I don't have a great deal of time to work on my car at school, so the breaks that I get three times a year are when it all happens. So along with the usual oil change and other routine stuff, I'm spending my week taking care of some body work that needs to be done.

Specifically, the exterior trim on left rear door of my 740 cracked and fell off in the bitter cold of this winter. So rather than replace it, I've decided to completely remove it and fill the holes. Not the easy way to do it by any means, but what the hell. I have some time on my hands.

I did most of the work between today and yesterday. I started by filling the holes with epoxy putty and then filing/sanding it down flush with the surface of the door. Working the putty down was easily the most time consuming part of the whole process, as it sets rock hard and nothing short of a metal file will make a serious dent in it. Some sturdy wet/dry sand paper in grits ranging from 220 to 400 finished off that part of the job.

With the holes filled as nicely as I could manage, I moved on to painting. Rather than paying $30 for a can of the Volvo stuff, I went out and got myself a can of Duplicolor paint made to the GM code 340 specification, which seems to be really close to the silver paint already on the car. I lightly sanded the lower portion of the door panel with 400 grit sand paper before I painted, and I masked it off inside the lowest crease of the door in hopes that I'll be able to blend it in unobtrusively at that location more easily than if I were to mask it off on a flat surface. Then I applied MANY light coats of paint. I lost count of how many coats I did, but it took quite a bit to cover the minor imperfections left in the surface where I filled the 6 holes. (Hindsight is 20/20...one or two of the patches could have used more sanding.) I used most of the 5 ounce can.

Right now I'm waiting for the paint to dry so that I can go back with clear coat and see how it looks in the daylight. (It looked pretty good under halogen light in my garage earlier in the evening, but I can't declare victory until I've seen it outside.) And if it does look good, I'll probably remove the rest of the trim on the other doors and do the same thing. Having done one door, I'm pretty sure I could do the rest in a day or so. Perhaps I'll post some before and after pics online if you guys are interested. (I finally figured out this whole web site construction concept.)

So the long and short of it is this: I finally understand why body work costs so much. This relatively minor job has taken quite a bit of time, though I've spent maybe $15 or less for all the supplies. This probably won't come out looking factory perfect, but hey. The car is nearly 20 years old and I'm not looking for perfection. I just want a significant improvement over the 6 gaping holes or wrecked trim that previously graced the affected area. So I'll let you know how it turns out.

Tim

85 745GLE, 94K mi
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Tim Smith '85 745GLE M46 w/90k. Also in the family: 94 854T w/120K.