Art & Inspiration Filler , pop rivets , window screen and other acts of shoe makery!

I’ve owned a bunch of nice cars over the years . I’ve also owned dozens and dozens and dozens of what we call up here “ winter beaters “. A car that’s basic need is to make it through November to March , so the “ good car” can stay safe and sound in the garage .
These cars where anywhere from free to $800 bucks , all got 1 week end of “ love”
Fluids , parts , tires etc what ever it need to be relatively safe and reliable for those few months .

used tires , scrap yard parts , white box cheapest parts i could find . Sheet metal and pop rivet floors , bondo ,mono foam , window screen , rubberized rocker guard and tremclad paint to make the car “ respectable “ while I used and abused it over those winter months .

some cars died and early death , some made it all winter to get flipped for a profit to some one who needed a car that simply needed to “ bridge a gap” to their next good car .


Anyways got me thinking about classic rides that ba k in the day where cobbled , Jerry rigged , magyvered , butchered together and kept on the road a bit longer or parked etc

but these types of repairs saved the car from an untimely death and lent it to a second lease on life .

would like to hear some stories .

 

Sometimes, you have to use quality material to, to keep a cheap rig in working order !
Every ones results may vary !

​

 

Just uncovered this nincompoopery yesterday.
Metal sandwich with rusty cheese hole.
Slap some bondo , well there was a bunch,
Then throw the door off to line up the fender, then raise up the fender for door gap, then cock the bumper way off so it meets the raised fender. At least that’s what I reversed thru

@)

I hear ramen noodles and super glue is the new hot ticket

 

Worked in a “rod shop” when I was 18.
Helped a customer get a 38 Chevy ready to sell.
Duck tape and card board repair panels slathered with bondo. Then painted with John Deer yellow.
My first “resto” when I was 15-16 was peel and stick aluminum repair panels, lacquer putty and rattle can primer.
Followed by Wastern synthetic enamel.
I’ve stuffed paper in rust holes and skimmed with kitty hair, used screen wire and recycled bondo shavings.
I eventually learned how do sheet metal work.

 

I've seen lead over steel wool in rust holes. Pre dates Bondo over aluminum tape.

 

I found that the outer covering of water heaters made great raw material for patch panels, and durable too. Fastened with sheet metal screws to hold it in place, then replaced with pop rivets, covered with body filler, filed, sanded, the body not to be painted, was taped with newspaper and the repair usually painted black, as that matched with anything. Often covered with rubberized undercoat or gravel guard if it was near the bottoms of the car, sometimes that would you allow to skip the painting step. I soon figured out flat surfaces were harder than contours. I wish we had saved that one drivetrain from a car my brother steered onto a pole, for one of my model A projects. Those were the days.

 

Well to make you happy it involves a Dodge. In 1974 i drove the Great Lakes Route . Did al four lakes in a 1964 Dodge that was rusted to shit but could really haul ass. Started in Sault-Ste-Marie and actually finished there as well.

 

Ok so what goes around comes around. On my ‘35 Ford pickup project I bought when I was a kid, the cab lower rear bead was fixed by me with copper screen and bondo. It then sat in the barn for 40 plus years. Resurrecting the project, I had to go and remove my artwork and cut in a new patch panel. Damn, it looked pretty good from the outside.

 

Alas, the poor shoe maker.

My wife and I were discussing this very topic only a few days ago. Wondering what manner of poor workmanship could possibly have warranted a whole craft being associated with less than stellar work.

Soles that wore out too quickly? Stitching that fell apart after only a few rainstorms? Tongues that were too long and would chafe as they wagged?

It had to be something so egregious to cause shoe makers the world over to reply when asked their profession, “uh, garbage man, or, night soil man”. Anything but “shoe maker”.

Could it be that many years ago an apprentice left alone, put the heels on the front?

