Originally Posted by
Aus56
Dav54effie, bog is simply your everyday plastic body filler that you would be familiar with.
This Holden has had the seams between the rear guards and the body shell filled. Lead wiping has been used to do this for decades and gives a far stronger and durable result than fibreglass or body filler. It is pretty straightforward to do, and can be taken out readily if the guard needs to be taken off for repair.
I appreciate that you are not likely to take the top of your cab off for repair. It just seems to me that with a seam as solid as that one on your cab, the lead is easier to do than welding and is not likely to fail due to flexing.
+1 on that. Lead filler will take less than half the time and is easily reversible if needed.
Plus, no matter how slow you weld the seam, the weld metal
WILL distort (Shrink) causing a depression right at the edge of the heat affected zone. You
have to get the metal hot enough to melt in order for the deposited metal to penetrate. When it cools, it shrinks. It's just the nature of welding steel. This shrinkage requires grinding, then body filler. Or just excessive grinding, (Cheating LOL) which would weaken the joint at the edge of the weld, (Knife Edge, thin spots, etc.) not to mention if you slip up with the grinder you're back to body filler again to feather out low spots you made with the grinder.
The other option is a massive amount of time with a hammer and dolly peening out the weld zone/parent metal boundry. Expert level metal finishing for those allergic to lead and plastic.
The PO that did mine used the Mig weld, grind the weld more or less flush with the parent metal, then fill with plastic method. Like I said, it came out very nice, but if it was me, I'd have gone the lead route. And I'm a 30+ year veteran welder. I weld sheetmetal everyday for a living.
And you just never know when some dummy is going to drop something heavy on your roof and oil can it.
