead of weld to seal off the edge.Kept welding and grinding till I got the gaps right.As Bob said in his post none of this stuff fits perfect you just have to be creative and read what other guys do and see what works best for you.My repo doors have the same problem at the bottom,I can stick my fingers in there almost.I had to weld a rod to the bottom of those also.Good luck with your project.

You're right ...creativity helps. To get my quarters to fit tightly to the new tulip panel, I attached a ratcheting "comealong" to the inner sheetmetal behind the sailpanels to draw it all together. It worked great. My gaps at the trunk are like yours. They are nice at the corners, but wider on the sides. Some rod should make for an awesome body panel fit.

Anyone know of where I can just buy a giant vise to put my car in when I start putting new panels on it? (besides the one at the junk yard :D )

:beers: