Simple respray goes quite astray....

I'm in the middle of repairing the body of my mk1 that I've had for nearly 20 years but while having done extensive work on the car I've never really given the body and real attention so decided to attack the body and prepare it for paint , this is where i opened a can or worms. I had given the car to a paint shop years ago but there was some weird reaction with the sealer and the old paint work and all the body blistered so had to stop. I then sprayed the car with a water based paint to get it somewhat acceptable appearance and left it alone , until now.

To find out what happened the roof i applied paint stripper and really very little happened , i ran into a layer of filler, then paint , and again filler , paint and….more filler…more paint, short story no less than 14 layers in total  . I then contacted a company about striping the car with blasting but as the layers were much too thick there would be soo much heat that the panels would all be warped , so the only option is to strip the car by hand with strip and clean discs…

The roof had about 3mm of paint and filler that took about 5 hours to remove , the rear quarters 2.5 hours each , bonnet 4 hours , boors 3 hours, you get the idea.

The metal looks damaged in some pictures from the strip discs but its not , the discs do a really good job , and i have found only a few places buried with filler where a repair is needed. The arch extensions also need work again as i removed filler with the discs





Also I'm refitting the panel that sits between the engine and the scuttle , i removed it years ago to fit dcnf webers to an 8v engine and now want to refit it. It turns out refitting is more work than removal .This panel is not available as a spare part so this has come from a scrap car . I was wondering if its ok to spot weld the side of this panel to the inner wing, I'm a bit concerned about causing a fire inside the inner wing , old sealer etc..and have no access to put it out should this happen .

If it were me, I would remove the front wheels and drop the wing liners out. Then you can check for fires, and also you can paint protect the welded areas after welding where the paint will be burnt off.

Surely to weld the scuttle it's a dash out job for the same reasons?