Quote: I'm curious...it seems it's more work to do all those tiny butt welds than to drill out the spot welds and mimic the factory spot welds?
Also, when you butt weld, what do you put on top of them after you grind them down? Do you lead or duraglass?
It's a lot more work to do the butt welding but we believe that to mimic the factory spot welds or even using a spot welder, which we do in some spots, is not as good as leaving the factory spot welds in place. There will always be someone who can tell the difference with the spot welds. With a proper butt weld, nobody can tell it was done.
The most important part is not warping the metal. As long as you don't warp the metal, when you grind down the welds, there will be almost no need for filler at all. We spread fiberglass over the ground weld to fill any tiny imperfections or pin holes and then sand 99.9% of it back off. By the time the car is ready for primer, you can't see more than a pin holes worth of fiberglass here and there.
If you are going to try this, practice a lot on scrap metal first. My guy has been doing this forever and he makes it look easy. I'm a decent welder but I can't butt weld without making a mess. Fortunately, I don't have to because I have Mike.
There is certainly nothing wrong with doing the spot weld method if that's what you want.
In my opinion, the guys who don't do butt welding simply can't do it properly this way; it's not as easy as it looks. Truthfully, if your welds crack, body torque or not, you didn't do them correctly because a proper weld is always stronger than the metal around it.
