Body work repair? After my off-Interstate incident in December I've got some exterior plastic stuff that needs to be reattached to my Grand Vitara. I'll post pics with questions on what to do about that in the future. But when I thought about my situation I realized we have very few posts on how to do bodywork in general--patch repair, paint, etc.
Or am I just not seeing them?
We don't really discuss religion, and bodywork is voodoo best left to those who are masters of the arcane dark arts.
I talk about body work on my salvage rebuild threads but since I am ham fisted and lacking artistic ability my idea of body work is to replace body panels with used panels or doors that are already the correct factory color.
Ergo, when I shop salvage cars I am only attracted to cars with light damage to removable panels. For me, this means rear quarter damage repair is usually beyond my skill level.
I also shop cars where ultimately, function will be more important than fashion. Therefore if the two body panels aren't a perfect color match, it won't be a big detraction.
My most recent salvage rebuild thread
In reply to stroker :
The mere mention of it makes my eye twitch start up again.
The first rule of bodywork is: you do not talk about bodywork.
You can see my hackish body work story in my Miata build thread.
I believe you are looking for NoHome's various build threads.
Don't forget One Second Welding™. I learned about it from Trent here (maybe?) but haven't tried it myself.
Because people fear what they don't understand.
wae said:You can see my hackish body work story in my Miata build thread.
I would characterize your Miata bodywork as extremely high percentile. If it looks hackish, that's because we like to watch people who do that kind of repair without cutting or filler.
How about the bodywork being done Crinkles? I think Crinkles is mostly a bodywork story, although you probably don't want to take the Grand Vitara in that direction.
I was thinking about this last week. I got a quote for a PDR repair and the number had me thinking maybe I could try it myself....
I'm really good at paintless dent installation.
"planishing" is a cool word.
Beyond the knowledge of this arcane word... there's a reason I try to buy the car with the nicest body I can, even if everything else about it is garbage.
To me, bodywork falls into three basic categories.
First is rust repair, which involves removing and replacing rusty metal with non-rusty metal. To do it correctly involves welding, panel shaping, body fillers, sanding, and painting. All of these skills are a total pain in the arse.
Second is accident repair. This is similar to rust repair but involves non-metal parts like plastic, fiberglass, glass, etc. This requires a whole new set of skills and tools that are a total pain in the tuccus.
The third is "customization" which involves adding things to perfectly good bodywork in an attempt to look cool or go fast. This involves ruining the bodywork in some way and often results in parts flying off at speed or resorting to duct tape, both of which are a pain in the butt.
Bottom line, body work sux.
In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :
Oh! Oh! There's a fourth type of body work. Race car work!
The rust repair flavor: Cut out a panel, find a piece of your inner door skin that you had hacked off three months prior, beat the E36 M3 out of that until it's roughly "flat", weld it in, melt holes in it accidentally, dial the power down, weld it some more, and then gloop a bunch of schmoo on there to seal the holes you didn't bother with. I did this. It was kind of fun.
Also accident repair: open the trunk. Sit in the trunk. Beat the E36 M3 out of the massive dent in the rear quarter with your boots. Then get a hammer and beat it more. Then go back onto the track. I watched others do this. Nobody wants to break their race car, but the work looked satisfying, especially when you can get it back onto the track!
gearheadE30 said:"planishing" is a cool word.
Beyond the knowledge of this arcane word... there's a reason I try to buy the car with the nicest body I can, even if everything else about it is garbage.
When clients want to buy a car, I tell them: Body, interior, mechanicals. Buy something with two of those items in good condition.
I mentioned NoHome's threads but Dusterbd13's work is very impressive as well and probably a bit more approachable for most of us.
This is a ton of fun to do. Actual show quality glass smooth panels SUCK. It took me over 70 hours to hand block and prime my 550 spyder to that level of quality and while it was fun because of covid to have something to do you could not pay me to sand and then wet sand again and again.
confuZion3 said:In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :
Oh! Oh! There's a fourth type of body work. Race car work!
The rust repair flavor: Cut out a panel, find a piece of your inner door skin that you had hacked off three months prior, beat the E36 M3 out of that until it's roughly "flat", weld it in, melt holes in it accidentally, dial the power down, weld it some more, and then gloop a bunch of schmoo on there to seal the holes you didn't bother with. I did this. It was kind of fun.
Appleseed said:Because people fear what they don't understand.
That's not quite correct; I don't fully understand what I'm doing and that results in frightful outcomes.
I love bodywork. I wish we talked about it more. One of the greatest drivers for building my new shop is getting to paint a car again.
Shaping metal requires a patience and artistry that I don't have.
I pulled a dent with a stud welder, got the surface smooth to only need 1/16" of filler. It wasn't a huge dent but that took all the patience I had.
j_tso said:Shaping metal requires a patience and artistry that I don't have.
Ehh. It takes a hammer to shape metal. You can trade patience for tolerance and make pretty much anything look "good". Better than good, in fact. Good enough!
We do talk about body work.
But it's how you found a washing machine on the side of the road, cut it apart, and used it to fab floor pans for your Miata/Volvo/Zamboni Challenge car while adding zero cost to your Challenge budget. Body filler is from dumpster diving and paint is house paint swiped from the chemical disposal area at your local dump applied with $1 rollers from Dollar Tree.
And yet somehow some of you manage to make it look like a Chip Foose show car.
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