I want to see how much/thick the bondo is on a car. I see this $70 detector http://www.ndtt.com/filler-detective-automotive-paint-tester-car-body-damage-and-bondo-detector.html which got me thinking, what about using a carpenter's wall stud sensor that lights LED in succesion depending on how close you get to metal? Anyone ever try that? Any other ideas? I suppose just a magnet works but not to any measurable level.
I could see it now, you spend 40 hours cutting and buffing your perfect black paint job and some numb nut wants to rub some bondo detector all over it. that's a good way to get punched. I'm thinking a stud sensor would not work that way.
figure that even some really nice rides have a skim coating of body filler. coated magnet does not always work. Filler-Detective 99.95 - Yikes? but, there are hi-tech ones around $3000 all the way down to $18.50 on eBay (paint thickness meter gauge tester)
Open the trunk, doors, and hood and look on the back side for rough metal work. Usually rough on the inside means lots of plastic on the outside. Pretty tough to disguise a bondo wagon if you know what to look for. Factory spot weld areas that are smoothed off, door and trunk edges that are super thick, and wavy body work mean mucho mud. As said above a skim coat of plastic is an acceptable way of finishing off a car that has had proper metal work.
I used to buy for a dealer and I used a much more expensive version. It basically measured paint thickness. I got used to knowing how thick paint should be in a respectable range. When the meter reading spike, you know you have a thick spot with filler. It saves a lot of time at an auction when they're selling 1 car every 30 seconds in 16 lanes. Not much time to fully inspect things. My paint meter saved my butt several times.
The Hardy Boys used to take their pen knives and scrape off the top layer of paint in an unseen area. You know, to make sure if that suspicious black car was really the same as the green one that nearly ran down old Chet in downtown Bayport. You could try that.
BTW, I went over my car with a strong magnet & did not manage to spot hardly any of the bondo. A weak magnet worked better. Of course the paint was toast so no problem for me on my own car. Fortunately the few thick spots are manageable repairs.
I think it is the other way around. people who work the metal so they need less bondo are the rare ones. bondo is king! get it done quick. it only needs to look good on top....that seems to be the motto of the day.
Bought an old Merc back in the 70s, thought I was being really smart to take a magnet with me to look at the car. The magnet felt about the same as I gently drug it across a black primered car. Thought I was buying a straight, clean body for under $100, and it had a Y block in it, too. Too bad that it all felt the same, because the entire lower body had about 1/2 inch of bondo all over it. All over.
working on a car right now that was the finest example of bondo sculpture anywhere. it was in light tan high build primer and looked good, then another shop decided to strip it to bare metal. big mistake. lots of patches and 2 new doors later it is coming back. the doors had a rust patch all along the bottom, filled with bondo and no backing of any kind, not even duct tape or old socks. it actually looked like it was ready for paint the first time I saw it.
I have used those flexible magnets that business give away. They won't hurt the paint and they are not very magnetic. Cheap, handy to keep in your pocket, and after you use it a few times you will know how to gauge it! KK
More often than not bad bondo bodywork is telltale if you look to the edges, underneath and insides of panels. The "shortcut" work is reflected there. Structure repairs can be a good indicator of work done. Most laser straight cars are skim coated front to back as is the fashion now, yet somehow sterile.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=850807 Beautiful sculpting of bondo over shitty and I mean brown and squishy really shitty metalwork and worse prep. Really bit me in the ass.
I always get a kick out of all the old geezers at swap meets knuckle tappin every inch of the car their looking at. Half of them dont even know what the hell their looking at. They all got bondo. ALL. Unless of course you find one thats been stuck in an underground time capsule since the day it was made. The only way your gonna find out what you have is if you strip the sucker down and start grindin. That is... If ya got the balls
Yeah it WAS ! Coming along with silly time consuming stuff, takes all day and nothing spectacular to show for it.
Sometimes previous body work is fairly obvious. What I've found as a good way, is to put a car up on a hoist/rack and look at the quarters and other panels from down below. You'll have a different perspective look at it. While it's up in the air, you'll be able to look at other things too.
Hi .... I had a knuckle head wanting to buy a 38 ford coupe I had and brought his magnet with him...started to runing it over the the beaver tail and it fell off...His comment's were " jeez its full of bog" I said ...jeez magnets dont stick on lead...he just walked around scratchin his head after that...as I had to give a lesson how body seams were lead loaded back then.......sometimes 3/4" thick.....I've see 33-34 A pillers neally all lead.......
With the prices today, you can't blame a guy for wanting to use one of those devices. And as mentioned, slim coats are the norm today for laser straight finishes. Where these come in handy is when the sh!t gets deep. Beats knuckle- knocking. Ain't technology wunnerful....
I use my trusty magnet its never failed me yet but I also have a good eye and usually see everything before i can even pull it out of my pocket ,but as stated before if you look up at a car you will see everything the guys who use gallons and gallons of the stuff to fix dents and rust are to lazy to finish it off where you can't normally see
Thanks all for the replies. I have a car of unknown history that I want to sell and thought I'd try to be as honest about it as possible, particularly after reading 31 Vicky's latest thread I tried a stud finder, that did't work. I'll just look it over as best I can, take pictures behind whatever I can get behind. It's not a valuable car that one would travel far to inspect.
I hope that thread helps other people, too late for me but hopefully karma will bring that body man out of the sky right to my door A paint mills gauge concept should work well too. Those cause no damage but the tested area is small. It's like a magnetic spring loaded micrometer gizmo.
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