Why do people feel the need to patch/bondo over rust??? IMO, that's making it worse than if they left it alone. I understand it is somewhat common practice in body shops to just patch over 'cuz the customer doesn't care, but if we're talking old cars/restorations, you need to cut that ****ty rust OUT or it is just going to get worse. Maybe I've been sheltered in the HAMB for too long
Aside from a body shop that cuts corners - and the ones that I know, don't - I think it comes from an overenthusiastic desire to do something to improve the car. Even if they don't know what they're doing. Seems that more than a few cars get purchased and aside from learning there's a helluva lot more work involved than first thought, the new owner/enthusiast wants to do something. Bondo's reasonably cheap and sorta fun to sling. The one I can't understand is when they bondo the car, whether a skim coat or something that looks like it was lifted from a wet and plowed field and then let it dry into a solid ugly m*** on the car. To my knowledge, most bodymen/panel beaters hit the almost cured bondo with a Surform file to get it close to the final shape and block it by hand after it fully cures. The other part I find interesting is seeing bondo blobs on cars running in the rain or simply sitting outside. Cured or not, once bondo gets wet you have new problems....
As a past shop owner,many times customers would say, I just want it done cheap so I can sell it. If you decline the job they go to other shops till they find one who will do it. Many DIY dont have the equipment or knowledge to do a proper repair. With the cost of paint and materials now I find it harder to find people willing to pay for quality repairs
Maybe it's common practice where your from, but not in any body shop I've worked in in the last 30 years.
the mentality is nothing new- there were blobs of filler in the quarters of my A applied right over rust (there were rust bits mixed in with the filler), done in the sixties and left to soak up 40 more years of moisture. Ughh......
Used to be a guy in town that had a one man shop, did a mid sixties chevy truck for a customer, after the guy picked it up and started home something fell out from under the truck. When he stopped and went back he found a bent up license plate that had been used as a backing to fill the large hole that was in one of his cab corners! I did an early 70's chevy truck once for a guy that had the p*** side front marker light filled, someone used a flattened out coke can for the backing on that one!
You open many aftermarket repair manuals, like the ones by Haynes, and there will be a couple of pages of "how to" repair dents and sometimes rust outs, at home. They show knocking out dents to "close" and grinding and filling, filing, sanding and rattle canning. One showed patching a rust out above a Porsche headlight with window screen reinforcing and filler. That's your source of the do-it-yourself door screen rust out repair "acceptibility". Plus, a lot of people don't have access to welding equipment, or the money to get it done on their "work car", but they can sand and push the nozzle on a rattle can and drive their beater just a few more months or years without their spouse complaining about that ugly old wreck. I think some of the current "Rat Rod Revolt" is in reaction ("Rat Rod Reactionaries"?) to the printed media for quite some time even poo-pooing ANY use of "Bondo" and suggesting that only perfect, hugh skilled professional, "Metal Finishing" was acceptible... (with a 1/4" thick layer of catylized high build primer surfacer, "liquid bondo" sprayed on it to actually get it straight?) Cars aren't "Cl***ics" when they start rusting, they are just old cars, (and most shouldn't ever be called cl***ics...) "I'm not saying it's "Alright" to make cardboard and bondo quarter panels, just 'splaining why it happens.
Me and a friend were joking about this the other day. We were working on my '55 Dodge and I had just cut a cardboard template for a replacement piece I had to make in my rocker panel. I had the cardboard fit up nice and he says "now just leave that in there, and I'll go get the kitty hair! It was a joke of course, but people do it all the time, because it's much easier than doing it properly. When a car is 15 years old and it's got one more $800 resale left in it before it's junk, all bets are off. If it's just going to last for another year, you only need bodywork that's gonna last another year. Occasionally, those cars get socked away for 30 years and re-emerge as resto projects, and then that ****ty bodywork needs to be undone. As far as the people who do that to nice old cars, they just don't know any better. I was lucky enough to work in a resto shop in high school and for a couple years afterward, so I know what it takes to do something correctly. If you don't know, you're going to do whatever's easiest.
