Yet more to fix - or - The Case of the Shrinking Quarter Panel

Wherein our hero heaps more work upon himself.

Today started (as far as my car is concerned) with a call to the good folks at POR-15. That's PEE OOH ARR fifteen, Kevin. (Kevin is the guy at the paint store who was nice enough to give me a 90 minute class on paint and body work which went right up to closing time and he had to rush to get to his second job. The next time I saw him, he indirectly tried to blame ME for making him late. I told him that I was sorry that he was late and that I wish that he had told me that he needed to go, which, in my language means "Don't try to push it off on me just because YOU didn't pay attention to the clock KEVIN." I figure you catch more flies with honey and I like for people to realize their own errors most of the time. I think that he soon did, actually. Plus, he didn't have to help me in the first place. Thanks, Kevin. Anyway, he once corrected me when I said "P.O.R. fifteen" with "por" like "pour" fifteen. When I called customer support today, the message said, "Thank you for calling PEE OOH ARR 15". Yes! Life's small victories. See, I figured it was an acronym for something like "pisses off rust" or possibly (work with me here) "prity ossum rustinhibitor", which would, of course, be thought of by someone with terrible spelling for common words but strangely capable with bigger words like "inhibitor". Then the "15" part of course would mean that it took them 15 formulas to get it right.) That's the end of my parenthetical statement (yes I know I put parentheses within the parentheses). Are those of you who don't know me personally beginning to get a sense of how my mind works? Are those of you that do knowingly rolling your eyes?

ANYWAY, Dave or Mark or whatever his name was from POR-15 responded to my e-mail and told me to call him and he would tell me "exactly what to do". My problem was that I had put the fiberglass cloth over the holes and then done three coats of paint over it. I thought that the fiberglass cloth would sort of become one with the paint and make a beautiful, seamless cover over the hole. Oh, but it was not so. The fiberglass stayed nice and fibery leaving an obvious patch. I asked if maybe it could be sanded. "No" was the answer. That paint just sets up too hard to be sanded very easily. Dave or Mark or whatever then said that if it had been him, he would've just put two coats of paint over it. Three was probably too much. He seemed pretty interested to hear that THE INSTRUCTIONS SPECIFICALLY TOLD ME TO PUT THREE COATS ON IT. His honest suggestion to me, which was all that he could offer, was to use body filler over the fiberglass to smooth it out. Which would mean that I would just have a smooth raised patch, not one that's nice and flush with the surrounding sheet metal. Honestly, I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe for them to know what they were doing and write the instructions accordingly. Maybe to give me an idea of what the end result would be so that I could modify my approach.

Well, I DID sand it, and it seems like that is going to work okay. I'm just going to have to sand a lot.

Moving on...since I had my grinder out to try grinding the fiberglass (which it did--into oblivion), I thought I'd start to take some of the primer/paint off of the quarter panel that I had repaired last year. Just to see what I was dealing with. As it turns out, there was a whole lot of filler on it. See for yourself:




If you take a close look at the second photo, you can see sedimentary layers, as it were. FIVE layers of filler. I'd say that it was about 3/16" thick. You see, the guy who did that work, who will remain nameless, got to working on my car and realized that the pre-arranged price/trade we had worked out was not going to be worth the amount of effort it would take to do the job right. So, he pulled out the bulk of the dent in the quarter and the door in front of it (which were pretty well smashed in by some drunken idiot who proceeded to leave the scene) and then began to trowel on the filler. He should be a sculptor. Or a mason (as in brick layer, not the brotherhood to which many highly-revered people from the past have belonged. I just saw a Masonic sticker on a car the other day. Still going strong, I suppose. Maybe I'll look into it. Perhaps I could make some connections and start getting photography gigs or deals on auto paint).

So, I took ALL of the filler off that panel and had a look. It's pretty bumpy in places. So I tried my hand at hammer and dollying it in order to shrink the metal. Since sheet metal has a "memory" of how it was originally pressed, it wants to snap back into place. If you put a dent in metal, you are stretching it. Therefore, it needs to be shrunk. This is done by tapping with a hammer on one side and a heavy, slightly convex piece of metal (the dolly) on the other side. You work around the dent and shrink the metal by tapping it. There was a pretty noticeable low-spot about 8" wide by 10" long. I am happy to say that I actually got it close to snapping back! I had to quit coz it was getting late and I don't think neighbors love to hear a hammer on sheet metal at all, much less after dark. Plus I wouldn't be able to see.

So, it'll take some doing, but I'll get it done right. It'll just take me til fall of 2010.