Here is another repair I did when I first started getting the van back together many (many) years ago. Looking back I'm not happy with what I did. The panel was buckled and the curve was more of a fold, the lip at the bottom of the sill was too low compared to the one on the cargo sill. I tried to bend it further up but this just formed another crease.
Trouble is that when I levelled the bottom of the panel with the bottom of the cargo door sill the panel came up short front and back, or more front or all back what ever way you look at it. The way I had cut the old patch out didn't make it easy to fit the new one either. The panel needed to be fitted lower or streched out longer. Not sure if this is because I welded my cargo door sills too high?
So with a bit of fabrication I cut and re-folded the forward edge but could not widen it as much as I needed to as I'd previously cut too much off so I got it lined up as best I could. I like my magnetic orange arrows.
With the cargo doors fitted I used a long spirit level (as seen in other posts) clamped to the doors to make sure I got the panel sitting flush and straight along the length of the van.
When I tacked the panel into position it warped in the centre butting the edges together. I took a cutting disc to the tack welds where the panels touched, this relieved the pressure and buckle between the two panels and got the skin flat again.
I still needed to line up the curve of the arch with the shorter repair panel, I did this with a gas torch and persuasion hammer. You can also see some hot spots on the upper panel where I heated the part of the skin that had been streached from the previour repair. I heated each spot to cherry red, when it started to deform I quickly blocked and hammered it flat, then again quickly whacked on a wet rag to shrink the metal. You really need three hands to do this.
I seam welded the front and top edge and dragged out my spot welder to get a few spot welds to hold the panel to the front inner wheel arch support and to spot the lower lip to the inner sill. I shrunk one last spot along the top seam weld. The repair now looks a lot better than the previous attempt.
