First Patch ever

This is the first patch I ever attempted on my bus or any other car. It went pretty well. This is a roof section at the rear. It seems that a previous owner cut 14 inch holes in the roof for skylights or something. I had to widen the holes because several holes had been drilled around the perimeter to rivet/screw whatever was on there in place. I chose the roof panels as my first repair jobs because I knew there would be a learning curve. The roof won't bee seen much by your average Joe.

I learned three hard lessons from this patch. First, when I initially tacked the panel in place, I started in the center fore and aft. I then tacked the centers left and right followed by the four corners. In the future I will start from the center and tack toward the edges. As a result of tacking the corners and then coming back toward the middle, there were some fitment issues. Nothing major, but there is a little waviness that shouldn't be there. Second, I need to be careful not to apply too much heat to any one spot for too long. I caused a little dip in the front a little left of center by trying to fix my my final mistake. My last (but not least) mistake, was to get a little carried away with the grinder as I was cleaning up the welds on the front. I thinned the metal and the welds too much in one area and It cracked a little. No sweat. I'll either patch the patch or fill in a little with the torch.


This photo is from the rear to the front. I still need to do a little more grinding and some sanding to get it perfect. you can see (at the eleven o-clock position on the patch where I went a little nuts trying to fill in some metal after I ground it too much.

Passenger side view from front to rear. You can see the slight waves that I caused by tacking in the wrong order.

Underside.

Passenger side view. You can see where the front doesn't quite meet correctly with the roof line. I still have a little grinding/sanding to do, but it wont help this section much. After It's painted and a light skim of some filler, I think It'll be hardly noticeable.