I bought a 49 ford when I was a punk *** 18 year old and have been driving it ever since by just fixing what broke. Well it came chopped with a thousand other body mods and pictures taken the car back to the late sixties as a custom, so who knows who all has done what. So I decided it was time to paint this thing the color I decided on about 2 years ago up till then I was fine with the color it was. now after chiseling out an inch and a half of bondo from the roof I find it at some point had a sunroof that someone then filled in by "welding" a piece of metal in lower than the regular roof line, then hitting it a million times with a hammer and filling in over an inch of bondo. Also for the "rolled" edges around the hood, it was just a round strip of rubber TAPED on with bondo over it! also evidence it was once a very similiar green to the one I am gonna paint it. I will update more as I find more hilarious "custom" touches I need a hug
We were painting a WHITE 63 impala for a customer way back and when we started to strip the car found that all the metal used in the body work prior was that black coated stove pipe used for wood stoves! You never know what "custom touches" you'll find under the surface if you didn't do it yourself. Rod
the best one i have seen so far personally was a mcdonalds ashtray (its been a while since you could smoke there) hammered flat and used to patch a hole in a floorboard. not welded but glued in looked like jb weld.
You do not say how long you have owned the car but the body work must have been pretty good if you did not know about the extent of the filler before you started prepping for the repaint. Goes to show that the use of filler is only limited by the creativity of the one applying it. Kinda like the "duct tape" for the customizer Neal
I once bought a wrecked POS car that sounded great. After I got it towed home, I crawled under it to find out what kind of muffler sounded so good. It was a stock muffler with a big rust hole in the bottom. The previous owner had flattened a Schlitz can, stuck it over the hole, and wrapped the thing in bailing wire! Slonaker
I don't think I'd ever buy an abandoned hot rod project. There's just too much stuff to undo. If I want a '47 Dodge truck cab, I want a stock truck cab to modify, not somebodies half-finished channeled-to-death-over-a-T-bucket-frame death rod project. Give me a field car, a basketcase or an abandoned resto any day.
I've found cardboard cut to fit a rust hole and bondoed over, lots of spray expanding foam, a flattened out coffee can, caulk, screen door screen, licence plate floorboards, cut up road signs, etc. My '54 Desoto had a complete rocker panel made out of a eve trough, I knew a guy with a '66 Chevelle that had rear wheel openings made out of garden hose. I used to patch up exhaust pipe holes in beaters with beer cans cut and attatched with hose clamps. Works OK for a little while. it's all been done.
A good friend bought Westergard's old Fade Away coupe. ( The first car the barris ever worked on when he was working for Westergard). At one time a beautiful car. Him and a now deceised friend put it back original except for the color. Anyway long story short every ******* and their illegitmate cousin had done something to it over the years. When they pulled the tunneled headlights out to put it back to original whoever had done the lights had used stove pipe for the tunnels. There were other attrocities done to it too numerous to mention. but i though the lights were innovative.
as much as people don't like to discover garden hoses, duct tape and all the things that have been used inappropriatley of which I am guilty of , you have to admire the ingenuity sometimes, likely alot of that stuff is some kid learning how to do things on his/her own or folks on a tight budget trying to keep the family rig going, I would be irritated to find something like that if it was "professionaly" done though PS I have never used expanding foam and don't ever figure to either just for the record
This makes me feel good knowing others have it wurst than I do I usully only find 10 lbs of bondo spread over rusty metal
ahhh, the joys of prepping someone else's bodywork for paint.... I remember it like it was yesterday... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60953 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40960
hey, if it worked and looked good, held up ok, i guess thats a plus, i mean, noone WANT to bang ugly chicks, but well....sometimes ya have to...........
