T
TAguy16
I have a decklid I'm really having a time with. I've restored a lot of vehicles in my day but this thing makes me feel like I've never done any metal/bodywork before when I see the results after painting. It's for an old Road Runner and when I got it it had a lot of stretched metal on it evidently from people stting on it or piling stuff on it. I shrank down all the stretched metal and pulled up the low spots with my stud gun, and of course after doing all this I was left with a big piece of out of wack metal. Since I couldn't work the metal from the back side like I prefer to do I broke down and got some "gold" filler to fill in the slightly low spots. None of it was more than about 1/8" thick after sanding it down that I can tell. I sanded the filler with 40 grit then 80 then 180 before applied epoxy to the low spots and spraying primer surfacer on it to block it out.
I've painted it several times - blocking it out again between painting with my long board - and each time I paint it it looks terrible - like I never did anything to it to try to straighten it (it's hard to tell from the picture I'm attaching). It's as if the filler underneath the paint keeps shrinking on me. Another possibility could be the metal itself has gotten damaged or fatigued from all that's been done to it to the point where it doesn't want to take a permanent set again and stay it one place. I always guide coat it between sandings and it always looks like it should be straight. This decklid has a small amount of dome to it, but on the ouside edges it actually curves up slightly the other way to match the top edges of the quarter panel which go back down in that area. This is really frustrating say the least not to mention a waste of material and time. I feel like I woud have been much better off removing the skin from the inner structure and rolling out a new one on my English wheel for all the work I've done to this thing.
I would apppreciate greatly any idea on things I could try to get this thing straight again.
I've painted it several times - blocking it out again between painting with my long board - and each time I paint it it looks terrible - like I never did anything to it to try to straighten it (it's hard to tell from the picture I'm attaching). It's as if the filler underneath the paint keeps shrinking on me. Another possibility could be the metal itself has gotten damaged or fatigued from all that's been done to it to the point where it doesn't want to take a permanent set again and stay it one place. I always guide coat it between sandings and it always looks like it should be straight. This decklid has a small amount of dome to it, but on the ouside edges it actually curves up slightly the other way to match the top edges of the quarter panel which go back down in that area. This is really frustrating say the least not to mention a waste of material and time. I feel like I woud have been much better off removing the skin from the inner structure and rolling out a new one on my English wheel for all the work I've done to this thing.
I would apppreciate greatly any idea on things I could try to get this thing straight again.