First off, to remove the old skin, take a grinder and grind the edge door where the skin folds around onto the door shell. Grind until you see the three layers of metal. Don’t worry if you grind a little too much, if the shell gets ground a little it is no big deal. On the spot welds you can drill them or grind them, sometimes both. By grind I mean a die grinder with a cut off wheel, just set the spinning wheel on the weld moving it back and forth till you have cut though eliminating the weld.

To prepare the new skin, take a DA or similar tool and sand the OUTER edge of fold in the new skin a little. I am talking about the edge as it will be folded onto your door shell. If you LIGHTLY sand this edge the lip will fold MUCH easier when you install the skin.

What ever tools you use the trick is to not add the last "skim coat' till you KNOW that it is all you need. Don't try to block out that first coat, just use it as a base for the LAST skim coat.

I was taught this procedure after doing bodywork for a number of years and it really works well:

Just apply a nice coat of filler (what ever brand, whatever style, we will put that aside right now). Cut that coat NOT to make it perfect, but to get the basic shape and filling you need as a base for the skim coat. You can cut it with 36 40 or 80 depending on how big the area you are working is. In other words, if you can cut it fast with only 80 then do it. But I would say that this would be limited to an application that is no larger than about 8 inches.

Nothing adds to “detail” on a car more than nice fitting panels. If the car is a light color it is even more important. Those “black lines” that are the gaps between panels really look bad if they are not a consistent width. While using this guide and aligning your panels be sure that you open and close the moving ones very carefully after a change. You can loose the gap fast which will allow the panels to hit, so be careful.

I have to start with this very important point. ALWAYS have the car sitting on it’s wheels or at the very least the weight of the car should be on the axles. That being if you want it on jack stands to raise the car up and give you more access to the bolts and such, place the stands under the control arms as and rear axle. They should be out as far as possible towards the wheels. This can still cause problems on the front. Even in a little from where the tire actually holds the car up can change the amount of pressure being exerted on the car’s body. A car can be twisted or bent more than you can imagine up on jack stands when the stands are set on the frame allowing the weight to hang off the ends. This is VERY, VERY important. Of course this goes for anytime a panel is being fit, either welded or bolted on.