Whe I owned a 71 International Scout the floors started rusting away. I did not have a lot of extra cash to buy metal to replace them so I went to the dump and grabbed a couple of dryer tops they fit pretty good and had a great enamel coat on em. I bought a 74 F250 a few years back and the rear fenders was fixed with black trash bags rolled up and bondo smeared over them. the bondo started breaking out and I would go down the road with trash bag flapping in the wind. Dawg
It's funny this thread popped up. I tore out the interior & trunk of the 59 Olds this weekend to track the electrical to the back end, and had to cut through undercoat+ cardboard+expanding foam. No consideration to at least lift the wiring before spraying that ****. I ended up laughing about it later that night. -John
One friend of mine found crumpled up coloring books and duct-tape in the rear-quarters of his Dart, another found a .45 sized bullet hole in the back pillar of his 64' Impala along with a license plate in the rear quarter. And we had a 62' vette' at a shop I worked at with a rectangular chunk of plywood glued in the middle of the hood (under the paint of course). I've used worse. When I was 15 and couldn't make a compound curve for the floor in my beater, I layered heavy-duty tin foil with spray-on rubberized undercoating. Still not sure what held the floor in that car.
Brought my '32 pickup home a few months ago with cracks in the bondo. I ended up finding body lines I didn't even know were there. The truck appears to have been a 70's rod and they smeared that **** everywere. Everything is smooth and rounded. ****s cause the budget and time says it's gonna have to stay that way for now. Oh well, drive 'em and have fun, that's the point I suppose. Mootz
Instead of fixing the rusted out floors in my cutl*** someone just coated the bottom with a 1/4" of undercoating and instead of filling the 1/2 holes from the trim removal with weld there is bondo.
been working on it a little more today and all I have found out was this guy couldnt weld but was one hell of a bondo sculpture. The bumper bolt holes were fillined with solid bondo and the trim holes as well, Also a lot of fibergl*** the deeper you go. Thanks for all the stories they made me feel better about my situation. If I spread that much bondo it would be destroyed in a couple months where this guys lasted at least 4 years. So I guess he is amazing in a weird, ****ty kinda way.
If he was a bondo sculpture and you mistook him for a human being, I'd say that he was indeed one hell of a bondo sculpture. The fact that he was made from plastic filler probably explains his reluctance to pick up a welder, too. Sorry, couldn't resist.
My brother in high School Bought a 74 blazer from a guy that said he just re did the truck, he had it about 2 weeks when he hit a pot hole and a 3''thick X 12'' piece of bondo fell off the rear quarter to reveal the galvanized trash can they used to fill a hole!
I've posted about my Chevy before. Long story short, there's riveted in galvanized tin, cut out pieces of another quarter (4dr used on a 2dr), bondo, lead, replacement rockers with no inner supports, and even part of some kind of sign in the floor - about the only thing that hasn't been used to repair it is wood, I think.
I found the mounts for caddy bullet taillights frenched into the sides of the rear guards of my 38 coupe when the bondo (Called Bog over here on OZ) fell out in a 12"x 10" sheet 4" thick! I once saw a EH Holden (parallel semi eliptical leaf springs) with home made lowering blocks made from some 2x4 blocks of pine wood scarey realy. Doc.
Had a CJ come in to the 4x4 shop I ran for some suspension work. We all thought it was a fibergl*** tub for 2 days, until we noticed the concave JEEP letters on the inside of the cowl...they DID NOT SHOW on the outside! Brett
I was 15. It was my first car. '55 Chevy more-door. Rotted rear floors. Patched 'em with left over heating ductwork and drywall screws. You can do alot of dumb stuff when you're a kid, but it kept the exhaust out of the car, and that was all I was striving for, so I guess I succeeded. Live and learn...
I pulled up the carpet on my car to find a CALDWELL REALTORS realty sign riveted to the floor from the toeboard to the seat. It fits so damn well, I'm thinking of keeping it.
I am all for cheap sources of metal! We used to build skateboard ramps with plywood used to advertise political issuses. Then they changed to corrugated cardboard. but westill would use construction signs instead of plywood under the masonite on the surface.
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