worst body work found on a car you bought

lets see the worst bodywork ever found on a car that you have bought... why did they do this?????

 

Well, usually it is because of a lack of skill. You see, I want to learn how to lead because of 2 reasons.
1) I heard some where that it is a dying skill, I would like to keep it alive.
2)Because bondo is the devil's workshop.
But really bondo can and usually does more bad than good. I read in a motorbooks workshop book that bondo is porous and can soak up water in the drying stage. Not good. Lead work is a nice touch but few people know how to do it and when YOU want to build your ride, why pay some guy to clean up your welds and bodywork?

Second reason for the over use of bondo and/or shitty repairs is profit/lack of patience. It takes time to hammer and dolly a panel only to have to planish it too. Instead of taking the time to do it right, people like to take the time to do it quick, cheap, and easy. Why? Laziness, and most of all, lack of skill.

 

Anything with pop rivets....there should be a background check and a waiting period for pop rivet guns. They have thier uses and that's a good thing, but not in body panel repair.

 

Probably a 55 Chevy I bought that was freshly painted. It looked great & damn straight. After 2-3 years- bubbles began forming in a few spots. So since I had the paint code from PO- I decided to tackle the bubbles w/ a roloc disc. Wound up stripping entire car to bare metal. Car had been sideswiped headlight to tail light on pass side- metal torn in several spots & the holes were stuffed w/ steel wool & the rest was bondo. I'm talking gallons of the shit! It was over an inch thick in many spots.

 

(Hanging head in shame) Picked up a 87 camero from bank repo. Good shape, cheap, quick repaint I figured, flip it for a buck. NOT a camero fan but hey, others are. It was a REAL shiny silver. Going black with it. Started to sand it down, noticed large areas on door and quarter that seemed to stay wet? drying in the sun, bondo popped out along with newspaper! They had filled the deep dents with newspaper and bondo'd over it! How they got it to stick in the first place is beyond me! Hence the REAL shiny. IT was HEAVY cleared to glue the whole mess together. I had gotten under the clear wet sanding and it soaked into the paper and popped. Fixed it, painted it, sold it. Funny end to the story.... The car survived 4 days after purchase. Kid parked it in a driveway, buddy in big four wheel drive truck went on a beer run, came back, did not see camero, and parked front tire on top of it. True story, can't make crap like that up man.

 

All of it. Big rust holes filled with a combination of a tar like and bondo like stuff. Interesting how some of it looks like the rough concrete surface it was laying on when I took the pic. Things like dents half assed pulled out with a slide hammer, then filled, and fender lips "formed" out of filler.

 

A magnet has turned into my best friend when buying cars to build. Does anybody know another way to inspect for this kind of thing without removing the paint?

 

well, the last beetle i had didn't have much body damage, but what it did have was just filled with no attempt to fix the dents. when i found all of the bondo (some of which was inches thick) and got it all out, i had most of the dents pretty straight in about five minutes. the car i've got now, 64 galaxie 500, po had the bright idea of filling holes and splits in the body with bondo, and in some places just caulk. not only is it definitely not structurally sound, it also just continued to rust. over all the car isn't bad, i need to perfect my welding a little more before i tackle it, but it's still in pretty good shape. i need to replace the panel between the trunk and the back windshield, most (but not all) of the roofline needs to be cut out and patched, but beyond that there are only two holes in the pans, one in a rear wheel well, the trim holes i need to fill in. some minor dents, some major dents. the funny part though is someone filled dents in the aluminum trim. i can see doing it to the painted parts of the body to try to make it look good(although if it was me i would have just left them until i figured out how to pound on dents instead of filling them with bondo), but the trim? it's not ever going to match. it doesn't look anything like the shined up aluminum (or in some cases stainless). just funny. i spent about an hour getting a headlight ring straight enough to put all three screws through it, it had about an inch of bondo on it too.

 

I bought a 64 Buick LeSabre in the 70s for 50 bucks. I started to chip away at some body filler and discovered fiberglass house insulation stuffed in a rust hole!

 

My 57 I knew had a bad quarter and was going to re-replace it. Started in on grinding out old bondo to get the botched quarter off. Bondo was over 1 inch thick in a few areas and the bronze was all over underneath it. I'd always been told bondo and bronze don't mix. I guess they do if you use a ton of both.

Seen a few body shops take spray foam insulation and blow it into a rusted out wheelwell, then cut it off close to the body and smoosh it in a bit with hammer then bondo over it. Looks great for 6-7 months or so, then rust comes back with a vengance and the whole "patch" falls out.

A friend "smoothed" in his fenders to the body by cutting the heads of 16 penny nails and laying them in the gap and welding them solid and bondoing the crap out of the area to smooth them in....

Hate to say it but I also worked at a body shop that filled holes in cars with a mix of bondo and steel wool on a few cars for used car lots that bought junkers, we shined them up and sent them down the road. (moral of the story, always take your magnet and REALLY check out a shiny nice used car)

Hang around a bit you'll see a ton of crappy work and always scratch your head wondering why

 

It doesn't work for most guys but since I have mostly built GM AD series pickups I look for future projects that still have original paint on them.

The biggest mess I ever ran into personally was a 72 Chevelle that i bought and put an engine in for my wife to drive. That one had the passenger side door built out of bondo that was over an inch thick in some places. It had been smashed in to the crash beam and was built up with bondo from there.
My wife slammed the door not long after I brought it home and the whole chunk fell out on the ground.
The bad part is that at that time you could (and I did) buy a different door for less than the cost of the Bondo to half ass fix it.

 

This is what I found on the driver's side door of my Model A. Some kind of strange weld repair with about a half an inch of fiberglass putty to "blend" it in.

