My Sentra is Xer than yours.

Xer... Say it out loud.

Anyway, my Xe with all the guts from an NX2000 was starting to show some rust.

It's always worse after you start smacking it with a hammer.

It ain't going to get better when you hit it with a grinder either...

I hate rust with all my being.  Grew up in the rust belt and saw way too many nice cars end up in the scrap yard.

And, as expected, the second layer is in need of some lovin' too.

Aww yiss!

In for this

I love B13s!

Well, look at that.  A third layer with tinworm.

This is not how you fix a 250GTO Ferrari.  A thousand dollar Nissan will be just fine with some epoxy panel bonding material to cover the little rust pinholes, since the fourth layer is pretty buried, and it's mostly solidish where it needs to be.

Beauty. Is that a SE-R?

We used to call these Nissan Sunny

Here is a lesson learned the hard way.  Every minute spent making the patch panel fit as closely as possible is a saving of ten minutes in welding and finishing.

End of day one.  Two layers to go, then off to the other side, which has bubbles farther up the quarter panel.  Makes for a tougher finish.  This one is solid from the body line up, so it should be easy to make pretty.

One more layer to go.  I need to drill some holes in this panel, I think.  There were holes in the old one.  I presume it has something to do with ventilation, or drainage, or something.  Not sure.

There. Similar to the old panel.  Still not sure why.

There.  A bit of spackle, some sealer, and it's back to being lovely.

And tomorrow, the drivers side.

Just thought I'd post a picture of everything I used for this job.  The welder is far larger than it needs to be.  As a matter of fact, the mechanical contacts are not as nice for this job as the solid state stuff in the little suitcase welders.  

The sheet metal brake is also far more than a guy needs.  Again, it's what I have.  I have often thought about buying a little bench top brake/roller for this kind of work.  For what I did, a good vice and some angle iron will do the job.

The tricky part is learning how to bend, how to form, and how to weld.

And, how hard it is to weld tinfoil.  You gotta get back to clean steel.

I recommend learning on a car you don't care about.

Where did my sheet metal brake picture go?

Looking good...

Wish I had known about the epoxy bonding material when I was piecing together the rockers on my G35 this winter.... Would have made life a little easier.... Oh well, next time.

My saving grace is the rockers are completely hidden behind a plastic cover (which is why they rotten in the first place)...

Gordon

A week later, I'm to the last layer on the drivers side.  Ran out of zinc weld through primer, copper is cheaper.  This patch is going to be a bit more involved to do in one piece.

The profile is going to be interesting.  I think the first step is to build a profile to follow.  The two tight radius curves are going to be fun to bend, but luckily it doesn't flare as It goes towards the rear wheel.

This is a thing I bought one day because it looked cool.

Also lucky, the profile is the same all the way to the front fender.

This is a good time to point out that I'm really flying by the seat of my pants just now.

It gives me something to work to , anyway.

Looking good; that profile tool is going to be super helpful for making the panel. 

I made the mistake on one of my Volkswagen's of trying to 'eyeball' the curve of the rockers. Needless to say my eyeballs aren't that accurate. On the drivers side I made sure to create some kind of profile tool.