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I am in the process of welding in panels that cover both battery trays, fender holes, and smooth out the passenger side firewall. I also removed all the mounting holes on both inner wheel wells.
Needless to say I am not a professional body guy so I am looking for advice about what is the best body filler to use when you know you will have some places be a bit thick. I bought a DVD from Eastwood about how to paint your car. It was very helpful. The instructor says to make sure to buy nice filler so that it doesn't shrink. This seems like very sound advice.
Does anyone have any experience with good filler, or even bad filler so I know what to avoid?
What is kitty hair, a fiber reinforced bondo? Shouldn't I be making sure that it is low shrinkage? I am just smoothing non-critical frame bumps and stuff like that. I don't think I will be going any thicker than 1/8", maybe in a very small strip hear and there, but I am not sure. I am currently at the stage when I am final welding all the panels in place. They are all cut and tacked. After that I will be grinding followed by the second round of welding, then a bit more grinding followed by the filler.
What is kitty hair, a fiber reinforced bondo? Shouldn't I be making sure that it is low shrinkage? I am just smoothing non-critical frame bumps and stuff like that. I don't think I will be going any thicker than 1/8", maybe in a very small strip hear and there, but I am not sure. I am currently at the stage when I am final welding all the panels in place. They are all cut and tacked. After that I will be grinding followed by the second round of welding, then a bit more grinding followed by the filler.
Then all you should need is a good filler I like Evercoat rage
I've never bought the just "Rage" plain version so I don't know. When you go to your local auto paint supplier/wholesaler, as them which would be best for the high heat of the engine bay. My local place is pretty knowledgeable but I've also only ever done exterior work with it.
Depending what you are wanting to hide, brazing with an oxy acetylene torch may be best. You can also mig or tig by the thick seams like the strut towers. I don't like using much of the body filler in the engine bay because I will accidentally hit fenderwells and firewalls with heavy tools or an engine / tranny when changing an engine and I don't want to worry about cracking a spot that needed 1/8-1/4" of Bondo type filler.
Posting again as a follow up. I started out using the standard Evercoat Lite Weight filler on my engine bay and found it to be extremely hard sanding and it took longer to fully dry. I switched to Evercoat Rage Ultra and absolutely love it, it was much easier to sand. It is about twice as much but worth every penny. I tried to use as little filler as possible so I always opted to build up the area of a seam with a weld rather than slapping on some filler. There are a couple threads where the guys really slathered on the filler around the firewall and strut tower caps, don't do that. The strut towers are known to move and can potentially cause cracks in the filler.
12-08-2014, 06:49 AM
