28buick

My car is now totally stripped. Prior to removing the paint I had minor paint cracking at the rear quarter pannel seams but nothing on the front fenders. Since I have all the seams exposed should I remove all the factory filler to the bonding strip and glass the seams. I hate to go through all the work of painting the car and have the seams open up in a year. If I should glass the seams what is the best material to use with the fiberglass matt for a 1975. Epoxy or resin.

stingr69

If you are going to all the trouble to paint the car right, you should replace the 4 fender bonding strips. They will begin to come back to haunt you very soon if you do not take care of this now. Mine are starting to show again but it has been about 12 years or so since it was refinished. Very few miles were put on the car during this time so it is not all from driving.

-Mark.

sray454

The cracking was probably coming from the paint and not from the bonding filler. But either way, you not need to replace the strips, nor do you need to replace the filler with glass. It is common for the filler to shrink back a bit. Either way, I'd simply sand down that section to a depth below the cracking and refill with a good, short strand fiberglass impregnated body filler ( I use Evercoat brand ). You can buy the original assembly line filler, but I don't think there is any real advantage to doing that.