Good advise. Will do. And Happy New Year!
And a happy new year to you to.
So extra food for thought here. When the carcass is fully repaired and before the skin goes on, i normally epoxy prime than paint that part standard Black (for doors i sell on) or if i have the paint to hand ( i normally do) then colour match to the car, bearing in mind its hidden.
The door skins themselves. Now two manufacturers out there, Heritage and Magnum.
Heritage, most expensive but fit well HOWEVER the E coat they come applied with, remove it. My reasoning for this and i have now done this to every single Heritage panel i have bought where possible is that coating can and does hide spider tracks of rust. Removing (flat it back with a DA sander) will highlight if there are any.
Magnum, they do fit ok to be honest and these are the skins i use if i sell any restored doors. The biggest single thing with these is again to completely remove the primer they come in. Now i have not bought any for the last couple of years and i have heard the coating is better?? but the original primer coat very easily and i mean very easily rubbed off with standard paint thinners. So remove no matter what.
Now the thing to remember here is there are a couple of spot welds to be added to the returns One or two along the sides and a couple along the bottom, this prevents the skin from shifting once you have located it correctly on the carcass, remember to fit the carcass to the car when locating the skin, (if the carcass is bare think about adding some weights to mimic the weight of the glass, all mechanical parts etc to help locate everything as equal as possible.) one at each point where the window frame disappears in to the carcass and then seam weld right at the top both sides where the skin does not fold completely around.
The reason why i mention this is twofold. one the lovely primer and paint you have applied to the carcass and not the primer and paint you also apply to the internal part of the door skin before fitting. Obviously any weld will burn off the freshly applied paint.
So the thing to think about here is those areas. Now i normally apply weld through primer on the weld sites where possible or i remove the paint (think the spot welds / plug welds here) So once the skin is fully fitted where possible i get in with some scotchbrite to the affected areas to remove the damaged paint then re apply.
So sorry if i appear to be teaching you to suck eggs but just my approach to keeping the doors on my cars as rust free as possible.
