body panels

[onebigsmith]

bought all new lower half ems patch panels from rear of front fenders completely around to the rear tailpan. has anyone ever done or entertained the thought of using the 3M duramix epoxy to attach these panels (mainly the large quarter sections) or is welding the only way to do it?

All suggestions and recommendations are appreciated.

[lalessi1]

Adhesives have come along way in the past 20 years. Some rather large panels of commercial airframes are bonded together. I have used a little epoxy to bond a patch on the underside of a 1" hole and filled the indentation with body filler with good results (so far). That said, I think that everyone would probably recommend welding patch panels as the only way to do the job correctly.

[RICH MUISE]

Welcome to the forum. Your gonna love this place.....We have a member here who is the 3M rep for automotive products. Pat Fleishman aka suede57. hopefully he'll see this thread, but it wouldn't hurt to send him a pm. I've heard alot of good stuff about the panel bond. It's used extensively in body collision repair shops on the newer car panels  that don't weld so good. I think most hot rodders are gonna take a while for a "new" process to replace the old standards. Either way, preping is a critical step.
A thought about the panel bond vs welding. Many if not most of the replacement panels need some working/massaging, etc to fit. in many cases the old method may have been to tack weld an area, working it/reshaping it with a hammer and dolly as you go along to the next tack welds. Don't know how you could do that with panel bond, but I'm not a body man either. I really think alot of the popularity/usage is because the newer cars are actually designed to be repaired with the panel bond. They probably have underlying structures to bond to that the old cars don't have. Just my thoughts on it, but as I said I'm not a body man.