Bog it Up!
Written by Anthony James
I fondly recall the days of my teenage years when your car was your everything. Always keeping it looking as good as you could, mag wheels, big tires, loud exhaust and loud stereo.
Doing the Friday night cruise down the Bay, showing off and scouting for your mates. (I’m talking pre-mobile phone era here.)
All makes and models of Holdens, Fords and Chryslers, vying for attention.
Mine was a well used 1976 Holden panelvan….one driver’s side mirror, couldn’t see much out the back at the best of times.
Inevitably, attempting to look cool, you’d end up backing into something, trying that fancy reverse park in the carpark, or the late night drop off on an unfamiliar street with power poles and trees just waiting to reach out and leave their mark on your pride and joy.
I had a couple of these regretful incidences and I vividly recall the weekends with the beloved van parked on Mum and Dads back lawn, bashing out a dent or two and ”Bogging up” what the hammer could never fix.
Back then it was a trip down to the Auto Parts store for sandpaper, masking tape, thinners, body filler and spray cans. Hours of exhausting work in the sun….trying to get that panel back into some sort of shape resembling the factory styling.
I remember mixing up the filler on a bit of cardboard, like bread dough, then wiping way too much on the repair area and sitting back waiting for it to “go off”. Then all the time it took to grind that rock hard filler down with sandpaper course enough to be used as road base.
Sheets and sheets of sandpaper clogged up with chunks of the stuff. Then once you got it sanded down to somewhere near the original panel, it was full of pinholes…
Mix more…. wipe it on… wait for it harden up… sand it down again and hope you got all the pinholes filled. Then you’d use a whole can of primer as the filler was so porous it would suck the first two coats in within minutes.
Finally, the next day you’d get a chance to put on the fancy, matching color top coat and hide last week’s damage, ready for cruising again.
I wish there were filler and aerosol primer products like the U-POL Dolphin Medium filler and HIGH #5 high build aerosol primer available at the local parts store.
The way these new generation of fillers and primers perform is light years ahead of the rough n ready products of the 80’s.
Dolphin Medium is an ultra-fine, ultra-lightweight filler that is specially formulated to resist pin-holing and to be extremely easy to sand compared to other premium fillers. The major advantage here is that, unless you’re filling the Grand Canyon, you’ll be able to fill a normal repair with one single application. No need to apply multiple coats to get all those annoying pinholes. Dolphin Medium will do it all in one hit. And easy to sand too! No more muscle fatigue from an hours’ worth of sanding with coarse sandpaper, you can start sanding Dolphin Medium with 180 grit and get it smooth in no time.
The U-POL High Build aerosol primer is another effective product that would have been a great help in getting my repair jobs done quicker. Genuine High build, fast drying and suitable for applying direct to bare metal, polyester fillers and OEM paintwork without a problem.
I’m sure glad that these products are available today, they make the hassle of repairs so much easier and for the trade so much quicker, which is a vital aspect of the modern collision repair process.