After reading many insparational DIY's on this here I too have decided to do most of the work on my car myself.

I began saving up money and I am planning to begin body work on my car sometime within the next week or two. However, since there is no such thing as a stupid question, and since I want the greatest results WITHOUT 'just taking it to a professional shop' I thought Id ask you guys a few questions.

Unfortunetly I dont have a digital camera to take some pics of my rust spots. My car was repainted before I bought it so alot of the rust showed up at around the same time. I have the typical quater panel rust on both sides that is begining to bubble underneath. I have rust below my gas tank plate that also bubbled undernear the paint, I have some rust forming around where my side molding retaining clips snap into. And finally I have rust forming around under my windshield trim.

To begin with, I am planning on going to the junk yard and getting a set of rear quater panels to replace the ones that I have now. When these are welded on, do I create a lap joint, so that my new quater panel will overlap about an inch of the exisiting cleanup/bare metal? Do I need to do any preparation work other than making sure all paint n shitz is grounded off on the metal that will be laped over if not will rust begin to form between the two peices of sheet metal? And does the other side just needs to be sealed to prevent water from seeping in between the metal once again?

I am debating on whether or not to shave my side moldings, IMO i prefer the shaved look. If I do decide to shave the entire indent, instead of just filling the holes, would I go the same way with overlaping the new metal?

I took out my windshield trim and I am horrifed by the ammounts of rust I got under there, I got water leaking into my car when it rains, lucky i stripped my entire interior in prep for this project. When the windshield trim is in, you cannot really see any of the rust, I only noticed it one day because I saw that my trim wasnt sitting flat againts the metal allowing water to seep through. Now since this isn't really visible, is it still recommened to somehow get in there and weld new metal in? or would some tiger hair body filler fix the holes I got underthere?

Is it very difficult to shave the top rain gutters? I was thinking abut welding this using the lap method but will this be difficult to blend in with filler after?


I guess thats all the questions for now that I got about welding, but I also have some regaurding the filling process.

After I have completed welding in the new sheet metal what is the process to ensure that it will look nice and smooth using fillers n etc. Will it be suffieient enough to use that rage gold body filler and just fill in all the hi/low spots or do I have to use a combination or fiberglass fillers. So if anyone can give me information on the process from after welding to getting that perfectly smooth look would be awesome!

I guess that's all the questions I have for now, I'll be checking back on this and most likely asking alot more questions. until then.

-jacob

 

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