The horror!!!!! I ran out of shielding gas last night, I was making some progress too, oh well. I gotta new bottle this morning, more hacking and welding tonight after work. I think I'll move on to the tailgate before tackling the other side, I get bored easily, and I can't lose my motivation. I took apart the hood I just bought from it's support structure so that I could repair the numerous little dings in it. I think it's NOS, there's no sign that it was ever mounted but it does have some pitting from sitting outside and a few tiny rust holes where it was lying in the dirt.
Intersection just down the road from my house has a large pothole. One day I'm stopped at the light when another car pulls up next to me & his front right wheel hits the pothole. A piece of bondo about an inch thick & probably 18in in diameter fell off the passenger door & rolled into the middle of the intersection where it was hit by a full size truck & converted into smaller chunks... My (then) 9yo daughter watches all this, looks at me & says "That's not good" LOL!!
Here's the quarter panel with all the inside patches welded up, I'm gonna POR 15 it now. I'm going to weld in the this patch panel first before cutting the rear half off.
Go Nads go! Good to see that Elky getting proper attention..... That bondo work is awesome.....wayyy better than spray foam.....haha....
Here's a couple pics of the bondo I took out the Wildman truck. I got more than 80 pounds of big chunks that I literally PULLED away from the body, along with incredible pounds more that I merely ground off - and after nearly 40 years, some of it was still gooey. In that next to last picture, the entire piece from the crack down and around the corner came off as ONE 26 pound chunk that had three 16p nails in it.
while poking around the 54 chevy i just bought i noticed that the trunk lid dosent line up very well. so i stuck my head in there and someone used fiberglass to join a new panel to the body. they just kinda put them near each other and there crappy cuts and then fiberglassed them in place. its not bad enough to justify ruining the paint and redoing it and then repainting the whole car again. i will have to go and take some pics of it and post them up. i asked the person i bought it from if there was any bondo in it as he was the last to paint it and he said there was a crack in the metal....
Not Bondo, but I just remembered my old 67 Pontiac had a parcel shelf made from colorbond roofing screwed underneath.
Jeezus it's a fuckin epidemic!! Everything I've touched in the last year seems like it's been done like that. I missed that in my apprentice days. It sems like the new industry standard anymore, even on DIY programs and youtubes. WTF is wrong with a hammer and dolly? I did a Packard hood last year that had nearly .090 in bondo, featherfill polyester primer, and primer/surfacer. Funny thing is that once it was stripped I spent 15min with a hammer and dolly on 1 small dent and used a light skin of metalglaze on an area that looked "pitted". Other than that it was litterally perfect steel. The metal glaze spot was about 4sqin on the side and the coatings were so thick the center crease was GONE from the hood. WTF WTF WTF...
Looks like we're getting a competition going, so I want in. I'm dusting off some old pics I've posted before, but they should be contenders. First pic, Edsel with previous "repair" intact. Second picture, same car, same quarter panel, but with bondo removed. Third pic is the patch panel I made (it's the other side, but both sides were about the same) Just the lip part I pulled out of the one quarter weighed in at about 3 lbs. As sad as all of these pictures are, it's kind of impressive how people were able to get that much filler to keep that shape for so long. How many years of practice does it take to make a quarter panel totally out of mud with no welding and actually stay in place for any amount of time?
The funny thing is before I started digging in people would say to me, "you're doing a fine job restoring the car." I couldn't even give them an answer. Many years ago when I bought my 57 Chevy, I was very insulted when an old timer told me the bubbles in my fenders were signs of complete rust through, I told him it was all surface, boy was I wrong, I'm sorry for doubting you, old fella, please forgive me, wherever you are. Now I know from experience that those bubbles are indications of serious problems, ditto, cracks, rust stain and ill fitting panels.
A friend of my mine, an old time bodyman, had some real winners come into his shop. The best one was a '67 Galaxy that came into his shop around 1990. The guy owned the car since new and wanted it to restored. He had the car worked on back in the early '80s and the rear quarters were giving out. When my friend started to tear the car apart he found the previous work on the rear quarters consisted of having new panels welded over the original rusted parts. Like one of the posts above, they didn't even cut out the bad parts, just welded complete quarters over the originals. They also patched other rust holes with used grinding discs. I saw all this with my own eyes. The interesting part is the guy had it done at the original big Ford dealer he bought it from new. He kept all of the receipts from all the repairs he had done to the car since new to prove it. They charged him ten years earlier about as much as my friend charged the owner to do it right.
