Re: insurance values/claims, repairs

[richard bies <bies@domain.elided>]

No sale.

I am concerned not with the optimum, but with what a typical body-shop or
DIY may achieve.

Yes, galvanic action is possible -- terrible with aluminum, not all that
pronounced with brass -- I feel other problems are greater.

I offer two data-points -- those repairs I have effected by brazing prove
far less inclined to rust than even torch welding, and, past the bolt-on,
that's how the factories, Alfa/Pinninfarina included, handled lapped
joints in body metal (the essentially seamless shell of the 750 spider
had to be a maze of such joinings).  Where the fender flows smoothly into
the windshield post, it seems it is always done that way.  There's a lot
of brass in this GTV6 which I didn't put there.

It's not a perfect world -- easy to "polish" brass to the point that
primer will hardly adhere, and I doubt that "etching" primer -- for steel
- -- would do much better.  One has to leave it rough enough for mechanical
bonding.  A real pain is the pits of remaining flux, which blossom white.

However, the mig/tig welding "professionals" do draws rust in a few
months, while the brazed jointures I have made are essentially as rust
proof as undisturbed metal, lasting for years.

Particularly where new panels are fitted, I don't think a shop should be
criticized for joining them as the factory originally did.

r.m.bies

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