I recently had the good furtune of State Farm insurance buying me a new lift gate for my Explorer. A perfect opportunity to shave that rear wiper and squwirter I never use.
Shaving door handles, locks and what have you will all fall under simular procedures. Also there are several ways to go about this task, this is the way I chose.
Here is my new liftgate ready to go.
Here is a close up of the holes I wish to fill. I did not have the time to engineer a way to shave the lock / glass popper. If I had thought of something I would have.
Step one is to measure the holes I wish to cover so I can cut a metal backing. Never use duct tape or any thing like that to back up your body filler no matter how small the hole. Such steps are very unreliable. Remember, measure twice cut once.
Keeping it in the family I cut the backing metal out of my old lift gate. Silver sharpe makes a fantastic marker for doing lay out work like this.
Here is the backing plates grinded down to bare metal on one side only. The scratches are 40 grit and will aid in the adhesion of the backing plate ( more on that soon )
I also roughed up the inside of the lift gate in 40 grit scratches.
Now to attach the backing plate most people would weld the metal plate on. Welding however creates tremendous heat and will warp the metal making for MUCH more body work. The key for that would be using several small cool tac welds and cooling the metal inbetween each tac weld. Very very time consuming. I opted to use a metal bond. Dura-Mix 4178 is a metal bonding adhesive that is used in this trade to glue sheet metal together. I was very skeptical too but have become quite a fan of this product. Let me guarntee you this stuff will hold a quarter pannel in place no problem. I think my backing plate will be a non issue.
I held the backing plates in place with some masking tape and let the dura-mix dry over night. Went home and got some dinner.
This is how it looked from the out side. Note how I cleaned up any dura-mis residue.
The next morning I filed it with some marglass fibergless reinforced body filler. This stuff is thicker and has a bit more substance that normal body filler. Not that the void I was filling was all that huge, but better safe than sorry.
Sand it down with 80 grit. The two little holes that were for the wiper support have just about disapeared.
Hit it with a coat of regualr body filler to get rid of the little voids and imperfections left from the marglass. Sand it down with 80 grit also. **** For more info on working with body filler see my thread Body Work 101 http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120559 ****
Fill the whole area with skim coat ( top coat ) to fill in my scratches. Sand that down with 180 grit
Here is the end results of the body work.
Prime
Sand that down with 320 and it is ready for paint.
The final after paint pictures will be posted in this thread at a later date.
Thanks
Shaving door handles, locks and what have you will all fall under simular procedures. Also there are several ways to go about this task, this is the way I chose.
Here is my new liftgate ready to go.
Here is a close up of the holes I wish to fill. I did not have the time to engineer a way to shave the lock / glass popper. If I had thought of something I would have.
Step one is to measure the holes I wish to cover so I can cut a metal backing. Never use duct tape or any thing like that to back up your body filler no matter how small the hole. Such steps are very unreliable. Remember, measure twice cut once.
Keeping it in the family I cut the backing metal out of my old lift gate. Silver sharpe makes a fantastic marker for doing lay out work like this.
Here is the backing plates grinded down to bare metal on one side only. The scratches are 40 grit and will aid in the adhesion of the backing plate ( more on that soon )
I also roughed up the inside of the lift gate in 40 grit scratches.
Now to attach the backing plate most people would weld the metal plate on. Welding however creates tremendous heat and will warp the metal making for MUCH more body work. The key for that would be using several small cool tac welds and cooling the metal inbetween each tac weld. Very very time consuming. I opted to use a metal bond. Dura-Mix 4178 is a metal bonding adhesive that is used in this trade to glue sheet metal together. I was very skeptical too but have become quite a fan of this product. Let me guarntee you this stuff will hold a quarter pannel in place no problem. I think my backing plate will be a non issue.
I held the backing plates in place with some masking tape and let the dura-mix dry over night. Went home and got some dinner.
This is how it looked from the out side. Note how I cleaned up any dura-mis residue.
The next morning I filed it with some marglass fibergless reinforced body filler. This stuff is thicker and has a bit more substance that normal body filler. Not that the void I was filling was all that huge, but better safe than sorry.
Sand it down with 80 grit. The two little holes that were for the wiper support have just about disapeared.
Hit it with a coat of regualr body filler to get rid of the little voids and imperfections left from the marglass. Sand it down with 80 grit also. **** For more info on working with body filler see my thread Body Work 101 http://www.explorerforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120559 ****
Fill the whole area with skim coat ( top coat ) to fill in my scratches. Sand that down with 180 grit
Here is the end results of the body work.
Prime
Sand that down with 320 and it is ready for paint.
The final after paint pictures will be posted in this thread at a later date.
Thanks
