Help fill holes in Trunk lid

72bluNblu said
I've done it before, I did some aluminum welding with my TIG for another member here and have done welding projects for a few of my coworkers. I don't mind at all as long as it's not more than a couple hours of work. If it's more than that the material costs tend to rise above the level of a beer donation :p. And I'm not a business, so, I don't want to charge people.

Panel bonding is great for cars that were designed to be bonded together. IMO it should not be used on any structural components of these cars- not the floor pans, not the quarters, not any part of the unibody structure.

Panel bonding adhesives can be very particular in use and application- curing temperatures, clamping pressures, direction of applied loads, vibration frequency, etc. Using panel bond correctly means starting with the right adhesive for the EXACT intended use and application and then following the installation to a tee. It works well in factory assembly type settings (where the use was designed and the application is tightly controlled), and it can do amazing things when used and applied correctly.

What you can't do with panel bonding material is just slap some glue on a couple structural parts, throw them together, and expect the result to be comparable to the welds that were designed to hold the car together. IMHO structural panel bonding is more difficult than most of the welding that's required for these cars. The application process has to be dead on, otherwise the strength of the bond can suffer dramatically. And it's not always easy to tell the bonding wasn't completely successful. Personally, I think a lay person with no experience with panel bonding or welding is better off buying a MIG and teaching themselves to weld. Especially if the cars to be repaired were designed to be welded together.

Exactly so. Well put sir. :thumbsup:

I'd like to add trunk floors for $200 Alex!:poke::lol:

Again just in general to those following the thread.
Only because I've seen it and some seem to think it's ok. It was one of the worst "panel bond" disasters I have seen. I was given a Civic to tear down. We knew it was totaled but Ins co's like to see a prelim estimate. Rear ended. First thing I saw was a cracked seem where a replacement quarter would go in at the rocker and a crack at the sail panel. Didn't think much of it pulled the car in. Had to cut the decklid open as it was wadded up pretty good. Long story short, the car had been previously repaired via a welded in rear body panel, 2 glued on quarters and a glued trunk floor except for where it was welded to the rear body. A salvage company did not pick up the car. The State Highway Patrol did. When the floor came loose from everything else except the rear body, the rear body wadded it up and shoved a section of it through the back seat along side a car seat.
For those that don't know, Umpteen years ago all the cars used to end up at the bodyshops including those involving fatalities and you'd have the highway patrol and maybe the NHTSA out there running around with cones, flags, measuring devices etc. In most places nowadays those cars go to a S.H.P. for investigation. That's where that Honda went. I'm not so sure "as is, where is" is going to limit liability for knowingly putting a bad repair out there.