DrJ, that's my favorite all-time old car comment. That's how I know that people are full of **** or don't know what they're talking about. They say **** like "my car doesn't have any bondo in it anywhere" then I know that this guy has never done bodywork ever. Brand new cars come with bondo on them to fill seams, 50's cars came with lead. No bondo. That's really funny.
I think a lot of the old cars we know and love have ****ty body work in them is because they were not all cherished. a '50 in 1965 was basically the 1990 chevy malibu of the day. Would you spend months fixing one of those properly or would you patch to get by. I grew up in MI and I remeber as a kid my brother would always by a rusted out beater to drive for the winter like most people did. But in the name of still getting laid he would usually spruce it up with bondo and rattle cans. Hell it was a $500 car driven to keep $1000 of rust from forming is his nice summer daily driver. U sure these some guy in sterling height today tryiin to restore on of his old Le mans or firebirds cursing his name right now.
I bought a 74 Ford Pickup it was no beauty but looked solid at a distance I got closer and the rear fenders looked funny. The reason I bought was for the drive line so the body was not real important anyway but due to situation I drove it for a couple of years. The Bondo cracked and fell out in places within six months what did I find underneith?? Black Trash bags backing up rust holes, About every couple of weeks I was cutting the black plastic that was flopping around. The drive line was excellent tho and now lives under my 62 unibody. Dawg
One of my favorites too. The one that gets me it the paint and body shop boss that says (lies) tells they don't use bondo. Either that, or he never visits the prep booth when work is going on. Okay, so they use filler with a different brand name. There ain't no car with a re-paint that don't have filler. So ****in' what? Filler named "Bondo", or "Fiberglas", or (enter your brand here), done right is just as good a thechnique as putting on a complete repro fender made of fibergl***, or better yet, a complete repro car made of fibergl***. ...........Duh. Show me an old car with a fresh, good lookin' paint job, and I'll bet my *** it has filler, in lots' a' places.
I use bondo, and skim filler, etc. But the point is to prep it right. Bang out the dents, CLEAN the metal, then put on the filler to smooth it out. Filling a big dent with an inch of bondo it NOT the right way to do things. I don't have much in the way of body tools, but with a hammer and a 2x4 I can get out the majority of dents. Then usuall a thin build up will work fine. Course I have also seen a guy rebuild a lower quarter with bondo and duct tape to "flip" a car he just got .
The really good body guys put the filler on just right so it only needs a little bit of sanding and it's done.
Ah....bondo......love the smell. I have made my living sanding it for 30 years. It really is the only "practical" way to get an old car straight. Fillers have been much improved in recent years. If panels are prepped properly and the filler thickness kept shallow long lasting results will follow. Bondo over rust......short cuts.......almost always about money(time it takes). Many folks want the "just look good for now" job. Bad for the shops reputation to do that caliber of work but it reflects the quaility later down the road. Car lot jobs.....done as fast and cheap as the guys could whip them out. Bubbles in the bondo after the first good rain. So what was the cheap product before bondo? Not lead......cheap and quick way to fill the holes? I had a 41 chevy pickup back in about 1970 that had concrete cab corners. Yep..someone must have taped the outside and poured concrete in the inside. Talk about a permanent repair. Bondo work is fun and the more you do it the easier it gets. Its my opinion that there is no reason to be ashamed of bondo in your car. Its the quicky jobs that give bondo the bad name. Steve
Back in the seventies when my family was young and engineering paycheques were small, I painted and bodyworked cars on evenings and weekends for cash. My customers were generally 1---kids that bought a good running older car with the body starting to rot bad, 2---men who had bought a cheap second car, for the wife to drive, with good engines, rotten bodies, and 3----farmers, who had a good pickup truck but would by some old land yaught to fit all their kids into for Sunday go to church. (looked bad to pull into church with 19 kids in back of pick-up truck, in rain) They all wanted the same thing---fill the holes, make it smooth, paint it pretty, and don't charge me very much. I used a thousand miles of brazing rod, and a million gallons of "bondo", and every damn one of them people was happy as hell at the deal they got. They all knew that in 3 years the car would need painting again, but hell, as long as it looked good for most of that 3 years, they could afford to buy another one then.
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