- Joined
- Apr 27, 2012
- Messages
- 4,765
- Reaction score
- 103
- Location
- Nashville, Tennessee
- My Car
- 1973 Q code Mach 1
I tend to avoid body work for a multitude of reasons, but from time to time I do find it necessary to be able to do a repair.
I had such an occasion the other night as my son damaged his Toyota Rav 4 just ahead of the rear driver side wheel.
I have, but had never before used a stud welder from Harbor Freight.
I thought I would share some thoughts and seek some comments from those more experienced with body work.
First-the Toyota metal seems incredibly thin. The first few studs pulled the metal out of shape and popped off leaving holes. I reduced the time to attach a stud to under a second and it seemed to improve some. I have larger studs, but expect they would be worse, but I am a novice, so I don't really know.
Second-the welder has a really lousy duty rating of one stud every 5 minutes. It will run a bit faster, but I imagine the heat inside will eventually cause it to fail.
Third, the "trigger" is a sucky designed poorly located piece of shit.
Overall it worked adequately and with a hammer and some light tappity tapping, I had the area ready for a skim coat of filler is under 30 minutes. A rubber mallet helped to reshape the door edge and remove the gap created by the dent in the door after I pulled the leading edge of the quarter panel back out.
Still need to block sand it a bit further, but it looks as good as a 10 year old 140K mile Rav 4 should look.
I had such an occasion the other night as my son damaged his Toyota Rav 4 just ahead of the rear driver side wheel.
I have, but had never before used a stud welder from Harbor Freight.
I thought I would share some thoughts and seek some comments from those more experienced with body work.
First-the Toyota metal seems incredibly thin. The first few studs pulled the metal out of shape and popped off leaving holes. I reduced the time to attach a stud to under a second and it seemed to improve some. I have larger studs, but expect they would be worse, but I am a novice, so I don't really know.
Second-the welder has a really lousy duty rating of one stud every 5 minutes. It will run a bit faster, but I imagine the heat inside will eventually cause it to fail.
Third, the "trigger" is a sucky designed poorly located piece of shit.
Overall it worked adequately and with a hammer and some light tappity tapping, I had the area ready for a skim coat of filler is under 30 minutes. A rubber mallet helped to reshape the door edge and remove the gap created by the dent in the door after I pulled the leading edge of the quarter panel back out.
Still need to block sand it a bit further, but it looks as good as a 10 year old 140K mile Rav 4 should look.
