Time to Break Out the Epoxy on My Roof Holes
Since my wheels are an ex armed police car, this came with several pros and cons. While it has been very well maintained and has a number of upgrades like air suspension and a sporty engine map, downsides are that it has no entertainment system and holes in the roof where the antennas and lights were mounted. The holes have been covered with some trusty duct tape for the last couple of years, but I figured that while we are in lockdown, and I don’t need to drive daily, it was about time to fix them properly.
I took the headliner down, duct taped alu mesh on the back of the holes and them filled them with p40 filler which is polyester resin gloop with fibreglass mixed in. This grabs the mesh, and fills the gap solid and watertight but leaves a messy finish. Rough sand and apply p38 filler which smooths out nicely with a fine sand. Having done all the sanding by hand before, this time was far less work with an electric sander. I still did the fine sand by hand as it is all too easy to make bare patches. I’ve had quite a bit of spray painting experience with model making and the odd scuff repair so that was straight forward. Some tips are to warm the cans in warm water and spray lots of thin coats. Primer > paint > lacquer. With the height of my car, having a platform to work on was very helpful, and this also meant I didn’t need to take too much time on an absolutely perfect finish, but it came out pretty well.
While the headliner was down I also ran the wire for the rear camera, more on that is for another post.