Pretty feckin good....bit of filler though..
I did my both my wheel arches (Inner and outer) and part of the sills last Sunday (Marathon day) and Monday night from stratch for the MOT on Tuesday. I used a shoemakers horn/anvil (Has three bits to it) and a flat hammer as I had some sheet and didn't want to waste good money on panels. You'll be surprised by what you can fashion as long as you think logically about it, ie what has to be stretched and what has to be shrunk and how you can acheive it by hand pressing and with limited tools.
If you can get an old anvil or something you can beat the stretch marks out of the steel by repeated light hammering against it as a dolly, certainly good enough for only the lightest layer of filler, but the good thing about the shoemakers thing is I was also able to get the lip line bent and curvature spot on as the thing is compound curved on all sides in a shoe shape, so its a bit like using an English wheel or machine hammer. I also used a thin block of oak flooring as a dolly for the arch flatbit to tidy it up. For the sills I used the tipper dropsides as a metal bender...
By midday I wasn't even using cereal packet templates, just guessing it by eye as time was getting on and I had to tighten the rear wheel bearing by Monday night.
Investing in a vice and some scrap 6mm steel beams etc is also handy for shaping stuff. Sandbags are good for the major one piece stretching jobs, then just run it over between the coumpound anvil and a flatish hammer for an hour.
Metal shaping actually ain't that difficult, if you have a decent right arm, patience and first think about how you are going to acheive it. Only problem is, unlike you I ground down the welds after the MOT for paint and found that 95% of them were cold and needed redoing...
Yeah I'm crap at welding.
You can't beat making something from, and for nothing though, the metal I used was free galv from a wrap around a bunch of RSJ's. Look out for a decent static dolly, like an old anvil or shoe repairer's anvil, they are well handy for forming accurate lines on lips of arches and stuff! I got mine free from a garden clearance...But seriously, true alchemy mate, its what its all about. Spot on!
Filer goes on bare metal after degreasing, its like a thick layer of porous primer effectively.
My Mk5 was biodegradable and disintegrated with time.
Ford. Committed to the Environment
Finally entered the 21st Century and bought a MK7. Oh Dear.
