84 CAMPER&BUS
HOW TO
(^19)
Body filler
Even the best repairs in the
world will need some filler to get
panels perfectly straight. Even if,
like us, you weren’t particularly
worried about perfectly straight,
but don’t want the repairs to be
visible, then you’ll need a thin
skim of filler across all the welded
seams and plug welded areas.
You’ll need to mix hardener into
the filler and work fairly quickly
before it goes off. Rather than
trying to fill the areas in one
go, try to get a smooth skim
across everything, then sand
off once dried and re-apply.
Clean your spatula well between
applications with a blade and
thinners on a cloth.
(^22)
Buffing
With the paint fully dried, we wet-sanded the area with
1200 wet and dry, before buffing with G3 compound on a
machine buffer with a wool pad. The intricate areas were
tackled with G3 on a cloth. You shouldn’t apply wax over fresh
paint for a minimum of six weeks after it was applied, as the
oils need to work their way out first.
(^23)
Refitting
When it came to
refitting our gate, we had
to drill out and tap the
snapped bolts with an
M8x1.25 tap – you should
probably do this on all
holes anyway to clean them.
If your bolts have snapped
too, Schofield’s sell stainless
bolts with the correct head
profile for around £1 each. If
you need to use new bolts,
you’ll need to paint them
first. It’s best to poke the
bolts through a piece of
card to paint them.
(^24)
Straightening
Whilst our side
gates were relatively
rust-free, they were
bent like bananas. We
planned to remove
them to straighten using
bodyweight and timber,
but practically every bolt
was snapping, despite
creative methods to
remove them. In the
end, we decided to use
a port-a-power body jack
against support pillars
in the barn where we
were working and some
wood blocks to get the
worst of the bends out.
Our truck is a tired old
workhorse, so actually
doesn’t look too bad
now that the rear gate
matches better.
(^20)
Sanding
We found with the drop
gates, as with any intricate seam,
it’s sometimes easier to use
your fingers to skim filler into
certain areas. When it comes to
sanding, a random orbit sander
is a worthwhile purchase – for
the sake of £25-£30 you can cut
the sanding time by 75%, leaving
you just the intricate areas to
do by hand. When it comes to
the fine filling of minor pinholes
/ craters in the filler, it’s often
easier to apply a coat or two of
high-build primer first to seal the
area, then use a fine filler. Start
with 60-80 grit sandpaper until
you are about 80% smooth, then
switch to 180 then 240.
(^21)
Prime and paint
Depending on what kind of finish
you want will depend on how long you
need to spend at the bodywork stage –
show quality can take weeks and weeks
of prep work on just one panel. We
wanted to match the wear on the other
dropgates, so decided to do a dirty
patina paint job. As there were lots of
areas where there were pits in the base
metal and we didn’t want to go too
crazy with fine filler, we decided to etch
prime everything, then apply a fair few
coats of ProXL Super Build primer. When the primer was dry,
we chose to wet sand with 600 grit before painting.
As there were still some pits even after high build primer, we
applied three heavy coats of paint with an aerosol – just heavy
enough that the paint is smooth but doesn’t run – which takes
practice. Before the last coat, we sanded the panel with 800
grit, then blew some primer onto the usual wear areas. When
we then applied the final coat of paint, we went very thin in
the areas we’d primed, so that when it was dry we could buff
through to primer a little, without compromising the areas and
making them rust.