Battery Box/inner fender

This car has very little rust and very little damage. But one area that has to be fixed is the Battery area or Apron as it is called. Some refer to is as the inner fender or side firewall. Batteries are harsh. The release gas and acid that will corrode the metal as did in this car. Now there is also a dent showing that the car ether lost a tire tread or was hit in the front. Nothing else is damaged tho so I am thinking it was a tire tread. Scan below to see this 'basic' repair...

You can see the battery in place here (front, your left)

Here is the whole side with the damaged area to the front (left)

I am assuming that the original tray has rotted away and someone made a new home  for the battery

The shock tower is now gone (and never coming back!) but the apron is still in place here

This is the underside of the apron/tray area

Drilling out spot welds. I chose to drill out the front so that it will be easy to clean up the welds.  Spot weld:  the way the factory joined to panels of metal. The panels are pinched together by two large 'welding rods' and electricity is applied to melt the panels together. You can see a small uneven circle around the edge of most car panels. These circles are the spot welds. Watch the first few minutes of this video. To remove them, you can drill a flat bottomed  hole through one side of the panel. If the hole is larger than the spot weld, the panel will separate.

Here is me separating the two panels. Normally drilling out the welds is NOT enough, you typically will miss some welded areas and need to chisel the panels apart some. In this case, I won the spot weld drilling lottery and the panel just about fell off! 

Look mom, I made a door! I removed this now so I can climb in and out of the engine bay to work on it. 

I will not be welding this back on until I am ready to paint the firewall but here it is in place

This is the new panels in place for mock up. The next step is smoothing out the unneeded holes in the firewall and prep for paint. I will do the bay in gloss black.