 

a trained eye is best in my opinion, but an electronic mil gage is the best. pricy but accurate.
you will find that bondo can be piled on quite thick,l and a magnet will still stick just fine. i have seen magnets at the paint store that supposedly wont stick when the stuff like an eight inch but not sure id go by that only

generally though, when somebody starts out with poor workman ship, they finish off with poor workman ship, so you can spot it.

another general rule is that about 90% of the work that has been done , has been done incorectly.

i take before and during photos on my projects, that way if you are ever inclined to sell, you can show what , and how repairs were perfromed


skull

 

I have witnessed a couple of cars getting what I called the pinata treatment.
The "body man" took shredded paper and made a home made paste similar to how you would make a pinata for a kids party. He filled in the deeper areas with card board then the pinata filler went on over top to create the shape. Once that dried the bondo was layered on. Of course he claimed to be one of the best body guys in his town back home.
note to self: learn how to do all your own body work!

 

My '56 Chev had been a street rod locally for many years. I was the 5th or 6th owner. When I decided to sell it I took it to a classic car sales lot and put it on consignment. There were some pretty rough railroad tracks to cross to get into his lot and one bump caused a piece of bondo almost an inch thick to drop out from under the rear quarter panel behind the wheel well. The lot owner was unfazed. He mixed a batch of two part epoxy and slapped the piece back into its original location. I wonder how long that "fix" stayed in place.

 

I don't understand what the previous owner was doing with this "modification," maybe trying to put in another door? Anyhow, we fixed it with a panel from a touring car.

 

Nice!

 

this is mine, i posted this on nads thread on bondo, but its all fixed now it just had bondo over the crack. it was side swiped when it was parked in front of bobby green bar. i didnt own the car when it got hit, i had it fixed right after i bought it!

 

Not to be a pecker wort but this has become a trend to show monkey chunks falling off the side of a recently acquired mess, if it was pretty it would cost more, when I walk through the park and see a dog turd laying there I say to myself theres a turd, we all know what a turd looks like, yes? Now what I want to know is the turd cleaning procedure, cause sooner or later when you walk through the park you're gonna step in a turd, so in the future can we post a picture of a turd and what you did to metal work that turd out of existence, finally, if you dont show me how that turd disappeared, I would say it may be safe to assume that a new turd may be used to mask the old one, turd discovery story = drama, yes? Turd repair story = content, correct?

 

Obvious rusted rocker panel, and rain gutter used as out rocker panel... Nice, classy wor. F-ing Losers... Ughhhh!!!!!!!!

 

I bought an off topic 1974 beetle and the floor was rusted out about 10x10 square and the guy to two peaces of metal and insted of welding them in, he took a sealent and then layed the metal over the hole and rilled it into the rusting out metal AND THEN he put fiberglass over all that on the top and bottom of the floorboard ):

 

when checking out for shabby bodywork a "mil" magnet is your friend. http://www.autobodytoolmart.com/progauge-magnetic-paint-thickness-gauge-p-10805.aspx $60 well spent!

 

i've not been surprised by body work on any cars i have purchased, but have had a few customers surprised when i opened up thier cars. this elcamino was sold as 99 percent rust free. the owner wanted a better quality paint job and wanted it stripped completely. i sodablasted the car and found alot of rust and alot of poor repairs. the quarters had been replaced with some random metal some of it appeared to be either refrigerator or oven sheet metal. since repop inner panels were not available we located a donor car and replaced all panels. didn't find pics of before but for fransisco plumbero here is the repair. i also have a mustang project in the shop now that has about 5 gals. of mud in the quarters. one quarter panel has 1 inch of filler between the tail light and the end of the quarter. nice.

 

OK I'm no body man but after a lot of practice welding here is the final result. Not perfect but much better

 

not mine but a car we worked on was a rolling fiberglass/bondo replica of an 0lds 442. Rockers rusted out....fiberglass used to cover sections. Inside the trunk the quarters were bondo'd to hide the body work from the outside. Driver's side quarter had been hit and door didn't shut well to quarter. turns out instead of doing it right they formed the quarter panel with fiberglass had about 1 inch of fiberglass just to give quarter some resemblence of what it should be. Front fenders patched. we took them off and noticed the bracing was gone but the fender looked good. until we cleaned them and found bondo on both the inside covering the pop rivets and the outside shaped by fiberglass. Car was a mess. Only thing not filled and had stuff hidden on was the driver's door and the hood. even the roof had 1/4 inch of bondo for some reason....only guess is they kept trying to fix something and just kept adding.

Another car we found a metal real estate sign and lots of bondo being used as a patch.

 

Respectable looking job, thanks for posting it, the door panel looks nice, no more turd.

 

No Pic ... but my OT HURST/Olds had bad floors, I knew this when I bought it but didn't realize how bad. They were repaired with large pieces of cardboard with bondo spread over it and painted.

Not to worry, as we speak(er uh ... read/write) body is off the frame and she is getting a complete new floor.

 

If some one tell you that a car is 99% rust free and is advertised . He is telling you the truth . but leaves out THE REST OF THE STORY BEFORE and AFTER. Its the (before) that gets you.

 

well dont have any pics of it but i wished that i did, after i had gotten a tail gate for my truck i decided to take it down to bear metal and was that a head ach about a inch or so of bondo to back the indent out of it where it said chevy

 

Pop rivet guns don't screw up cars, PEOPLE screw up cars.

That said, anyone misusing pop rivets on body repairs. (anything other than temporary) should have said pop rivet gun turned into a suppository.

I'm concentrating on mechanical stuff on my Chevy right now, but as I tear into the body, I'll have some great pictures to show (chicken wire, pop rivets, roof flashing, and bondo by the job lot!)