I am in the process of building my 46 Merc. I was trying to figure out why my deck lid didnt sit flush at the bottom. So I took my handy dandy DA and started stripping some paing off the rear roll pan. What I found shocked even me The entire upper lip of the roll pan had been filled with bondo. I know this care was professionally (sic) built about 20 years ago. How this much bondo survived 20 years without cracking is beyond me So digging I go. So many short cuts were taken on this car its pathetic. The story goes that a guys always wanted a street rod and took this 46 to a builder in Bakersfield Calif. Spent a ton of money having the car built. He was so disapointed in the car that he let it sit for many years and then finally sold it. I am the 3rd or 4th owner since then and I have decided that this is a bitchen body style and needs to be done right. Some of the other Mickey Mouse things the builder did was using orange extension cord from the switch to the headlights and painting it black. And using fuel line hose to join a gap in the steel brake line (my favorite) I could go on, but you get the picture So I do have a question. Does anyone know of a company that makes the rear roll pan for 46 Ford/Merc cars? Any help is greatly appreciated
before you jump on the shop think about the car and how it is built. many people cant pay to have it one right and just want it fixed then bitch about how it comes out, right or wrong is all in who looks at it. 10 different people on her will have different opinions on how some thing should be done.
I would try EMS. They have a bunch of Ford repro metal. You should walk that body with a magnet to find all of the other trouble areas. Please tell me you are going to seal over that gas door and "fix" the plate box in the pan? What tail lights are you planning on?
looks like it was carved out of a bar of "SOAP"! someone must off had stock in possibley the "DIAL SOAP CO."! slag kustom are you saying that is something that would be ok to come out of a professional shop? must have paid the guy in food stamps looking at the so called fixed/finished product.
Yikes!!! Bet you're wishing you'd have gave the car the "magnet test" before purchase. You may have passed or got the price down to cover some of the body work labor you're in for. It's not just the bondo thickness, but the fact that it went on over rust holes in the body. Now you're commited to stripping it down to bare metal to make it right. It'd be nice to be able to do an MRI on the body! I'm concerned about the cheezy brake line fix; better take a good look at all the suspension (grade 8 fasteners???) and the electrical (uncovered splices, no bushings where harnesses pass through sheet metal panels,etc).
Yep, and beyond the fit issue it didnt seem to crack and looked somewhat straight after 20 years! Good luck with the rest of it. If you can its fun to get a broom and pan and brush the filler shavings up and into a garbage can. This way when ur done you see how much filler you took out!
20 yrs. and it looked pretty straight? Not the best fit but I have seen worse. Seems like it turned ok for the guy who did it. Very few poeple wanna pay for a true factory fit at the seams.
Maybe this is the same guy that built up my F100. Instead of bondo in the cab corner i found electrical tape over a half dollar hole that was painted over
If you can find a trunk lid from a 36 Ford sedan, the little one on the bustle back, it will fit the shape perfect. I did it back in the day on a 40 Mercury before sheet metal became so valuable. Also check the shape from the sheet metal on a Volkswagen, as they are round in every direction.
Do what??? so you're saying maybe because the owner didn't have the money it's ok for the shop to do crap like that? I think that's about as sorry as i've ever heard, if the guy didn't have the money, send the car home with the owner and don't work on it! Gotta have some integrity in all you do, even on the cheap jobs when you're not making any money!
I would rather have rust holes than that much Bondo. At least you know what you have. Shops that do this are down right shameful.
It's never okay to do work like that..You either do it the right way or don't do it...Most body shop guys I know WILL NOT do bondo like that...if they do it at all...One of them won't use body filler on metal, just the high grade epoxy primer...Builds it up and blocks it smoother than a babies ass..If your gonna patch holes, use metal...That may not have fallen out or cracked, because it hadn't been driven...the body didn't flex because it wasn't driven enough...Do it to a car that's driven everyday or even every weekend...see what it looks like after 20years..
I've found similar situations after putting a sander to a car. Sometimes I say to myself "maybe I should stop now before I get sick to my stomach, patch it back up with bondo, and act like I never saw it." Then reality kicks in and I realize I must save it before it gets worse. On a friend's '65 Mustang in high school, we started stripping it for paint, on the rear quarters, we went through about 2" of bondo before wire mesh, big rocks and smashed up coke cans started dropping out. There was no rear quarter!
First, IMHO it is NEVER ok to use this much bondo. Bondo is a smoothing agent not a forming product. If you want to make a custom roll pan then form the metal and weld it in. Its the cheepie way out to use bondo. When people see the kind of shortcuts that were taken on this car it give legitimate shops a bad name. Thats whay I am doing the car top to bottom. I dont trust anything. I have already stripped the interior out so I can see there is no cancer. I have also had it on my lift and gone over the inside of the fenders, the frame, floor pans etc. No real rust. I may have a few surprises yet, but not anticipating anything major. Fortunatly I dont have a lot of money in the car. I got it in a trade 5 years ago this month. I found the electrical and brake problem right away and fixed those and have driven the car until this past Feb when I decided I wanted to redo it. By the end of today I will have all the bondo out and will post the pic Thanks for all the input. Keep it coming
Oh yeah Sean. They be gonzo. As wierd as this might sound I have been thinking about frenching in 52 Buick tail lights. OK guys. Give me your thoughts. Good, bad, ????
we all got horror stories on bondo....heck dive into my past posts and what I'm dealing with right now on my build threads.... I'l say that I wish I had yours to start with instead of mine....you got it good brother...
if it didnt crack after 20 years then it must have been done right..... common sense... " if it aint broke dont fixit"" why waste time grinding shit down when you could have been cruzn....
From the original pics it looks like it had a color change from blue to what it is now. Maybe its been worked on since the original restore and the owner didn't mention it, or didn't want to.
I bought a 42 from a shop that was said to be solid. Body looks great and great floors. The mastercyclinder gave out a week after owning it (real slick) and the ignition was complete messed up. Best, every time you'd honk the horn you'd get a jolt. Really hope under my paint it's not a putty mess. I going to crawl under it right now.
I know the feeling. I have a door that was fixed with bondo. I found it because he put the filler over rust and the holes showed up. Some of the rust holes were filled with silicone caulk before the filler was applied.
I'm not very shocked about the bondo, it's crap work but maybe that's what he paid for. And it *did* look pretty decent for 20 years, not every car has to be perfectly metal finished. After weldingup a ton of holes in my firewall, I can see why someone wouldn't want to pay the $$$ it'd cost to have all teh cancer cut out. The rear looked fine with the bondo. Well, except for that license plate recess I wonder how much bondo is in Cadzilla?!? The ol' bondo over duct tape method of fixing rust holes was common practice in production bodyshops 20 years ago, and I suspect it still is in lots of shops. You get what you pay for, and hopefully he didn't pay more than that job was worth.
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