remove rear 1/4 panel

[YellowMKIII]

does anyone know if the rear section of the car ( left and right quarter panel) can be removed? i am sporting a yellow 89 NA and it looks like shit with a hole on the left rear.... the size of a shoe box

any advice would be nice i want my dawg to look nice for once

[TONY!]

Interesting thread.
No response yet, well written, well titled, and from a pure newbie (to this forum anyways - welcome!)

Won't I feel so helpful to show you pictures that I have been really thinking about myself.

Now these attached pictures are not my pictures, nor are they from my car.
I think a fellow linked them to show those to people, and I saved them for future reference for my own possible work.
I hope the car owner/picture owner won't mind my using them.
And thanks goes to him (or her) for getting them up on the net.

Anyways, so they say a picture is worth a thousand words and so here are the pictures of the before and after with some of my narration.

You will need to drill out the weld points in your car as well as removing some nuts that are accessible from the inside of the car.

I once chopped rear quarter sections from an MKIII Supra, but I did not do it this way as shown in the following pictures.

I am also thinking of cutting my own rear quarter panels just for the sake of learning how that would be done (I disassembled mostly everything else that I could, so why not).

Tell me/us how you make out with whichever way you go.
Show some pictures too if you can, enen in its current state now.

[flight doc89]

Originally Posted by YellowMKIII

does anyone know if the rear section of the car ( left and right quarter panel) can be removed? i am sporting a yellow 89 NA and it looks like shit with a hole on the left rear.... the size of a shoe box

any advice would be nice i want my dawg to look nice for once

nope. rear panels are unibody. i wish i could, because i have a like 2foot by 1 foot by 3-4 inches deep dent in my real left.

[TONY!]

Well, they do sell quarter panels at Toyota.
Of course they can be removed--I just proved it with a picture of how a bodyshop would fix it.
Maybe they don't come off as easily as other cars, but they can be removed (as the pictures prove).
Imagine if a brand new car was to get hit in that section, would it just go to the garbage because it could not be fixed? - of course not.

[YellowMKIII]

yes i am new but i just want my 89 NA looking nice... she runs good except for some engine noise and a loud ass muffler

so do i need to get a cutting wheel to remove pannel from the targa brace?

[TONY!]

Originally Posted by YellowMKIII

...
so do i need to get a cutting wheel to remove pannel from the targa brace?

I am not so sure what would work for your application, but here is what I have found or from my limited experiences:
There are different ways of cutting the body metal.

Cutoff wheel
I have done it with a cut off wheel attached to a high speed grinder, and I don't think that is the best way, but that is all I had.
If you can make precision cuts with it for your section, go for it. I know you can't make curved cuts with it...or at least I could not.

Sawzall
There is a crazy fellow that goes by the name of slow66 on the other forums, and he used a Sawzall to modify his car into its transformation.

Plasma cutter
The absolute best way to do it if you can is by a plasma cutter. Not everyone has one of those though.

Air chisel
I tried that, and from my experience, it did not work all that well at all.
Maybe I used the wront tip? I borrowed it from a friend with a sharp tip, but it was still not that effective.

EDIT: If it were me...I would see how accurate I could cut a straight line or maybe even practice on scrap sheet metal before I attempted to cut the car in that line. Practice on sheet metal, then cut the real thing in a staight line.

[YellowMKIII]

is the shell of the panel attached to the frame? or soon as its cut around it will fall off?

[gorillaguy8]

No the 1/4 pannel is not attatched to the frame. I just had to cut one off a donor car from the junk yard. What i did was cut out the pannel so the patch will be square (dont try and cut round) . Also make sure you have plenty of extra in all directions on the good patch. Then cut the hole in the car (make it smaller than the patch cuz you can always trim off what you dont need), then your ready for welding, grinding, and filling.