Triumph Spitfire Body Work - Underneath Seam Sealer & Door Work

I took a vacation from my vacation and got a day at the garage. The video:

With the epoxy primer well beyond its  7-day overcoat time, I needed to scuff it up before applying the seam sealer. So, between 180-grit sandpaper and  my trusty maroon Scotchbrite pads, I scuffed up everywhere that I wanted to get sealed.

My focus areas were, of course, the panel seams but I also wanted to get each weld repair that I did as well. The whole thing will be covered in UPol Raptor Liner (tinted red), so I didn't think I needed to go crazy with the stuff, but I did want it covered.

I used two separate products for seam sealing. For the panel seams, especially where there were some sizable gaps, I wanted to ensure I got the  sealer in there good and this would require a bit of pressure. The best way I figured how to do this was to use seam sealer in a caulking tube, so that's what I did. I used  AC Delco  Body Joint and Seam Sealer Compound and it worked fine. As I mentioned in the video, I also invested in a relatively good caulk gun. It wasn't cheap, but the difference was night and day between it and the cheap ones that I have used in the past. And the next time I do the bathroom or some other random caulking event, I'll have it to use!

AC Delco stuff in the fender arch.

And in the floor to rear crossmember gap. You can see some light areas where I scuff to the right and parallel to the caulked seam.

The directions say its paintable in 60 minutes, so I gave it an hour to cure as I wanted to put another coat over the first. After waiting, I went over all of those areas with Evercoat Brushable Seam Sealer as well as all of the weld repairs and any other seams that I have previously scrapped old seam sealer from. This stuff went on pretty well, though it is definitely "goopy". A good smell to it, too, especially using as much as I did so I recommend organic vapor cartridges for your mask, which worked great.

Brushable seam sealer on the new to old floor pan seam.

Brushable over the AC Delco stuff in the wheel arch (in the shadow).

Boot floor to wheel arch seam, partially repaired but all seam sealed.

That was really it for that stuff; not too difficult. Like I said, I am putting Raptor Liner under there so that will also provide protection. I'll give it a few days and look over it all again to see if I get any shrinkage and then reapply if I feel its necessary before the Raptor Liner.

After that, I decided to take out the passenger's door and see what body work I would have to do on it. I was not disappointed, but I will admit that I was surprised with how good of shape the door was in. No significant rust, but there were a few dings.

I took my pneumatic DA sander with an 80-grit disk and started working on removing paint. I didn't get too aggressive with paint removal because I wanted to use the existing paint as a guide for my damage assessment rather than taking the door down to bare metal. If I sanded down to a bare metal spot surrounded by paint, I knew this was a high spot. If a darker red topcoat (applied by the PO) spot was surrounded by  the original red, I knew that was a low spot.

Starting the DA sander process. The bare metal is indicative of high spots.

Another shot. The dark red paint surrounded by the original, lighter red is indicative of low spots since this is the top coat. A good ding is evident on the horizontal door crease towards the right.

Majority of DA sanding done without going to bare metal all around. You can clearly see the highs and lows in the door. Like the surface of the moon!

The area around the door handle was pretty banged up, though I think it was due to decades of use of the door handle itself rather than damage. Of course, I found some body filler, but surprisingly, only one spot.

The body filler spot bounded, prior to removing it all.

Filler removed, showing the holes used to pull the dent out. I filled these in later.

The repair seems to me to be pretty decent. I will revisit it because the crease in the door kind of loses its sharpness in there, but all in all it wasn't the gob of filler over a nasty dent that I thought I would find.

Filled. I didn't get aggressive with grinding them smoot because I didn't want to mess the crease line up by removing too much metal.

The rest of the day was spent looking at the rest of the damage and figuring out what I need to pay attention to in the future. I did fill in the holes that I found from dent removal and two holes from a previous door mirror installation, but that was about it. Time to go back on vacation!