 

Hey, that's how I supplemented my income starting out as a young flipper of fine 50 footer automobiles. I was well connected, for a guy in his mid teens. Had a good friend who worked at the local boneyard and another that had the keys to the plastic filler factory. Every weekend a newly rejuvenated junker was rolled out and sold and another rolled in. Got really good at wielding a big ass disc grinder, churning out clouds of filler dust. Screwed, riveted, hammered, filled to the maximum of gravitational limitations, using whatever means that was low but mostly no-cost. Primer was cheap and well accepted as a good look for the crowd I ran with.
We could buy great cars that already had plates on them for $50. Insurance wasn't required and there was an endless pool of willing buyers. It was easy money an I sure didn't give a rats ass what anyone in years to come thought of the workmanship. Sold as is. Acceptable today? No, but still brings a smile to my face when looking back.

 

I remember those poor man repairs. I would take the high class route and cut a tin can to basically fit the area to be repaired. Then fiberglass it in place. Sand it and finish it with Bondo. Not too thick, as anything over 1/2" would crack and fall out. But if they magnet checked the repair area, the tin can would allow the patch to pass as real metal. Now days, Ramaan noodles works great as filler according to some of the kids at work.

 

Great stuff spray foam provides R factor too

 

Around the Cleveland steel mills they were called "mill cars". Beaters that were driven to the mills where the furnace fallout was so toxic and corrosive that cars self destructed in three years.
I once got a call from my future father-in-law who was stuck at the mill because his car would not start. I jumped on my motorcycle and went to see what I could do. I found the air filter element in his '64 Ford was so plugged up with that stuff that no air could get through. Removed the filter element. The car drove fine and he made it home.

 

That's funny! I recently used Great Stuff foam to solve an oil canning condition on my Model A deck lid. Yep, guess I'm still a hack at heart.

 

I guess I was a genius using galvanized sheet metal ducting and blind rivets. Very little bondo.

 

...til you tried to paint it...

 

Same thing in the Detroit area around the Ford Rouge Plant and steel mills of the downriver area. The fallout was so bad it pitted the paint and eventually turned a rust color. People used to wash cars with ot oxalic acid just to get them back looking good from 50 feet. No amount of waxing, rinsing everyday could prevent it. I worked with a guy who ran a carpool with an old station wagon so guys didn’t have park their cars at work. He kept the wagon (mill car) at a gas station and never took it to his home. Even the glass eventually got pitted.

 

I used to do the "winter beater" thing when I lived near Buffalo, NY. For the winter of 1976-77 I bought a 1969 Ford Galaxie 500 XL which had less than 50,000 miles on it. It also had no floors under the nice carpeting. I paid $50 for the car. The trunk floor fell out in the road when I first drove it home, so I lashed the spare tire to the back seat (which I believe had never been sat on). I beat on that car all winter, just being careful not to step on the soggy carpet. I sold the car in the spring for $100.

 

In the early '80s, one winter beater of mine was a '65 Tempest hardtop that I bought for $150.00. 326/3 speed on the column originally, but it had the world's cheapest floor shifter by the time I got it that constantly hung up between first and second; A Hurst Syncro Loc I had lying around fixed that. The only place that it was really perforated was both lower quarter panels behind the wheels, so I mixed up some USC Long 'n Strong to fill them in, followed by roughing out the shape with a 36 grit disc on an electric grinder, and some lighter filler over that. The car was white, and the enamel that my cousin and I sprayed over the repair blended in better than expected. I sold the car in the spring for $400.00, and saw it still on the road four years later...the quick driveway repair job on the quaters hadn't bubbled at all! Today, that car in the same condition would bring $6,000-$7,000. I bought a totally rusted out '65 Lemans hardtop for $25.00 and transferred the complete black bucket seat interior into it. I usually didn't put that much effort into a winter vehicle, but I've always liked Pontiacs. On the other end of the scale was the '67 Buick Electra 225 four door that I purchased for $20.00...an oil change, new spark plugs and one $5.00 u joint readied that one for a fun winter of plowing into snow banks, as well as intentionally running into my friend's '73 Toronado once in a while. That one got sold to a kid for $175.00 in the spring to take to college. I told him that he wouldn't have to lose any sleep over it getting run into in the municipal parking lot.

