The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop sealing welds

Im restoring 55 chevy 3600, and have had to repair a lot of rust, floor pan, lower door hinge, inner step, patches in fenders, bottom of doors, lower 24" of ourter door skin and lower section of bedsides. I have become very good at this and at shrinking metal expesialy the bedsides inorder to remove the waves. All patch welds were butt welds and I used a light source behind the weld to help identify and fill the pin holes. My questions is this. I plan on painting the back side of the welds with eastwood encapsalting paint the brushing over this with seam seal to insure I have sealed all pin holes, is this the best approach or would any one recommend somthing else instead?

thanks

You could use a good brand of auto body Premium filler then epoxy prime both sides of the panel. You can still use filler over the eproxy primer if required. The eproxy primer is the best in my painting book because it has an excellant grip to the metal and will go over or under filler and is a excellant moisture barrier as well as many other reasons.

Agree with above on epoxy primer. Been there done that. Pics below

Dan
http://rides.webshots.com/album/512683224ScMvjW

POR-15 products work well for this, too. That's what I used. They have a steel reinforcing fabric that you can lay down and then coat with POR-15. When it hardens, you can drill through it. Makes a nice seal before painting. It's been a few years since I did this, but I think I described it right. I've used most of their products with good success, Marine Clean, Metal Ready, putty and their enamels. You might want to check them out.

Thanks for the posts, I planed on the epoxy and well most likely go that way. If you bondo over the epoxy do you need to sand it first and if so what grit

thanks again

Use a Scotch Brite pad to rough up the epoxy surface.

if you use a good encapsulating type paint, be it Por 15 or the eastwood product
they will seal. they need to contact the metal NOT a filler
that's why they are what they are.
the filler applies over the encapsulator paint only after it (painted surface) has been preped to accept anything other than the base protector paint.