I'm looking into some metal bonding products (Fusor)to do some minor repairs on my floorpans. Has anybody used these products? Are you satisfied? I don't have a welder, and I could be ready to patch for under $100. Is there a catch?

Mark

Weld it, that is a structural piece and can cause twist in the body. If you can buy the parts and cut out the bad areas your half done. With all that work to that point do it right. Stop at a couple of body shops and ask if they would weld the parts in place. Cash and beer on Fridays gets work done.

Read this
http://www.chevelles.com/cgi-bin/forum/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=007509

You say minor repairs. If you mean cut out and glue in say a 6 inch square section i don't think it will be a problem as long as its not on a brace.If your going to replace a full pan i would weld it.

The areas are about 8" X 2" and smaller. Two spots on the driver side. The floor pans are in awesome shape, I just wanted to grind out the rust and put a small patch over the hole. Just seemed like a waste to weld a new pan in for a hole you can't fit your finger through. Looks like I'll give it a shot. The question now is what should I use to coat the interior of the floorpans...

You can "glue" those without even the slightest of worries.

And I have to tell you, these adhesives are better than welding in many cases. Your floor is not going to flex to any degree worth thinking about.

The thing about gluing is that it is every bit as critial to do a proper job as welding. Poor welding will fail, so with adhesive.

OK, so what gauge sheet metal should I use for the patch? Is it found in something laying aroung the garage, or should I buy some fresh stock? Thanks for the info, I feel a lot better about using it now...

Originally posted by sapperox:
OK, so what gauge sheet metal should I use for the patch? Is it found in something laying aroung the garage, or should I buy some fresh stock? Thanks for the info, I feel a lot better about using it now... Make sure you cut out the rust and grind the perimeter to bare clean metal where you intend to glue the patches in. Make your patches so they have a minimum of 1/2" overlap on all edges...3/4" or 1" overlap would be even stronger.

If you need to bend the metal for a nice fit, do so before your ready to glue.

Use 20 awg clean sheet steel for your patches. Clean all the surfaces with a wax & grease remover and grind all the bonding surfaces with a 36 grit sanding disc just prior to bonding.

You will have about 3 choices of set times with the fusor...fast, medium, and slow...I usually wind up using the medium for patch type work.

Late last week I finally got the sample of adhesive I was waiting for, from the gentleman at the other company (The Gateway Group), to test out for you guys (since it is available aftermarket). It's called TGG-204. It's a 2 component epoxy, room temp cured (but I was told can add 10-15% more strength with some heat from a heat gun; conversely, this makes it less flexible, which may hurt long term durability).

I'm gathering up Fusor, 3M 8115, and some others to do a comparison here. I'll let the data do the talking as far as what is best. Give me a week or two to get everything set up.

Crankshaft