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- Jul 21, 2012
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- My Car
- '71 Mustang Mach 1 M-code "Soylent Green"
'69 Plymouth Valiant 100
'68 Plymouth Satellite
This thread on TheLincolnForum.net (only readable if you are a member) spurred on a bit of body filler contemplation.
One of the forum members there had the unfortunate incident of having his '64 Continental's quarter panel dented by a motorhome parked next to him. In the process of the repair, there were commentaries about the (apparently shocking) "2mm of body filler" found from an older repair over some rust, which was cut out by the body shop:
So be it. Then the bodyshop hacks lapped a pair of patches directly over the existing steel - welding it to boot, instead of gluing it (why warp the original steel if you're going to put panels over panels? Might as well glue it and save yourself the warpage):
...and once the body filler was on, nobody seemed to mind, nor care - notice that there is a lot more than 2mm of filler on it now. The wheel arch definition line absolutely disappears as it works its way down the quarter panel:
But the lousy patch repair isn't my rant. Lousy patches have been around for ages. It's the attitude towards filler; new vs. old. For sake of brevity, I'm copy/pasting from my post at the Lincoln forum:
2mm is not that much filler for an older, run-of-the-mill repair that has survived for the last 20 years. I dare say the shop that did the Lincoln NOW must have put that much and more to smooth those overlapping patches. There must be at least 3-4mm of filler on the car now just to blend the overlap of the patch vs. the original panel. The wheelwell edge suggests that there may be much more filler than that too.
I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade here, but I've found it all too prevalent for those of us in our hobby to believe that a good looking - yet filler-heavy - repair of today is somehow superior to filler-heavy bodywork repairs of yesteryear.
Neither are superior, nor are either necessarily bad - if it holds up and you don't see it (and if you're not paranoid about all-steel repairs), then it'll probably be fine for the average daily-driver resto/refresh. I'm not discounting metalworking skills here, mind you - by all means, if you can hammer and dolly like a god, do it! - but not all of us are metalworking geniuses...and even the geniuses use skim coats.
Fact is, there is this unrealistic and delusional attitude throughout a good portion of the classic automobile community* that plastic filler done in the present is somehow superior to plastic filler removed off the car from when someone was there last. It isn't. It's the same thing (provided it isn't a quarter inch of filler over steel that looks like the Cascade mountain range, or falling off the car due to bad prep).
Just remember this: Someday, someone will remove YOUR body filler and remark "What were they thinking?!" - just like we do now over older repairs.
-Kurt
*By that, I don't mean the Pebble Beach crowd, but those of us who tinker with simple, mass-produced cars. Still, I'd bet that there are some fun secrets hiding under more than one of those award-winning paint jobs.
One of the forum members there had the unfortunate incident of having his '64 Continental's quarter panel dented by a motorhome parked next to him. In the process of the repair, there were commentaries about the (apparently shocking) "2mm of body filler" found from an older repair over some rust, which was cut out by the body shop:
So be it. Then the bodyshop hacks lapped a pair of patches directly over the existing steel - welding it to boot, instead of gluing it (why warp the original steel if you're going to put panels over panels? Might as well glue it and save yourself the warpage):
...and once the body filler was on, nobody seemed to mind, nor care - notice that there is a lot more than 2mm of filler on it now. The wheel arch definition line absolutely disappears as it works its way down the quarter panel:
But the lousy patch repair isn't my rant. Lousy patches have been around for ages. It's the attitude towards filler; new vs. old. For sake of brevity, I'm copy/pasting from my post at the Lincoln forum:
2mm is not that much filler for an older, run-of-the-mill repair that has survived for the last 20 years. I dare say the shop that did the Lincoln NOW must have put that much and more to smooth those overlapping patches. There must be at least 3-4mm of filler on the car now just to blend the overlap of the patch vs. the original panel. The wheelwell edge suggests that there may be much more filler than that too.
I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade here, but I've found it all too prevalent for those of us in our hobby to believe that a good looking - yet filler-heavy - repair of today is somehow superior to filler-heavy bodywork repairs of yesteryear.
Neither are superior, nor are either necessarily bad - if it holds up and you don't see it (and if you're not paranoid about all-steel repairs), then it'll probably be fine for the average daily-driver resto/refresh. I'm not discounting metalworking skills here, mind you - by all means, if you can hammer and dolly like a god, do it! - but not all of us are metalworking geniuses...and even the geniuses use skim coats.
Fact is, there is this unrealistic and delusional attitude throughout a good portion of the classic automobile community* that plastic filler done in the present is somehow superior to plastic filler removed off the car from when someone was there last. It isn't. It's the same thing (provided it isn't a quarter inch of filler over steel that looks like the Cascade mountain range, or falling off the car due to bad prep).
Just remember this: Someday, someone will remove YOUR body filler and remark "What were they thinking?!" - just like we do now over older repairs.
-Kurt
*By that, I don't mean the Pebble Beach crowd, but those of us who tinker with simple, mass-produced cars. Still, I'd bet that there are some fun secrets hiding under more than one of those award-winning paint jobs.
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