Auto Fabrication vs. Transplanting Car Parts

This El Camino had a couple of very serious rust problems here in the box. Here in this back corner you could see all the way down to the pavement. There was a huge hole here, a lot a lot of rust. Over here we had a couple of big holes going through the side of the box where that had rusted through. So we have two different approaches to fixing those problems. In this case, what we chose to do is use a parts car and from that parts car cut a patch, and then weld that patch in. Now the reason that we went that route is because look at the complexity of the shape that we would've had to of dealt with here on this piece. So would it be possible for a real good body work person to fabricate something like this and get it in place so it looks good? Probably. But a whole lot easier, especially for a hobbyist auto repair person, to cut this part that's identical in look and shape from another vehicle and patch it in. Now the potential downside here is that if this particular one rusted through, maybe that's a problem area for this model car and the one you find is gonna be rusted through as well. Obviously in this case, that wasn't the case. We had a real sound part off our other vehicle. So sometimes your gonna be able to cut a part out, sometimes you're not. Now, the one on the side of the box it's a different approach. There were a couple of small holes through the box. It was very easy to take a piece, again from our donor vehicle, just a piece of sheet metal. Then using a brake, we could put that 90 degree angle into it, weld it up against the side of the box, weld it to the bottom of the box. This was so easy to fabricate it would've been crazy to take the approach of cutting it out and scabbing in that new piece from the donor vehicle. So basically the way to look at it is how complex is the part that you're trying to replace or the portion that you're trying to replace, and can you get a donor piece from another vehicle in order to make that up. If not, then you gotta look at the fabricating step or if it's a real easy fabrication like this one it's definitely the way to go. So when it comes to those body work pieces, sometimes you can fabricate, sometimes you can transplant from a donor. Depends on the application and what you've got in front of you.