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shaved door handles
this is something that rodders have been doing for years. it looks better to have a nice smooth/cleaner door without a handle on it. my original plan was to shave all four handles and install electric solenoids to pop the doors open. since i was in a hurry to start working on this and didn't have the cash to buy the solenoids, i started with the rear doors since i don't use them much anyway.
first thing to do is remove your door panel from inside. once you've done that, locate the bolts/fasteners that hold the handle in place and remove the handle. on this car, once the handle is removed there are two holes in the door. at this point, removing the door handles could be viewed as something done as weight savings (see "lighten up" on the nav. bar) however that isn't my primary goal in this case.
next i took a piece of paper and a pencil and did a rubbing over the holes to get the shape needed so i could transfer it onto a piece of sheet metal
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after transferring the shape to the sheet metal i cut it out with a pair of sheet metal shears.
once i got the metal trimmed down to fit flush in the hole, i used a wire wheel to grind the paint off the areas that were to be welded.
i spot welded around the outer edge of the sheet metal patch. i have a Sears wire feed arc welder that my wife got me for christmas about 20 years ago. it is like a MIG welder only gasless. it uses a flux core wire. once the patch is secured to the door i ground down the welds to smooth it out.
earlier i said to cut the patch to fit flush with the door panel.important - actually you want the patch and the welds to be slightly below the surface of the door panel to allow room for a thin layer of body filler.
usually when i have exposed bare metal and have done some welding i like to use a fiberglass reinforced body filler over the bare metal and seams. for one reason it will be stronger and less likely to crack, and also it seems to me that the fiberglass filler would be slightly more resistant to moisture than regular body filler. shown above right, i'm using a grater to knock down the high spots and take off the tacky surface film that will clog up the sand paper.
the small hole where the handle was didn't seem worth the effort cutting a patch and welding and everything else, so i just ground off the paint in and around the hole and used the fiberglass reinforced filler to just fill in the hole.
once the fiberglass filler was sanded down, i applied a thin layer of regular body filler over the top of it to fill in the pits and to allow me to get a much smoother finish.
once i finished sanding it all smooth i used an inexpensive rust inhibiting spray paint over the area of the patch and filler.
and there you have it. smooth sleek and sexy!! o.k. maybe not sexy