I've never liked roof racks, but I love wagons. I have a wagon with a perfect original factory headliner inside that I do not want to remove if at all possible, but I do want to remove the roof rack and fill all the holes. The roof is otherwise perfect. Any ideas as to filling without having backing access behind the holes and not using any heat, but will hold and last permanently on thin sheetmetal?
Wow, you are asking a lot. How about just removing the rack and screwing nice stainless steel oval head screws in the holes and leaving them? If you were to remove the rack and find there were "riv-nuts" in the holes you may be out of luck as the riv-nuts are higher than the roof skin. If they are a sheet metal screw hole, and it is small.......grinding it off well, then tapping the hole down some....then applying a product like Evercoats "Everglass" a fiberglass reinforced polyester body filler this would do wonders. As long as the hole isn't very big 1/4" MAX. If you tap the hole down a little it will give the filler some support so it isn't just in the hole,THAT will fall out. If you could pull down the edge of the headliner by removeing the trim at that point (no big deal) you could apply a "patch" with panel bonding adhesive.That would be as good as it gets without welding. Brian
Not sure what you'll find under the roof rack. On my '69, each scrw went into a well nut...rubber encased nut. The hole in the roof was about 1/2" for each. I think you need to pull the headliner down if you want to do this properly...or a bunch of us that lover roof racks could do some sort of intervention or hypnosis... p
How about using that two part epoxy that they now use in modern vehicles to glue door skins on. You'll need to use some ingenuity to keep it from falling thru.
That's a small enough job for JB Weld! Fill the holes, sand 'em smooth, repaint it, and call it done! :TU:
Bonding The bonding adhesive that they use to bond the fiberglass panels to the metal frame on older corvettes is good. That stuff will harden like concrete and bonds to metal. When I replace my panels I had to chisel it off the metal and panel. It sticks.
