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What's with the body filler?


The Woj

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So I finally finish removing all the paint and priming the interior of my 240Z and decide to start on the exterior. From the roof working my way down. The first thing I notice is that the aircraft paint remover is not working nearly as well on the exterior paint. I chock it up to what I thought was really thick primer used on the roof.

 

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But wait, that's not primer - that's body filler. :icon_frow

 

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But it can't be, I think to myself. I just did the inside roof of my car down to bare metal and there were no indentations, creases, etc. For all intents and purposes, it is a perfectly straight Cali car.

 

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So I spent about 2 hours with a dye grinder, praying the entire time not to find body damage, rust, or Jimmy Hoffa's corpse. I am pleasantly surprised to find the extent of the damage consists of some pinprick corrosion holes - that's it.

 

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So now we come to my question (and the title of this thread):

 

Why did someone fill my rather straight roof?

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I have seen this topic discussed at CZCs dot com. There isn't much of a consensus, but I have read that at the factory, it was quicker/cheaper to skim coat the roof and sand smooth, than to have a body guy fix the flexy sheetmetal.

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Maybe someone sat on it. I went throught exactly the same thing, and it was no fun getting it straight on a black car.

 

 

You should try and get the roof metal from "oil canning" as much as possible before you re-apply bondo. A friend recommended fiberglassing some balsa wood strips to the underside of the roof to stiffen it. Fortunately, I got it pretty tight with hammer and dolly. Took some time chasing the soft spot around and around.... but I got it tight eventually.

 

 

Bondo was no picnic. I got one of these http://www.nationaldetroit.com/tools/tooldetail.aspx?model=900 which helped out immensly. You'll learn a lot doing such a big panel. Good luck!

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I have seen this topic discussed at CZCs dot com. There isn't much of a consensus, but I have read that at the factory, it was quicker/cheaper to skim coat the roof and sand smooth, than to have a body guy fix the flexy sheetmetal.

 

Question: Is this supposed to be particular to the roof? I got down to the driver's side rear fender and found more of the same.

 

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Once again, the layer seems to be really thin and is under the original paint. Am I likely to keep on discovering these little prizes?

 

You should try and get the roof metal from "oil canning" as much as possible before you re-apply bondo. A friend recommended fiberglassing some balsa wood strips to the underside of the roof to stiffen it. Fortunately, I got it pretty tight with hammer and dolly. Took some time chasing the soft spot around and around.... but I got it tight eventually.

 

I actually only applied bondo back to 3 very small spots that weren't level. The roof still seems to have enough strength in it, though that is assuming I don't have baseball size hail, pinecones, etc. This is the roof now, it is pretty level though the rattle-can primer job doesn't make it look so.

 

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orbital sander with high torque, low speed. I am using a 6" to do mine.

 

Your suggestion has taken much more precedence with me after finding this in my neck earlier:

 

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I've actually gone through 5-6 wire brushes with all the bristles breaking off before one actually punctured me, I think that's pretty good but maybe it's time to look for something else. (NOTE: I always wear eye protection when using the wire brushes)

 

That is scary...not looking forward to that with my '72 if they did that from the factory....

 

It's getting scarier...

 

Maybe your roof isn't as straight as you think.

 

I still swear it's as straight as I think, maybe not perfectly level but good enough to pass an up close and personal inspection.

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