What to do with roof seam?

[440WIP]

My Duster was previously a vinyl top car. The top has been stripped off and there are some really ugly body seams to deal with. Do they need to be filled in with steel, or is plastic filler okay. I would prefer to not put a vinyl top back on. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Daryl

[thebankerstoy]

Hey Daryl,

I ran into this very same problem when we did the restoration in 2005 / 2006 on my son's 72 Dart, which came factory equipped with a vinyl top. When the owner (who's advice I COMPLETELY trust) of the body shop removed the original vinyl top material from our car, we had the same ugly factory seams that your looking at on your car. He told me that the ONLY way that he would consider to fix this problem, was to lead / metal fill the seams and smooth them out from there. This type of body work is expensive if done by a body shop, and difficult to get right if your not experienced at it, so on my son's car, we had the shop replace the vinyl top with a factory style replacement, rather than doing the seam filing work  He told me that he would NOT even consider using bondo, or any other type of filler on a Mopar, as with the uni-body design, the constant flexing of all of the body seams would cause damage to any other type of filler other than lead / metal in a short time. I'm not a body and paint guy, but I TRUST the man who does my work, as he has been in the busines a LONG time, so just consider it one man's view on the subject. 

Richard 

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[68_Val_Sedan]

I welded the seams with the mig, ground them down and then used filler over the welded seams on a buddies 69 dart and there has been no cracking or other movement .. .the car is a pretty hot 340 setup that runs mid 12's

[Duster440]

We did a vinyl top "delete" a few years ago on one of my cars. The guy doing the body work, who had years of experience, removed the factory filler (too new to be lead), welded the seam solid, and then refilled it. I don't know what he used at the time but I never had a cracking problem - and it was a 440 car. Recently I've used a product called All-Metal which, of course, is much stronger than standard filler. Used it in a couple of places on my current project and I wouldn't hesitate to use it on a sail panel. 

[loiq]

Clean them up, weld them and use dura glass filler - it will be fine. Always put dura glass over welds, the "bondo" over the dura glass.