Technical UPDATED AGAIN! Bondo on New Brookville Body?

Hope to talk to Brookville today... in the meantime, here's a phone pic of the front half of my RPU build which is driving this discussion.

 

Blake, that right there is sweet!

 

I wonder if guys whom have a 'roadster p/u' from Brookville and the car is finished and in paint have that much "bondo" under nice paint? It would suck to have the paint crack and find out.

 

Wow, I`d be getting a real bad itch to get that on the road too. This is going to be good.

 

Now where the hell is Larry? Patiently waiting to hear what Brookville has to say.

 

Well, the verdict is in!

I talked to Dale at Brookville today. Per Dale, he talked to Rick... and Rick's stance is that this is the way they built these bodies back in 2007, and he confirmed that the pics of my body that I sent to them (the same ones I posted here) do not suggest to him that my body was any worse than any other body that left Brookville at that time.

He also felt it was necessary to point out that they shipped 'lots and lots' of bodies this way and 'no one has ever complained'.

When I asked specifically about the deep bondo sculpted into a body line at the bottom corners, Dale simply explained that the bondo is necessary because the metal there is really 'sunk in'... so the bondo is obviously necessary to make it look worth a damn. See? Simple.

Basically, that was it. At the end of this 2-min conversation, I summarized all of the above back to Dale to make sure I understood it correctly, and Dale agreed that I did... and that was it.

Now we know.

 

Thanks for the final answer Blake!

 

Wow! That is both surprising and disappointing at the same time. I really hoped they would have taken better care of you. Not offering you a truckload of freebies, but at least offering to work something out with you. After all, if you would have found that back in 07, I'm sure you would've had the same reaction, and called them on it. But them excusing their excessive use of bondo by telling you that is the only way they could make it look worth a damn is just bad business.

 

Wow not the answer I expected. I am disappointed too.

 

Pay extra for a metal body and ended up with that. Sounds like my luck

 

So much for "body of steel" as their moto goes. I would be very disappointed if I bought a Brookville and found that much filler.

 

I fully expected that to be the outcome. Let's face it, 8 years is a hell of a long time and if they took care of this one it would open the floodgates for others to want the same concessions.

Every manufacturer has a learning curve and I am sure Brookville has learned a lot over the past decade. If you look at some of the early fiberglass bodies vs the ones now being built, they do not compare in any way. The BV body Dan bought was super nice, and a lot of guys on here have had similar good experiences with them. We are playing with old cars here, and reworking stuff is what we all do, just part of the game.

I also think it unfair to chastise Brookville for not doing what some of us think they should have done. I don't know many manufacturers who would do something after that many years. Hell, we had a TCI built racing transmission crap out when their own torque convertor broke apart, and it was only about 6 months old. They said "Sorry, we cover them for 90 days only." We had to get Summit involved and we ate $125 each way shipping, plus the cost of a new torque convertor, and all Summit kicked in was $75 to help with shipping costs..

All manufacturers have to draw the line somewhere.

Don

 

Being that no one has seen filler on a BV body like that before (at least in this thread), I wonder what their response would have been in '08 if found then?

Surely with this thread title and as many that have seen it on the HAMB, you would think someone would "know a friend of a friend"...etc...that has seen something like this before from the same time era?

I'm not speaking of debating years passed, whether BV has an obligation, whether Blake should get some compensation, etc., I just find it odd that no one else has knowledge of so much filler being used back then, yet BV says "normal".

 

I agree with Don and Ryan.

 

Wow ! I don't feel so bad about having filler on my old ford know that I know it comes with new bodies !That sucks

 

So, what's the plan now? Leave the bondo (apparently not that big of a deal, not many folks are yelling about it before this), work the metal, or ????????????????????????????

 

The only thing that bothers me a little is .. It was well known you were not to paint directly over the red oxide primer they used to ship with for protection , back when....

so I guess I still don't understand the bondo thing cause technically it would be stripped anyway like the red primer?

 

the problem caused here is not the filler, we know filler on a solid body done right will out last the paint job.
the problem was the lack of disclosure in their ad.
those statements made at the end, or the "fine print"
"some settling may occur during shipping"
"people that are pregnant, or want to be pregnant, should avoid these pickups"
"you may experience gas with an oily discharge"
"body was assembled on equipment that also processes nuts"
"filler may be used to smooth out defects in manufacturing"

 

Thanks, fellas. Since Dale told me what likely lies under that bondo, I have no intention of stripping it all out and re-doing it. It does need to be cleaned up a bit, so that'll be my focus... make it nice, then get moving again on paint. I'm ready to get this bad bitch on the road.

I will offer my opinion of all this, however. While I agree that it is unfair to demand redress if you suddenly realize that the body you bought eight years ago is not as nice as the bodies they build today, I don't think that was ever the issue here. The issue here, as I see it, was always whether or not it is acceptable for someone selling 'brand new, all-steel' bodies to deliver a body with this much bondo on it... especially when they admit that the bondo is there to hide really lousy metal fitment. My gut suggested to me that it was not acceptable. My gut said to me that surely others would agree that instead of using bondo to hide lousy metal fitment, Brookville should have delayed delivery of these bodies until they worked out the defects, and that shipping them with defects buried in bondo was borderline deceptive. Apaprently, my gut was wrong... so I'll just move forward from here.

Thanks again for tagging along!

 

That was actually the original issue I raised. Brookville assembled these bodies... bondo'd over the defects... sprayed them in red primer... and then the buyer gets to sand all that stuff off and deal with the bondo again. Lord help anyone who media blasted the primer off their bodies! It just didn't make sense to me that this would be Brookville's standard operating procedure... but I guess I was wrong (?).

 

What's done is done. Now all you can do is move forward and get your long awaited hot rod on the road. Your chassis looks great. Good luck.

 

I bought my 28-9 roadster body about 4 years ago and it will take a good bit of filler to make it straight . Bill

 

If that was mine I'd sell the body and find another even if I had to take a substantial loss. Every time you go out to the garage it will be in the back of your mind and you will never be completely happy with the car. Go out and smash something with a hammer, it wont help but you will feel a whole lot better.

 

Being a amateur hack myself I have to ask would it have been better if it was lead? Fillers have come a long way since the Bondo years,hell there are car company's gluing Aluminum frames together rather than welding. Lead was abused back in the day,how many traditional cars on the road can claim all perfect metal. There are some on this Forum that can accomplish it but I don,t think its the norm!! These are cars to be driven not works of art to hang on the wall. Before you chew me a new one remember I,m a hack!! I would smooth it out with filler and enjoy the road!! Pete

 

Hard to say if Brookville misrepresented their product then, 8 years is a long time to find out you didn't buy what you thought you bought, if you bought todays product from them, well yeah you'd have a major point. All of us have bought something which won't get tested or used for several years, depending on the speed of your build, myself, I bought wheels, one is out of round on the inside lip, chased the balance problem for years, it has driven me nuts. This year, after really being fed up with running cheap tires cause that's all I could afford, got good shit and discovered my balance problem wasn't. What to do? Get on with it, put on your big boy pants and move on, it happens, I'm impressed with how you've handled it Blake, lessons for all of us. Nice car bud, get her on the road, fix the body later when there's nothing left to build and it's got a few miles on it.

 

I had thought they might offer a discount on a new body, if you wanted to sell the current body and purchase a new, better formed body. I have to agree with Don, they didn't want to set a precedence that could get real bad for them, although this is going to hurt their reputation slightly, it isn't going to ruin them. Time to move on, complete your build and enjoy it the best you can.

 

How many people will read this thread and decide that is enough to not even consider buying a product from them?