Another small step, that actually feels like a big one!
After looking at the window channel, it looks like the earlier repairs have held up well and don't need re-visiting. There is some surface rust to be tackled, but I think that can be dealt with without welding.
So, back to the outer wheelhouse/quarter/trunk drop off alignments. First off was to trim the lip that was around the window edge.
Now there are no lips to interfere with fitment, I clamped the quarter over the outer wheelhouse lip and see how far off we were.
Amazingly, it all looked good straight away. A little encouragement and the body lines were where I wanted.
Looked good at the back end too.
With that all held in place, I had a go at aligning the trunk drop off too. This didn't work as due to the rough edges on the bottom of the old quarter. I'll cut this out when I'm ready to have another go at this.
As I started to disasemble the parts, I realisd I'd made a mistake. The outer wheelhouse hadn't been properly held in place. There were screws at the front and rear, but these still allowed the top to rotate out slightly. Only a quarter of an inch, but enough to mean the alignment I thought was good was actually wrong. After re-applying the top screws I found the alignment at the front was too far out to be acceptable, so the process had to start again.
I made a couple more tweaks to the front bottom end of the outer wheelhouse, so that it could go lower still - lower than I needed, but this helped as it gave more wiggle room. Rather than screw the outer wheelhouse in place, this time I use a few well placed clamps, so that I could adjust it easily if required.
Then the quarter was offered up and clamps applied to pull it in tight where required.
This time I got things lined up properly, and was able to apply some screws to hold the position of quarter to outer wheelhouse, and wheelhouse to main body.
With those all lined up and held, I set about bending the quarter lip up to meet the wheelhouse flange. Theres about half inch to be close up, all around the arch. I placed a small piece of aluminium between a clamp and the panel, squeezing it up, and bending both parts up a bit at the same time, sort of rolling the arch, but not as extreme.
I'm about half way round so far, although I can't do the rear most part until the trunk drop off is in place.
Realistically, I've not moved on much, but seeing the panel in place is very satisfying, and it doesn't feel like long until I will be ready to start welding it in. In practice, this could be a long way off, as I think I will need a full day to do all that welding. I will go as far as I can up to that point, and then may move onto something else until the right opportunity comes up.