Smoothing over the rough spots

Yesterday I spent a few minutes working on the Chevelle, smoothing over some of the worst spots before the finish bodywork commences. This is a normal practice in a heavy restoration like this, filling rough areas where entire body panels were replaced and other such major repairs.

The first picture shows the area I am about to smooth. This is the right (passenger) side of the car where the quarter panel meets the roof. You can see there was some fairly extensive repairs made in this area that has to be addressed before the primer is applied. The filler that is being applied is an aluminium impregnated filler that dries much harder than normal body filler and is designed expressly for these types of heavy, bare metal repairs.

The second and third photos show the the filler being smoothed over the repair. After the filler dries it will be sanded smooth so when the primers are applied it will simply blend into the car’s lines and disappear.

The last photo shows the same process being applied to a seam in the firewall. I had to pick the old seam sealer out of this factory body seam before I could paint, and I figured since I was working with the filler it would be almost as easy to use the filler to cover this seam as it would be to use seam sealer. Like the roof/quarter panel repair, this will will be sanded smooth before the engine compartment is painted.

Covering the factory panel welds in the engine compartment with body filler is going a little beyond what the customer is expecting and paying for, but here at JMC AutoworX we always try to give full value, or a little more, for the customer’s dollar. It’s just the way we do things around here.