 

This reminds me of the woman who asked me if I could rebuild the carburetor on her Caprice. It was running like the choke was closed, and when I removed the air cleaner lid, it straightened out immediately. The air filter looked like it had been soaked in oil and then rolled across a freshly mowed lawn,.

 

Sometime in the mid-60s I bought a '59 Lincoln Premiere cheap, from the back row of a rustbelt used car lot....... "to tide me over 'til I could save up to get something nice". It wasn't all that rusty but it was an ugly pink/coral color. There were a couple of small "rust-throughs" that I didn't want to "sand-n-fill" so I squirted some Ziebart on the inside and glued a patch over the holes. As I recollect, it had about a thousand CID and a 2-barrel the size of a double-hole outhouse. It never saw a gas station that it didn't want to visit.

 

I remember being in high school and wanted to fill in some trim holes on my car. I didn’t know how to weld and there was a ton of them. So I went to the auto parts store, bought a can of bondo.

Got home, saw my dad had some old screen door screen laying around. I cut some pieces of that to use as backing. Filled the holes with bondo.

Nowadays, I would just weld and metal finish them. But I still have the car and the holes are still filled. They probably shouldn’t sell bondo to teenagers.

 

Don't the survivors of such repairs, as well as later clones, gravitate to the big classic car consignment warehouses, you know, the ones where all the cars just don't seem quite right?

Chris

 

Not winter beaters since it was in Florida, but some less than quality work.
Way back in the 80’s my dear Mother called and asked if I could come look at a used Plymouth Duster she had found on a used car lot in Jacksonville. When I met her there she said the car looked so good that she had put a deposit on it. Afraid someone would buy it out from under her! What?!? Bless her heart!
It was a rebuilt wreck with shiny paint. The sides were so wavy you would get seasick looking down them. The closer you got to the bottom edge of the body, the more sanding and grinding marks you could see in the filler.
I opened the trunk lid and noticed that it was warped, and didn’t fit the opening. The kicker was the hole that the dealer had punched in the spare tire well to let the water drain out.
I had to threaten the salesman with some bodily injury if he didn’t refund the poor woman’s hard earned down payment! It’s my Momma, you SOB!

Another time one of the girls at work came in from lunch all giddy over the great used Firebird she had just bought. We all went outside to check it out. Immediately you could see something wasn’t right with the roof. Too distorted, and had what looked like a shadow line under the pretty blue paint.
I asked her if I could look inside the back, and noticed that the carpet wasn’t down flat.
I lifted the carpet and there was a fresh mig weld bead all the way across the floor to the other door.
The POS had been back halved!! WTF!?!? She started crying and yelling that she had signed the loan papers.
Luckily the state had a law about not declaring a salvage or wreck job and she got her money back. Sorry used car dealers in Florida!

 

I remember walking around the car corral at Carlisle in the '80s on a warm, sunny day and smelling all of the new Dupont Centari paint jobs baking in the sun.

 

Winter beaters in Minnesota. Never cared about how they looked so the filling of holes that leaked in the cold and exhaust gasses was as simple as tin and screws. Gather up garage sale blankets and old floormats and roll on. Cut the battery tray sides so a way bigger battery with the highest CCA would be bungie corded to the inner fender.
Once or twice a winter beater became the summer driver.

 

The lower 48 ( except 'The Lake Areas' ) aren't quite as bad as 'The real' North America.
The three winters I spent hauling from Windsor to Quebec taught me that.
But winter survival did call for some extreme corner cutting.
With no real budget to fix up a project Nomad, lack of choke control became a nuisance by the end of October.
One morning I took the dental floss wirh me, tied an end to the choke plate, shaft ear.
Ran it thru the fire wall. Looped the end and placed it on the tunnel.
BTW no insulation or matting etc. rustoleum and metal.
All fixed up so I could get to work and fix other peoples cars, ugh.
The spare tire well was rotted out for the first 18 inches so I cut some plywood for a floor.
Buuut no tailpipes required the upper gate ( rear glasss ) remain open, or I would get stupid-*R *
Admittedly main expense was the elbow bending I had developed
In later times ( no shop or garage ) my daily (o t) needed fresh oil.
Too frigid cold, too windy, too humid to use a jack, or lie on the ground.
I slid the little drain pan beneath the filter twisted it a turn loose.
Sat on the seat cranked the motor. When it fired, counted to 5 and shut it down.
The drain pan had a sufficient amount of oil. So I hand-tightened the filter, tight.
Dumped in fresh.... and good to go.
Yes I was an Animal.

