Thread: trunk rust....

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Mercuryman, I have gained a measure of fame for performing some pretty half-a$$ body work in my time, but I once owned a '76 Buick Century Special that we bought new. 1976 was not GM's finest hour as far as body quality was concerned.

When it rained it seemed that more water got inside that car than stayed out. The floorboards and the trunk floor rusted out. Water got under the vinyl Landau top and holes rusted in the roof.

What I'm leading up to is, I finally bought some heavy fiber glass cloth and a bucket of epoxy resin and sanded the areas as clean as I could get them, then I bridged the holes with a layer or two of the cloth then applied the resin.


I mentioned the kind of repairs that I tend to make sometimes, but it worked very well. Admittedly, the fixes didn't look too good, but what the heck? New carpet and a new trunk floor mat can hide a ton of ugly. As for the holes in the roof I got some of that wide aluminum tape stuff and patched over the holes and stretched the vinyl back as tightly as I could and it looked okay.

Well, sort of okay .......

We kept that leaky devil for several more years before selling it to a neighbor for a go-to-school car for his daughter, and yes, I did tell him about my less than professional body work.

If you are making a show car out of your Merc you might not want to go this route, but if money is an object, as I said, it worked.

Jim