Cleaning up body lines

mbaird said:

To make things worse it appear that some of the panels in between the top line and second line are flat while others have a slight curve to them . Is this my imagination ? I am referring to the quarter vs door vs fender....

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Bodyperson said:

Not really picking up what you are laying down but it seems like you are filling one side at a time. That would not work for me. I would put filler over both sides of the line in one pass and try to duplicate the line with the spreader with my last passes running length wise. It takes some practice. I rarely use a spreader bigger than 4 inches. I give the plastic spreader a little curve so I am using one end to dial in the line after the initial application and the other end of the spreader is hard on the panel yet "floating" the line. Gotta think flat all of the time. No up and down (high and low) with the spreader.
Starting on the top (easier to keep flat) file one side of the line letting it run wild but keeping it flat taking in consideration of any length wise curvature of the panel. Always use sharp paper. 36 is pretty aggressive but doable then work it with 80 and then 150 for primer.
Blow it off good. NOW, on the freshly filed side of the line, lay down your tape where you want your line to be. Make sure the tape is stuck well. Take some fast drying rattle can paint and dust it over the tape. This is called a "guide coat". They actually make a spray can called guide coat or there is a powder form that is applies with a foam pad but lacquer rattle can works fine.
Pull the tape and file the other side up to the tape line you created. Hopefully this helps. Sure is nice to get this done in one shot. If you don't get it in one shot, I recommend re-coating the whole thing cause you will never get it right patching it in here and there because of the different hardness of the mixed fillers. You can get away with a small depression if you get on it before it gets real hard.
That's the ticket to most of this. Get on it with #36 when its "cheesy" to start with. It will plug your paper and have a tendency to peel off the panel but be gentle and smack your paper with a paint stick or something to keep it clean. Get it roughed out when its soft then let it dry better and start in with the #80.

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ocdart said:

Almost exactly what my body/paint guy said when he was about 6 months into my Dart.
A trick he found that he said helped him a lot was cutting the retractable metal tape out of a 25' measuring tape and then taping in to the side of my Dart to use to establish laser-straight continuous body lines. Do this after setting all the gaps.
One of the previous clowns that attempted to do body work on my Dart attempted to work the body lines with the front fenders and doors off of the car. Needless to say the lines were all over the place and nothing matched up.

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plymouth67 said:

So, I'm doing a Dart for a guy now. The quarters were put on before it showed up here. The paasenger side was a mess and took a lot to get the body line to look right. What i wound up doing was getting the quarter all straight then, ran 2 tape lines, the first one right above where the body line would flatten out and, the 2nd right below where it should flatten out so, basically between the lines was only about 1/2". I filled the area between the tape lines to make a more pronounced line. I sanded this down until the hieghth of the line seemed right. I then ran a tape line to what would be the very center of the line and blended the bottom in then, retaped the center of the line and blended the top in. Turned out pretty decent but, took hours to get it there. If you can see it in the picture...

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charliec said:

Could very well be so. These pix are of 68 Dart rear quarter. Even the flat parts tend to curve a little bit (top to bottom) as they get near the tail light.
That flat near the bottom is less than 2" wide so when you're sanding, you're sanding peak on the upper side and a valley on the lower side. I had to make a 2" block to fit the width, and that worked out well.
I'm fairly certain that manufacturing tolerances on these babies didn't allow for all of them to come off the line with the same flats, curves, etc.
Makes it all the more fun.
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