stud guns - gotta love 'em

[newbaa]

I also posted this over on the team chevelle forum...

Recently i have been trying to figure out what to do with my left quarter panel. it has already been replaced (by the previous owner) and whoever did it did a horrific job of welding it back together. as i was stripping off the body filler it just kept going and going... some spots must have been about 1/2 an inch thick. so needless to say i decided to take a wire wheel to it and grind it off. (i would have used a grinder or something else, but all my good tools are at school.)
after i ground all the filler out i was able to assess most of the damage, which, besides the actual weld line, isn't TOO bad. so i broke out my stud gun/dent fix tool and started going to town on it. i love using this tool. it is great for being able to pull out small dents.
it's expensive, but it helps when you get almost 50% off from Snap-On
so as you can see in the pictures, the first few are still with a good chunk of the body filler on there, then after i've ground some of it off and started using the stud gun, and finally all the filler is gone and i'm done using the stud gun - until i can get a better idea of what i can do to fill in that seam, and when i get my tools home from school to really be able to do some real body work on the thing. it still looks really lumpy/wavy in the pictures, and in truth, it still is... but it's 10 times better than what it was. i hope to have it to the point where i'll only need MAYBE an 1/8th of an inch of body filler on it.



Any help or ideas as to what i could do about the seam would be appreciated. thanks.

ok, so enough talking already, here's some pics...

[1971novaSS]

HOLY $#!& batman! That is one shotty replacement. But get it as close as you can metal work wise. As for the seam maybe clean it up with a grinder and perhaps lay some weld to fill up the gap? Metal is better then 1/4 inch of filler or more.

Thats all the advice that i can give ya. Just try to get it as close as possible, then try filling the seam in by welding it. Least you minimize the body filler use.

[Chad-1stGen]

Wow that is UGLY.

[newbaa]

HOLY $#!& batman! That is one shotty replacement. But get it as close as you can metal work wise. As for the seam maybe clean it up with a grinder and perhaps lay some weld to fill up the gap? Metal is better then 1/4 inch of filler or more.

Thats all the advice that i can give ya. Just try to get it as close as possible, then try filling the seam in by welding it. Least you minimize the body filler use.

i hear ya. somebody else who does some restoration work that i know suggested welding it in, but another person i talked to said he would be worried about how much it would warp it. i know, small welds at a time, but still... he actually suggested that i use all-metal, so it's a "body filler" but more like metal than regular body filler. so i dunno. i'll probably wait to do the majority of the work to it until this summer when i can bring all my tools home from school. i've got other car work that needs to be done in the meantime. gonna start sanding down the corvette to get it ready to paint, and i've got two fenders i've gotta paint for a friend's 4runner, so i've got things to do.

[Posi12Bolt]

Wow that is UGLY.