Tonight I worked on the dash panel patch. I decided that with the tools and skills I have available I'd never be able to form the patch out of a single piece of metal, so I made it out of two, welded together.

As my luck would have it, the heat from welding stressed the panel enough that a large thin area I had missed (to the right of the patch) cracked open. Fuck. So I ground out the rust, verified that the panel underneath was intact, and spent the better part of 2 hours chasing thin and rusty parts in the upper panel around with the welder, attempting to fill them in.

After that little debacle, I ground the welds on the original patch down and blended it into the original panel. I have to say I'm really pleased with the way it came out. After blending it in it was really hard to spot where the original metal ended and my patch began. Not that it really would have mattered all that much because the majority of the panel is hidden by the windshield reveal moldings.

Anyway, I finished up by POR-15'ing the whole panel. An exhausting 5 hours of work or so today (after a full day at work).