Classic car rust repair, body and paint in Alberta

Rockers and cab corners, lower quarters ahead of the rear wheel, floor pans under the pedals, trunk drop-offs behind the wheel wells, and frame rails where brine sits and never dries out. Door bottoms too, on anything that spent winters outside.

If a car lived here, assume it is rotten in those places until proven otherwise. Surface bubbles usually mean the steel behind them is already gone.

Where reproduction panels exist — most GM and Ford trucks, common muscle cars — replacing the full panel is often cheaper and straighter than piecing in patches.

Where they do not exist, we make the piece. Butt-welded, planished and metal-finished, not lapped over rust with seam sealer smeared on top.

Floors, braces and rockers hold the car together. Cutting them without bracing the shell first lets doors and gaps move, and a shell that has moved never fits right again.

We brace, cut, fit, weld, then check gaps with the doors hung before anything sees primer.

Orphan makes, one-off customs and hot rod work need metal made rather than ordered. Shrinker-stretcher, bead roller, hammer and dolly, TIG and MIG. Slower work, and it is what a good build is judged on ten years later.

Straightness is made in the blocking, not in the spray gun. Epoxy primer, high build, guide coat, block, repeat until reflections run straight down the panel. Then base, clear, cut and buff.

This is where the calendar goes, and where a bargain quote quietly tells you what it left out.

A quarter panel costs a few hundred dollars. Fitting it so the gap matches the door and the reflection does not bend is days of labour. Any quote that treats paint as cheap is either skipping metalwork or planning to.