This thread reminds me of when I was a kid in OH. My Dad called me and one of my buddies the "Bondoleers". We were 15 and didn't know any better. This thread also makes me happy that I live in the desert southwest now
HA! When I first got my 57 I didnt have any bondo but the whole lower 6 inches were pretty much GONE. It also had a quarter panel crunched up pretty good so I ordered a new quarter and starting cutting out the old one out when the distinct oder of burning wood hit me. Yup , found an 2 & half foot 2x4 in there to keep it off the back wheel!
A friend of mine got hot rodded model T (typical '70s build). The fenders had been molded to the body with bondo and fiberglass. Since he got it, he's done quite a few burnouts and the fenders have stress cracks where they are molded to the body. It still looks pretty neat.
Must have been a trend, when I cut into the areas above the headlights on the Edsel above, I found that someone stuffed DA stick-it pads up inside the fenders to hold the mud in place when they filled in the holes.
Here is an attempt to explain some of the exquisite Bondo jobs. Back in '76, I was fresh out of college, compete with a degree and debt. Newly married, getting by paycheck to paycheck. Our wheels was a 70 Gremlin, about 175,000 miles on it. I got rear ended by a cute little brunette who backed up and promptly fled the scene. The rear was crumpled in so the right rear fender was gouging the tire. I had no collision insurance and no spare cash. Was also 1100 miles from my "home base" where tools were available. So I hooked one end of the Gremmy to the barn where I worked, attached a chain to the other end. On the far end of the chain was a John Deere. 'Ole Johnny pulled the back end out to approximately when it had been. I ordered a sliding hammer and some cheap tin knocking tools from J.C. Whitney. Most the damage was not accessible from the rear, so it turned into mostly dent pulling. When I got it out as best I could, I ground off the paint with a $9.99 (no shit) Black and Decker drill with a sanding disc in it. Then came the Bondo. Oh yes, had to "fabricate" the panels under the bumper, the originals had been form fitted to the subframe. Could not even get the screw on the sliding hammer to get a bit into them. About 2 gallons of Bondo, as I recall. About a fourth of it was on the driveway. In addition to the John Deere, I had access to a decent 2 hp air compressor, located in the barn that helped pull out the fender. So I sprayed the Gremlin in the barn and about 100 degree heat, but at least the dust was not too bad. Had the bumper straightened and chromed ($125), reinstalled it and drove the Gremmy for 5 years. Still looked okay when I junked it. So to all of you that might ask "Why didn't you do it right"? I say, "Mind your own fucking business". Bill
I love the smell of bondo in the morning.... its right up there with a galss of Tang and some Nitro fumes...
I remember back in the early 70s when i first went to work in a "real" body shop we used Duponts version of bondo and on the label was a picture of a sculpure of chief pontiacs head and the slogan below said "so workable its sculpturable" , back then we got cars in all the time that fenders and rockers had been filled with steel wool , tee shirts, newspaper, underwear, yes even underwear lol then covered in bondo , it never ceased to amaze me how some so called professionals can hack up a car . i saw one once that had been in a roll over and the 2 guys fixing it literally dumped 2 cans of bondo on the roof squeezed in the hardener and mixed 2 gallons all at the same time right on the roof . crazy . i saw a guy once that would save the shavings after he "cheesgrated" the bondo too to add to his next batch as filler to make it go farther . i have seen some poor leadwork too so lets not blame it on bondo lol its the users responsibility to use it correctly .
I wish I had the pics of my first Jeep, a 75 CJ5... I was 15 and my dad said it was the right way to fix it. It had 4 gallons of Bondo in it if it had an ounce. That thing looked absolutely beautiful, for about a week in the PA potholes. Lesson learned... listen to the guys at the parts store, not dad, when it comes to cars. Taught myself how to gas weld and braze tho, and the project kept me out of trouble...
I was checking it out and this quote really stuck out I've done some rough stuff but some of his work is just unreal. I love the copper sheet patch job he did.
Hmm. Great (?) minds must think alike, I just did the same thing to my beater van because it was leaking every time it rained, through a couple big rot holes over the windshield. Foam sealed it right up tight, and I was thinking of just running a coat of bondo over it to finish it myself. I know that's not right, but the only way to do it right would be to make panels or cut them out of a donor, and I'm not going to do that on a $500 beater that will probably only last 3 or 4 more years before it becomes a storage unit.
The Jalopy Journal
