For mr. Ken Smith

[Roberto67]

Dear Sir:

I have just visited your excellent website, and I would like to ask you about how did you repair the rear right corner of your bodytub.

Many thanks!

R. Flores
cartoonist & illustrator
http://www.robertoflores.com

[Cacti_Ken]

Roberto, That side was all banged up mostly I think was because the spare tire was mounted there. It would have been very difficult for me as I was working by myself to try and hammer them all back out. The bracing behind the panel makes that difficult to do anyway.

And I did not want to have to cut all that out and replace it since it wasn't rusted out, but only dented up. I messed up and welded three of the original holes up because I thought they didn't belong there.

I tried to pull the dents back out with a (I can't think of the name of the tool) It is a rod with a slide hammer on it to pull dents with. I tacked a no. 10 nail to the panel with a mig wire welder and attached the head to the slide hammer and pulled some of the spots back out. Then ground the nail tacking off. I did this a number of times. However I didn't have any experience in vehicle body repairing. So my work is diffinitely not perfect.

I went to a body repair shop here and asked what kind of filler that I should use to make it all flat. At this time the indentions were not that deep. It just looked bad. So they told me to use some stuff called All Metal body filler. It is mixed with acatalyst just like bondo. The filler is powdered aluminum puddy.

It sets up pretty fast so you can only do small places at a time.
So there you have it. It took me a few weeks working on it to get it like I wanted before painting. I had to let each application dry then sand it down and apply some more until I got it the best that I could.

Ken