I had an extremely bizarre dream last night, involving a Car & Driver tuner shootout where I had to replace the quarter panel on the Firebird before I could go out on track. I was doing this work at the bottom of a well. I should seek help.

Anyway, I woke up this morning at 6am and decided to make my dream a reality.

Last night I painted the inside of the replacement panel with POR-15, and this morning, after futzing around with fitment, I punched holes for plug welds (using my fantastic harbor freight pneumatic hole puncher), and sanded the paint off the weld areas.

I also used some of that steel I bought yesterday to make a filler panel that replaces the factory drip rail. I'm shaving the drip rails off, so this panel will fill in the gap between the inner body structure and the quarter panel. I'll make a similar (but longer) panel for the roof when I get to replacing it.

Then, the welding began. I started in the front, at the doorjamb, and worked my way backwards. Many pairs of vise grips were used on the wheel well to make sure the panels are tight together. The panel lines up with the door more or less perfectly--I was *almost* able to get the rear filler panel to line up properly, it's flush at the top and bottom, but in the middle it's bent in a little. I finally gave up on trying to hammer it perfectly flush and decided to just fill in the leftover gap with body filler. FWIW, there was a gigantic gap in this location with the factory quarter panel that was full of bondo, so I made things much better than they were.

I made my drip rail replacement panel extra long so I can cut it perfectly flush later (I'll wait until I'm working on the roof).

Getting that quarter panel box out of the garage made it much less cluttered. I can actually reach my workbench now!

I've still got a couple of minor welding tasks (there's a bumper support brace that goes inside, and that lower valance piece), and I need to grind all of the visible plug welds flat, but I'm basically done with this side of the car.

.. now I get to do it all over again on the other side!