Had a discussion with the guy from the body shop where my Merc is being prepared for paint. Doors, rear quarter panels, fenders, hood, actually the entire car is being filled with bondo. Body is straight. I know imperfections on 60 year old metal are unsaveable but which is the limit for bondo ? Of course this things were still not sanded. What do you think ? Take a look at the pics.
Id say nothing more than a 1/8 of an inch and 90 percent of it should be sanded off! its hard to say with the picks!
Most cars get a full coating and then sanded smooth until perfect, but like said above 1/8" thick or else they need to straighten the metal a little more.
i wish it was that EASY...guess you have never worked a big ass 50's or 60's car that everyone and their brothers have ALREADY worked on.......
wow...you are that good you can do perfect metalwork with no need for filler ever...my new hero! For us common folks it really helps straighten little waves in big panels.
I hate the stuff. Little if none in my book. At the very most there should only be a skim coat and the tons of block sanding. You should sand at least 90% -95% off before paint. The key is great metal finishing!! But... I'm no welder or bodyman. So I'm having to use it for now.
man,,you guys that dont use filler should post up your bare metal work just like the Cole built '36,,,
We metal finish as far as practical.. Then the entire car will get a skim coat. Block sand then block some more.. 90-95% of it falls back on the floor.. Mainly for perfect door gap alignment and such......3-4 foot long block so it is smoooooth... Then primer and block some more.... Metal finishing is great but impractical for most applications.. Jason.
I saw a 67 Mustang once that was metal finished. This was done by a panel beater about 30 years ago. He only had $30,000 in the metal finished body. Could have got the same effect for about $1000 if he had used bondo. Or you could spray 10 coats of high build primer, that's not bondo, right hahahahahha. Nothing wrong with bondo applied right and blocked out. Pat.
i am one of jasons bodyman thats been working for Bear Metal Kustoms for almost 10 months now. we go through a lot of filler, and then we dump a lot of filler dust into the trash can. there is being practical and then theres way too much. when you cover a panel completly, its easy to leave too much still on. basically, the ideal amount of mud is no more than 1/8 thick. in collision, its 1/4. we get cars that have 1"thick of mud. now thats too much. basically if you can tap the panel and it sounds like metal still, then your good. i know it can look like a lot when the panel is completely covered, but it actually makes it to where the panel is straight. almost all cars from the factory didnt come perfectly straight. so when you see one that is, know that there was a lot of block sanding invovled. whether it was old paint, primer, or filler, its all being used as a filler. a lot of guys that metal finish stuff will use a polyester filler to fill the imperfections that can be sprayed up to an 1/16".
ugh.................. was all of that bondo already on that car before they started on it? it's hard to tell from the pics, but i'm trying to figure out why there's so many patches of old paint/primer peeking though in the high spots. or are they low spots?
When I was in high school a couple of classmates put seven gallons in the roof of a rollover mid 60s LeMans...looked OK from 300 yards on a cloudy day.
cool so now all i need to do is go drop about 1300$ on a decent tig setup and i'll never ever have to use filler again, never mind the fact that even with a tig you still have to worry about warpage, panel placement, highs and lows etc... but i guess thats what the file is for
looking at those pics.. that looks like quite a few aplacations of filler, did the shop try and straighten the metal first? or just coat the metal with bondo an sand away, coat, sand? was the body in REALLY rough shape to begin with? could you post some before pics... that looks like alot of bondo, but if it's really thin when their done you'll be o.k.
It seems to me that skimming the whole panel and blocking the the shit out of of it would be less time consuming than applying a little plastic filler and finding out it's not enough and having to re-apply it, over and over. How many panel beating hours on that Cole Foster 36 Ford?
Stem to stern under 1/8th inch. I have cars on the road i did 20 years ago using this as a guide. No cracks, looking great....
i wasnt being 100% serious(i havnt touched a 50's car), but there is a guy down the road from me who chopped, sectioned and channeled a 50 merc, patched thebottom,made doors and its in bare metal, all done with a old heli arc and a vixen file.....absolutly flawless, and its getting gloss black.........im learning from him currntly, hope to be 1/8 as good as he is..... i didnt meen to upset some of you, hell my tig welder is 15+ years old........cheap big and works fine...
I used to manage a porsche shop. there was a guy there by the name of Chris Thompson. he could metal finish anything. He used a mig welder, vixen file, small body hammer, and a bullseye pick. i mean he could metal finish ANYTHING!!! i saw him do a 911 that had slid down the pacific coast highway on its side. 2 coats of high build and we painted it black. He was AMAZING!!!!
As you can probably tell, the question should probably be "How much bondo is too much?" There's plenty of opinions, but the basic answer to your question generally seems to be - .as little as necessary.
I couldn't possibly disagree any more on the use of filler over the whole car. It's not the best answer. Profitable? Sometimes but not always. All the sins that can happen while blocking become permanent in the finish. While many here like the rough, suede, rat, rust, lumpy look to go on their rides, some of us (me) prefer a straight perfect panel finish. Metal finishing isn't always easy or profitable for a shop. So does that make it right to skin the whole car? Not for me. My guys like to do that shit. Blocking filler is a filthy nasty time consuming job. It's mostly false economy. But it can give you nice thick door edges, paint chips that are a real mutha to repair when they happen (and they do!), and a complete "sponge" coat to suck up all the solvents in your primer and paint. Now go ahead tell me what an asshole I am for the above views, but only after you've really thought about what I posted. You seasoned pros know EXACTLY what I mean, that is if you can see it. More often than not most can't.
Yes, the metal was straighten and patched, there were imperfections all over but not that rough. The imperfections you would expect from a 60 year old car body. Its not paint underneath, thats red oxide which we believed it was better to sand and work over instead of pealing the whole thing again. Here some before pics.There was no bondo under the red oxide, just metal Thanks guys
theres no right answer to this debate. it all depends on your skill level. fillers are practical for us mere mortals. some of us can't afford $10,000 to $20,000 paint and body work. in a perfect world ,metal finish. in the real world ,plastic. stay around 1/8" or so, as long as the metal is prepped right you won't have any problems.
Bondo gets a bad rap! The early products made in the '50s-'60s were prone to problems, but that has been over for a long time. More of the failures have been due to people not using it the way it is intended. The recent products are very good. I would bet that 50% of the cars you pass on the road have some, but you will never know it! Today I guarantee all of my work as long as they own it. Does that tell you anything. I haven't had a failure in at least 30 years.
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