The rear lower valence was always wavy on the car and when I put the backup lights in it was obvious there was a lot of filler. Besides being wavy, one side was flat and the other rounded. It gave the valence a real wonky look that just felt wrong. That was one of those little things that always bugged me.
When I stripped the paint this time around I bought a stud gun to pull the panel out thinking it would be a really easy to fix the lower valence.
The metal was really stretched on one side and it was just beyond my skill set to fix it. I was a little discouraged and set that aside for a while. In 2011 a friend had a left-over tail panel that he gave me. I was able to cut off the lower valence and weld in a new one. It was good I did because the backup light holes were punched wrong from the factory. One side was ¼ inch higher than the other. I was able to fix it by lining the mis-punched hole up with the inner valence and now everything is lined up properly.
Also there were always two holes burned around the hole beneath the license plate. I always assumed it was something the painter did. When fitting the valence I noticed the center hole would not sit flush because the inner valence was not trimmed correctly. The factory could not get the panel to sit flush so someone bridged the gap with a stick welder and burned a couple of holes around the opening. There were no spot welds anywhere. The inner valence hole was pretty jagged like it wasn’t trimmed right, or was early enough in production that it just wasn’t worked out properly (my car was built in Sep 1966). I trimmed the hole correctly and the parts dropped right in like they should and I was able to spot weld it in.
There was a softball sized dent in the lower right quarter. Again using my trusty stud welder I was pretty sure I could pull it out. Again the results weren’t that great so I bought patch panel and welded it in while working on welding in the lower valence.
Overall this part came out well. The car will have a straight lower valence now which was something missing for years.