I bought a 56 Ford Victoria from Jim's Auto body San Antonio Texas in 2015.If this guy Is an auto body man,then I'm a brain surgeon! There was bondo 2 inches thick on the driver's quarter that I had to resort to using a air hammer with chisel tip to remove it. Oh well hope the rest isn't that bad.Wish me luck I'm retired so time is on my side.
If you have a little propane torch, you can heat up thick body filler and scrape it off, it's probably a bit less destructive than an air chisel and it's cleaner than grinding it all off. Obviously you don't want to get the sheetmetal too hot, but for taking off super thick filler like that, it'd be a good option to know about.
Must have been from Corpus Christi and not Abilene… Was it dented or rust? Good things is panels for 55-56 are becoming available today including floors and trunks. A lot of these 2 year Fords of all models are coming out of storage to be rebuilt. The front crossmember under the radiator will tell you a lot about the car. What color(s) and is it stock appearing?
My bud bought a '57 Chevy car in a container up in Arkansas. When he got it home & started working on it he said it was gonna need a Right Quarter Panel. I looked at it & it had TWO on there already! One atop the original! I asked him "Another one, it's already got Two!"
Almost every car is a surprise, unless it's in bare metal or original paint. I've seen cars with rags stuffed on rusted out holes to stop bondo from just gushing into the holes. Seen chicken wire or screendoor wire backing up holes, all sorts of shady stuff. My '63 Falcon had a bulge in the passenger front fender, and when I went to grind the paint off to get to bare metal it exploded in a cloud of bondo dust! By the time I get to bare metal there was a scratch less than 1/8" deep, and maybe 6" long! I tapped it flat and gave it a thin skim coat. Some amateur tried to fix it, and must have been cross eyed to get the bondo and inch thick!
I knew someone who used a a loaf of bread to fill a bad dent on a quarter panel and then bondoed it over.
I witnessed a neighbor who flipped cars back in the early 70's, cut out the bottom of a coffee can. He then cut up the side and flattened it out, then cut it to the shape of the large rust hole behind the rear wheel. He screwed it on and covered with Bondo. After sanding and more Bondo, he zapped it with some rattle can. As a twelve-year-old kid I was impressed and thought that was the way it was done.
My adopted Uncle was talking about how he and my estranged, deceased father and he were flipping pre war junkers in the late 40s. One Chevy sedan had salt damage on the right rear side panel that they used cement to fill. Ugh..
In the early '70's, that was how it was done, there was very little done in the manner we have grown accustomed to.
If you can heat up the panel from the underside and the Bondo should let go easier. Saves having a blazing mess on the outside.
I remember when I was a kid and watched a guy do similar with some chicken wire. What do you suppose I did at 15? Dad caught it and off it came. He had a friend come over and did it properly. “Oh” I thought. “That’s how you’re supposed to do it”. Hopefully things have been different since the “old days” since the info can be found with a few key strokes.
Maybe the bread was Wonder bread. Still, it would make for a crummy repair and eventually that panel will be toast.
The best body shop's, always use the finest ingredients to make the best body filler! You never have to worry, whats under that killer paint job!
...Not trying to defend the guy, but do you know for sure that he was the culprit or did he just flip the car?
I saw this video a while back and at first I thought “WTF is this guy doing?!?” I was amazed after watching the whole thing as how good it looked but I was still saying “WTF” to myself. Imagine getting hit again in that spot and revealing that mess. What would the other driver think. Car is built like a brick shithouse.
Strange thing is, that my Grandfather ran a body shop doing the real deal in the fifties but had to give it up because of wartime injuries. I got a picture of my Dad standing in a shoebox Ford they'd taken the roof off of because it was rolled and were getting ready to put a new one on. He might have been fifteen or so. Fast forward fifteen years and he was doing body repairs with the latest wonder product: Bondo-glass. It was simply faster to do and cars weren't expected to be kept decade after decade then (mid 70's), so smooth and somewhat shiny worked then. Gramps never could understand why I wanted to restore old cars: he said they were only "new" once...
I’ve seen the following items used as a backer for bondo: Duct tape Chicken wire Pantyhose Rags Expanding foam Cheerios box Toque Aluminum siding Beer cans Rubber gloves but the real talent shows when you make a hot patch. That’s when you mix the bondo with lots of hardner so it gets really hot when it kicks off. Then you spread the bondo on wax paper and just before it starts to harden you slap it over the rust hole. The heat melts the wax and the wax paper slides right off. saw a guy make rocker panels for a full sized van with hot patches.
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