Now that the body was finally free of rust and damage, the time had come to finish the job. I initially tried to do this myself. Starting on the roof, I first marked every small ding, scratch and irregularity with a marker. Next I sanded these spots with a coarse sandpaper; 80 grit.
Before applying body filler, the sanding dust had to be removed by compressed air first. Once clean I started mixing the two filler components. For my car, I used two-component body filler with aluminium pigments. This filler generates less dust, warps along with metal at temperature changes, is easy to apply, and gets really hard.
After 15 minutes the filler is ready for sanding. I again used grit 80 to start with. Planar surfaces were sanded with a large sanding block, while more rounded surfaces were done by hand or rubber.
The same applied for this door. It was harder though because the door was more curved. Also, on the corners and edges of the door, it was easy to sand through the paint.
Once everything was filled and sanded, I used zinc spray to cover the bare edges. Afterwards I sanded the zinc spray with grit 120. In the end however, I was still not 100% satisfied with the results on roof and door. So I decided to stop finishing the body of the car, and have it done by professionals.
On this late type trunk lid, a spoiler had been mounted which was to be replaced by a different one. So I was left with six mounting holes in the wrong locations. On the rear there were more holes for the emblems, and a big hole for the Honda logo. Because I don't want logos on the car, these holes had to be closed. For the big hole in the middle which houses the Honda logo, I cut a piece of metal and filed it into shape.
I had the holes in the trunk lid welded shut; filling them up with fiberglass will only get you in trouble later with the warping of different materials. Located next to my former employer's building, there's a large steel constructor with good welding facilities. An employee of this company did the welding with CO2 in one afternoon. On the picture you see him grinding the welds.
The heat generated by the welding made the metal warp some. For the most part the metal was pulled inside, which is good, because it can easily be filled. I used a hammer on the parts that had been pushed outward. Lastly the bare metal was covered by zinc spray again.