Every body shop will have its own preferences when it comes to buying and using different types of Fillers for repair.

The interesting thing is that shops that might be located within yards of each other can have completely different feelings about the quality of different products from specific manufacturers and often the choices aren’t made on the chemicals in the products but more often on personal experience or the amount of time a business has been using one manufacturer or vendor over another.

Vendors can really play a part on how products are introduced in different shops. If your vendor does not distribute a specific product or if their profit margin is not as high because they are not a preferred vendor then you are likely to hear horror stories about how other shops had problems with a new product you might want to try.

As a hobbyist you will hear opinions from people who have only used a dozen or so cans of filler touting how great one product is over another.. however you also have to consider that when the home builder first starts working with different products they are likely to make big mistakes when preparing them.

When you first start out you don’t realize just how bad it is to use cardboard rather then a plastic mixing pallet for mixing.  You will also over harden or under harden your product by incorrect mixing and blame the materials rather then your experience working with them.

Simply mixing all of the resins off the top of can of filler before you use it is something many people do and if you aren’t willing to take the time it takes to get the bottom material up to the top and all the resins mixed equally then you can always expect problems.

And if a home hobbyist lets a can sit in their shed for a year and a half going through 105F to 15F days then expecting it to work correctly and complains when it doesn’t … well there really isn’t much you can do to convince someone like that.

Not to mention that there are a variety of different filler types that should be used for different situations.

How many people break out a can of tiger hair for the first pass on a restoration or do they jump right into the light weight filler expecting it to not crack on a roof quarter panel weld?  And did they even clean the weld before they applied filler? The fact is once its out the door most shops are willing to take the risk and expect that the owner will sell the vehicle in the next 2 to 3 years before a huge hunk of plastic breaks off when the car hits a speed bump.

So, I guess what I am getting at here is there may be subtle differences between manufacturers and there may even be a few products out there that are pure garbage best used by mud shops to get cars out the door… but for the most part equally matched products are really pretty close in quality.

If a Filler is clogging your  sand paper maybe its because you didn’t use enough hardener or you didn’t wait for the full cure time.

If you find pinholes in your work maybe its because you mixed air into your filler or you didn’t clean dust from the surface before you started applying a second layer.

If you fill a one inch wide hole with light weight filler and the customer comes back in three months with a large crack maybe its because you should have welded a patch then used fiberglass reinforced filler.

If you bend a screwdriver in a half used gallon of filler that you found on the back of the shelf and expect it to spread easy then…

Well .. Like I said there are low quality products often shipped to consumers or low dollar products that really have no place in the industry but 80% of the products out there will perform as stated if you take the time to prepare them correctly and use them for their appropriate use.

When we find some products that just simply suck we will share that with you but as for finding the best of the best of the best… you are better off just finding a good general purpose product and using it correctly.