Body work can be fun - OK, maybe not fun; how about rewarding? You’ve received some good advice here, but if it feels too overwhelming, here’s a thought. One of our local community colleges has an auto body course, and they actually need cars to train on. Most often, you pay a nominal fee for materials, and the young men and women get some valuable hands on training. They may need to keep it a couple weeks, but that is a fair trade off for the price.
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A vinyl roof Ford Escape . . .
That would easily be the ugliest Escape on the planet
I hope Docnick was making a joke. First of all that would be a waste of time and most likely cost as much as a proper repair.
Not joking. I’ve seen car roofs on older cars (my wife calls the “old fart cars”, like Crown Vics ) damaged by hail and very hard to fix. A local custom shop could put a vinyl top on for a lot less. Then you would need to buy white shoes of course and wear double knit pants!
Plaid double-knit Sans-a-Belt pants…
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I’d take a wire wheel to it, then a coat of POR15, then Bondo, sand, prime, and paint. Good for another couple of years.
Hee hee. Yeah when we were dealing on our 86 Park Ave, the dealer gave us his wife’s car (rest her soul now) to try out for a couple days. It only had a few hundred miles on it as a demo but it was the ugliest new Buick I’d ever seen. It had one of those fake convertible tops on it and kind of a turquoise color. It was really ugly. We ordered red and no vinyl top. I see him in church every Sunday and never mentioned how ugly that car was to be used as a demo and his wife seemed to really like it. Never said anything to her either when she was alive but I hated to even have it in my garage. But everyone has different tastes and different levels of pride.
Anyone interested in replacing their roof? I ran across this youtube while looking at cabinet construction.
Naturally, applying a rust preventive paint to only one side isn’t going to completely stop it. To do this effectively, you need to drop the headliner and apply it to both sides. That has to be done anyway if you’re going to do any welding and it will be far easier to just apply paint than to weld in a sheet metal patch panel, especially for a novice DIYer. The fix doesn’t need to be pristine and last for decades on a commuter car. It’s probably going to die from some other reason before the POR job goes south (if applied to both sides)…
I had some holes maybe dime to quarter size in one area. I sanded it down and used a screwdriver to scrape it away, making it more like a 3 inch by 1/2 inch hole. Then I used bondo, which is a kind of fiberglass I guess. I had never used it so I used way too much glue. Mine looks not so good, but it has sealed the roof.
I didn’t bother sanding it, I think that would be dangerous, you’d need a mask most likely. That fiberglass stuff could get in your lungs. I would be worried anyway.
Bondo in the can contains polyester resin and styrene monomer (that distinctive odor) plus fillers and that little tube of hardening agent. On the car, it’s polyester and polystyrene and fillers. The only fiberglass is the “screening” you use to bridge gaps, if needed. A dust mask while sanding is always a good idea, though not necessary for small jobs.