Tiderus
Free Member
A few years ago While at a seminar I mentioned that I had lead loaded my jensen. One of my colleagues was estatic as he had tried to get his repaired the same way. And wanted me to travel over 500 miles round trip to do his as nobody does it nowerdays. This was the standard way to fill body work when I was a young, Dad's old A55 was full of lead to fill bad presswork. But like other skills, it seems to have almost dissapeared with the introduction of body fillers. If cleaned and applied right they dont rust again or lift out. The other benifit is that the lead can be worked pretty well straight away, and the thickness of the filling is not a problem cracking as with polyester fillers. I never managed to get a flawless surface finnish, but a wipe over with filler or stopper got the required result. All you need is a shaped block of hard wood, permernantly kept soaking in half a pint of clean engine oil, acid free flux from your body shop, lead and a blowlamp. Forget the taller fat, and mole skins. On the vertical panels, don't forget to work from the bottom up, or the lead will beat you to the floor. It would be nice to see more people working this way again, or am I being oldfashioned, Rgd's Graham.