 

Around 1982 I bought a 76 Plymouth Valarie off the back row at a local used lot. The total price was $500 (for the car, the tune up & the tires), so you know it was a prize. The old body didn't look too bad, which was very unusual for those cars. It was late Oct, and I had just started a job about 40 miles from home. The car had a great heater, and actually ran pretty well (after I gave it a tune up). I also riveted a piece of metal over the big hole in the driver side floor. I bought a set of 4 Goodyear Vector tires off the tire rack that were nearly new, they were black wall tires and the person that bought the car they were on wanted whitewall tires, I don't remember how much they cost me, but they were really cheap. The car drove pretty nice too. V8 & auto trans.

We had a bunch of snow that winter, and that car was great in the snow, way better then I expected. I thought it must have been those tires were really good in snow. I drove that car for two years before the miles caught up with it. There were a couple guys I knew that was looking for a body to use on the local dirt track, and they offered me $200 for the Plymouth, which I happily sold them. A few weeks later I stopped by their shop to check on the progress of the new race car. They just had to show me both rear quarter panels, both were solid cement! The bottom of the quarters had rotted off (not unusual for those cars), but someone somehow supported the bottom area, and filled both quarters up even with the trunk floor with cement. After it cured, the smoothed it out with body filler and painted it. That cement was about 2' long, 8" wide, and about 8" deep, on each side. Now I understood why is drove so well in the snow! All that time I thought it must have been the tires, but then I knew. The tires may have helped, but probably not as much as 100lbs of cement behind each wheel. I've seen some cobbled up stuff in my day, but that was the first time I'd seen cement rear quarter panels.

I never looked because I didn't care. I needed a beater with a heater, and that one filled the bill really well for 2 full winters.

Most of the cobble jobs I've done on winter beaters was to close up holes that left cold air into the cars or trucks. Before I learned to weld, I did a lot of sheet metal riveting. Any "finish" work was brush on oil base red oxide primer. I bought a gallon of it much earlier and discovered that if the can lid was tight, and you turned the can upside down for storage, it lasted for years. Buy a cheap brush, open the can lid, stir it up, brush it on, seal the lid, flip it upside down, until the next time.

 

My late granddad was a mechanic, and self-taught bodyman and painter in western MN. His first rebuilder was back in the 1930's, a roll-over, he and his hired man worked on when his garage was slow. He told me how Grandma helped him take the headliner out. With the seats out, he used a bumper jack and a length of 4x4 to push the roof out as far as he could. Plastic filler was a new invention, they called 'body putty' back then, so what wasn't pushed out was filled in. Fenders were had from a wrecking yard, then he painted the car.

A local yokal bought it, then a couple years later pulled up to the garage, honked the horn. Grampa came out..."Hey Verne! My roof needs re-shingling!" All that putty had curled up like dried mud!

 

I leaned against a C pillar on a friend's beater once, and it made a cracking sound, so we poked it and went through the paint to....Bread! Someone had stuffed a hard piece of bread in the rust hole, shaved it down, then got busy with the bondo. I remember using "make-a-panel" when we were young and would flip beaters for some extra loot. That was where you bridged a gap (could be up to 4 or 5 inches) with masking tape, then on went the bondo. Holes in the floor were usually a pop-riveted opened up oil or soup can, with plenty of silicon to stop the carpet getting wet! Those cans were handy to fix holes in the exhaust, too.