Progress Thread HeHateMe gets bent

"Come on! Out with it!"

JB Weld works well filling holes. You've got to recess the holes a little and scuff them up. Thats the teenage way of doing it 20yrs ago. The epoxy bar is the way to go.

Most of the holes aren't that hard to weld shut. A piece of brass can help tremendously. The weld wont stick to brass. If you hold brass on the back of the hole it makes it easier to seal up.

My buddy has a CRX and we smoothed the bay with JB. Its been like that for a bunch of years. No issues. If you dent the hole in ( just a tad ) and keep from sanding through the JB it'll hold up well. Just a skim with filler, sand, clean, prime, seal, and paint....

PBA is runny and takes a while to set up. Bad combo for filling holes.

What Scott said^^^^^

If you do not have any welding skills, welding in a set of fender aprons is not the place to learn (Ask Collin). I too would consider the easily available "epoxy stik" that is made by JB weld. You pinch off a small amount, knead it together till it's uniform in colour, then press it into the hole. You can guarantee it's permanency by pressing on both sides of the application to "mushroom" the repair so that it will stick on the surrounding metal instead of just the hole. After it dries ( in about 15 minutes, it can be sanded smooth.

Beats the living hell out of grinding a weld.

What you wont have is a true smooth bay like you see in all of the pics. The typical job has everybody capping the troughs at the top of the frame rails.

If I had it to do over again, I'd consider the Scott Rod panels that can be riveted in. As long as you can drill symmetrical spaced holes in a straight line, it'd look great. And its do able at this stage, and the thing that most people see when the engine and all of the accessories are cluttering up the rest of the space.


says that these can be pop riveted in.

Hell, I'd even consider riveting these things in. I'm confident that I could make them look like they belonged there by painting them a contrasting texture to the rest of the bay.

there are only a few jobs that can be done to a Mustang that can be considered "Hell on Earth" and welding, grinding, filling, smoothing then priming and painting an engine compartment is one of them. (The other is removing the undercoating out of the rear wheel tubs)
Knowing what I know now, I'd D/A the hell out of the strut toweres, and prime them in an etching primer, then cut away the disposable part of the existing fender aprons.Then Cleco in the above panels until I got them to fit as good as I could. Then I'd paint the towers, prime and paint the inserts, and rivet them btches on there.