Am I crazy for doing this on a 65 Barracuda ?
I appreciate you starting this thread and doing cheap body repairs that many would say are a waste of time and money.
To keep it in perspective is the goal here, simply doing what you can to make a car look decent for a few years to keep it on the road and enjoyed until it's just parts or the money comes through to do it ''right''.
At least another car is on the road (good or bad) to be driven and enjoyed.
You have definitely put some thought into the project.
I would love to see the car in 5 years to see what worked and what did not and why.
That is why I have encouraged you with my likes...
Thank you. I have done some body work in my younger years that I would not be proud of . I had a work truck that I did body work on that I drove on a daily basis and didn't see any problems for a couple of years. That was without proper treatment . I'm sure this type of repair would have lasted much longer.
I doubt this car will see much time on salt covered icy roads , so it would be hard to make a comparison. One thing that is for sure is that if you repair this type of damage using " conventional " methods , putting the car back to or close to factory conditions , you are putting it back to what we know failed. There is no doubt on that.
But a person has to be realistic and not compare their work to other work that wasn't done the same and didn't have preventive measures taken.
Depending on how a person is going to use their car is going to determine how long their repair lasts. If a person repaired their car in this fashion and it saw the same use as many classic car , I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem .
But, we don't see fiberglass repair work that much thought was put into it . We don't see fiberglass repair work that was treated and sealed from the elements so there is no comparison . We have seen fiberglass and metal work that failed and either method will fail again if put under the same or similar conditions .
This type of preservation or build or whatever one would call it is doable by many more people and affordable by many more people and may be a more common sense investment depending on the vehicle . It wasn't a matter of affordability for me , but rather a preference and I wanted to encourage people to do something with their car if it was in similar condition as mine.
Some people will use exaggerations to condemn this type of work when they have no comparison to what I've documented here. It's not an exaggeration that some are working on or have worked on a car putting it back to a state that we all know failed. I think the treatment of a car after a repair is a bigger factor than what method was used in most cases.