trim holes

Hi there

I have removed the beadings / trim from the sides of my
mk 1 id like to close up these little holes to have a smooth
reccess . whats the best way of closing them up without
experiencing problems later

I intend to make some vynil trim to stick in the recesses

I always thought the original trim suits the car , you can of course use black or chrome trim depending on tastes and they are still available from various suppliers.
 But if you want to cover the holes and there are a lot of them options are to weld them up with Mig weld [watch for distortion] and skim fill with body filler  . Or the best method is to fill with lead body solder - search the site on the subject - using a kit from Frost restorations . This will give a non distortion hole filling method and is reversible .

Good luck ………

Before welding or whatever, just try the vinyl trim over the holes and see how that looks. Cheaper, easier, and trim can be put back on later if wanted.

Think some people do use filler in the holes as easy and can be drilled out later to return the car to original spec. A more permanent solution is to fill the holes with weld and grind flat.

Be warned, if you're not careful and/or experienced with a welder you can ruin the bodypanels with excess heat from welder. Saw a GTI a while ago that had had this done and the welder had obviously been a bit to impatient with the welder set to high and bodywork had distorted around every trim hole down both sides of the car 8O .

Cheers

thanx for the advise

Just done this myself actually.  
Firstly I took the paint down to the bare metal on the exterior.  I then used fibreglass compound to fill the holes, you can apply a lot to the interior as you won't see this and it provides a better base for the filler.  I tried to put as little as possible on the exterior but this needs to be sanded down anyway.

Once the fibreglass was sanded down smooth on the exterior, I then used body filler on the holes.  Once this had dried, I sanded back the filler to the contour of the recess.

I had to do this on my sills as well to cover the holes from the BBS kit that was on it when I bought it.  It is not a quick process but it works well, you just need to put a bit of elbow grease into it.  Detail sanders work well to get the bulk of the filler off but don't take too much off or you'll have to start again