Rear Hatch Gutter Repair

I take it as a good sign the repairs are getting smaller now.  I have a rust though site in the rear hatch gutter that contains the rubber weather strip.  Here’s the location on an old photo prior to blasting and priming the interior.

No doubt water pooled here due to a leak somewhere or perhaps the drain in the bottom of the gutter channel was plugged.  Fortunately everything here is more or less single curvature so the construction of a patch panel should be straightforward.  The only slight complication is the sheet steel has to be folded to double thickness before forming.  In this first picture (below) taken from the inside, the double wall is clearly visible.  In the second picture, the damage appears limited to the inner edge.  This should allow me to stay away from the highly curved and highly visible external surfaces.

Here’s the blank with the fold completed.  The only moderately fussy thing was to get the folded height correct, as that can’t be adjusted once the fold is made.

Now to match the curvature of the hatch the stretcher is used, followed by the shrinker when you go too far.  And then the stretcher again…these Eastwood devices work very well by the way.

The match is pretty good at this point so the outline is scribed onto the body and the cuts are made.

Then comes the usual tack welding and rough grinding.  Final smoothing comes later.