Aside from the gaping holes in the floors, rockers, fenders and quarter panels, which I am working on and have no problem knowing how to fill, I have a question about whether or not I can get away with something when it comes to filling some holes in my roof:

My car was originally an all black 4-door sedan. There are 3 holes in the roof that go through the otherwise good headliner. From the circular mark, it looks like there was a gumball on top of the car at some point. I want to fill these with a quick little zap from my MIG welder, my question is just how likely is it that I can get away with this without taking down the headliner (which is tucked into the rubber for the windshield in front and rear window in back, which I don't want to deal with removing and replacing)

And the obvious concern would be igniting the sound deadener between the vinyl headliner material and the roof sheetmetal (wasn't it just a cardboard-like material soaked in tar?)

i think you could probably get away with it by just tacking the joints very slowly, like 1 a minute or something. any kind of heat build up and the headliner would probably ignite. i'd take it super slow and try to keep the heat down. keep a fire extinguisher close by as well.

JB

If I was there and could see it, I may feel different. But I am going to say NO . The problem isn't the heat from the weld, that is easy to take care of. The problem is the flying sparks!!! One of those little red hot balls will burn thru a shoe!

A fire under that headliner would be a HUGE disaster, HUGE .

Back in high school I had a welding class. I remember a guy thinking he could weld on a seat if he wet around the weld and all that, it was a cool fire, thank goodness he got it out of the shop.

My dad had a suggestion I think I'm going to go with - use a pop rivet to fill the hole before applying filler over it, it of course isn't the ideal solution, but given the nature of the work (not a show car) and the timing constraints, I think it's probably the best solution.

(at least, aside from putting a gumball back on when it's done.. But that's a seperate issue.)

i just thought of something. if these holes are large enough could you bond some narrow metal pieces underneath the roof to support a hole-sized piece of metal that would be bonded to that? then you could put your filler on and smooth it out. shouldn't be able to tell if it's done right.

JB

You are right on the money Johnny, that is an excellent idea.