Long time lurker (reader) here, lots of great advice and information on this site. Thanks in advance.

I'm restoring a '71 Cuda, metal is pretty much finished except for some dings here and there. Car has been blasted and is in epoxy. I took '68 Coronet's advice and lightly sanded the epoxy in a few areas to see what I'm up against before skim coating filler. See below, I have a few examples of some low spots. One is drivers side quarter, this is new AMD, and as you can see a few low spots. A large one in particular, with the straight-edge it's ~1/16". The other example is a door edge ding which is quite accessible and I will try to get most of it out with hammer and dolly. It's also ~1/16".

My question, are these too much for the skim coat to cover? The door ding is accessible but the quarter is not and I'm afraid of making it worse trying to fix. Thoughts?

Thanks...

If you can do quality metal work, a planishing hammer and dolly can fix that ding. If you aren't comfortable with doing that, 1/6 or so is not an issue to fill. I use body filler for 1/32-1/8, and glaze for under 1/32.

I fill gaps twice that big every day of the week.
Never had a problem.
Fill it, it will outlast the car.

chopolds wrote:If you can do quality metal work, a planishing hammer and dolly can fix that ding. If you aren't comfortable with doing that, 1/6 or so is not an issue to fill. I use body filler for 1/32-1/8, and glaze for under 1/32.

I don't have the metal experience and it's tough to get behind. I'd be more concerned I'd make more problems trying to fix it. I do appreciate a skilled metal guy and their drive for perfection, I'm just not him...

Thanks...

JCCLARK wrote:I fill gaps twice that big every day of the week.
Never had a problem.
Fill it, it will outlast the car.

That's what I was looking for... thanks...

Sal C wrote:

chopolds wrote:If you can do quality metal work, a planishing hammer and dolly can fix that ding. If you aren't comfortable with doing that, 1/6 or so is not an issue to fill. I use body filler for 1/32-1/8, and glaze for under 1/32.

I don't have the metal experience and it's tough to get behind. I'd be more concerned I'd make more problems trying to fix it. I do appreciate a skilled metal guy and their drive for perfection, I'm just not him...

Thanks...

Most people who do this type of work, don't go that far. It's a common misconception that you should make every dent or weld so perfect that you don't need filler to finish it. I think TV helps that misconception. There are guys who do it, but Very few and far between.

I always work the metal out as close as possible to minimize filler
thickness, but it's really a waste of time, I do it for me and the challenge.
I've seen so many past body filler jobs 1/2" to 1" thick on really
old cars I've worked on and it held up just fine.
Body filler when properly applied will out last the car so
keeping it thin is really a moot point.
But we still try

chopolds wrote:

Sal C wrote:

chopolds wrote:If you can do quality metal work, a planishing hammer and dolly can fix that ding. If you aren't comfortable with doing that, 1/6 or so is not an issue to fill. I use body filler for 1/32-1/8, and glaze for under 1/32.

I don't have the metal experience and it's tough to get behind. I'd be more concerned I'd make more problems trying to fix it. I do appreciate a skilled metal guy and their drive for perfection, I'm just not him...

Thanks...

Most people who do this type of work, don't go that far. It's a common misconception that you should make every dent or weld so perfect that you don't need filler to finish it. I think TV helps that misconception. There are guys who do it, but Very few and far between.

That Misconception goes even farther with so many thinking they need to replace Quarter panels instead of Patching them. I would much rather have a Repaired quarter panel than a cheap China made replacement any day of the week! Their are welds done at the factory that can not be duplicated when replacing Quarter panels.