Strange finds under filler?

Ok.. THAT's funny and disappointing at the same time!

 

on my 63 Impala i found cereal boxes under the carpet covering holes in the floor and expanding foam insulation under plastic body filler in the quarters! HIGH quality body work right there let me tell ya

 

i got one of those shirts, a hamber was selling them years ago. they say "BONDO do it right!"

 

I found tar paper in the rear quarter of a 73 mustang and concrete in the cab corners of a 56 ford pickup. Both made for some interesting times when I hit them with the disc grinder.

 

I was really dreading doing the bodywork on my Merc,now I feel better...with all these great tips,I can have it done by Saturday,maybe Friday

 

My hillbilly buddy kocked out two five gallon pails of cement of the quarters of his 'lowered' 58 Ford rag a while back. No wonder it sat so nice.....

And my old Duster had a sheet of Mactac holding the spare tire in the trunk. Second rustiest car I ever owned....

 

i found about a gallon of bondo on my buddies 74 bronco door when i stripped it.... not one dent or glitch, there was know reason for it to be there!!

 

With all the galvanized sheet metal under the bondo, someone must have worked in HVAC.




After uncovering the rocker, we found the inside still chock full of dirt from one end to the other. Kinda explained why it had started to rust through the galvanized sheet metal.

 

Painted a newly built High dollar Super Stocker. When we took off the p***. side door panel to take off door handles...found two lenths of broom sticks, holding the Window up,inplace, epoxied to the inside bottom of door. $70,000. ride with no way to sweep the shop .They also left a roll of duct tape inside rear bumper.

 

Carpet glued to fibergl*** filler on the whole floor. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time cause the carpet wasn't going anywhere.

 

I found the holes for Caddy bullet tail lights in a set of rear guards. A mate found what was left of a loaf of bread under bog on, of all things, a restored Ferrari!

 

found aluminum siding and a sock holding a 67 impala quarter together, and found some tin foil and bondo on a 31 plymouth I was workin on for a friend.

 

When I took away some old rusted metal from a van sill I found a t-shirt, not my size. On the other sill I discovered a plastic shopping bag.
I also heard a story of a guy who just bought a antique car, supposedly restored years ago by some spe******t from England. When he slammed the door shut a piece of filler fell to the floor, the filler was attached to a 3 week old newspaper...

 

God, these are some scary stories here. Good thing the only cars I ever get are all rusty and unfixed.

 

Chicken wire and pieces of road signs (Yield!) to patch a quarter panel together is one I remember a lot of.

The road signs I've also seen used to patch floorboards. And no wonder----The stupid government just leaves these things posted all over the place!

Nick

 

I've seen wheel openings shaped out of garden hose and then bondo'd into place, I saw an eve trough (rain gutter off of a house) made into a quarter panel also. Lots of expanding foam, fibergl*** and screen, duct tape. A flattened coffee can pop rivited onto a quarter and then mudded over.

The oddest one was a '57 Ford rectractable that I ground the mud out of the quarters. Underneath the mud was a square of cardboard and a perfectly cut out square of sheetmetal missing, where they fit the cardboard in and then mudded it over. As if the cardboard was going to be a template for a sheetmetal patch but they just decided it leave it in there anyway.

Worked at a resto shop for years so you see some wacky stuff. Saw a '65 Impala with a 2x4 slid into the framerails right under the door to keep the two pieces of the frame together. But in his defense, he did bring it in for a frame swap. Drove it there with the 2x4 in place, too.

 

License plates, coke cans some one flattened out, chicken wire. The weirdest one I ever had was a 58 Ford that someone had made the rocker panel patches out of some type of aluminum foil! I think it may have been some kind of exhaust system patches, just shaped over the rot and they skimmed a lil putty over the edges to hide 'em and painted right over 'em.

 

Got me beat I found old gym socks as filler in the lower quarters of a 71 Javlin. Friends from back in Youngstown, OH used to steal Speed Limit signs for floor boards Didn't rust though

 

A friend of mine--that I've lost track of--was fixing up and selling cars at a rate of about 2 per week. We were in high school in the mid-seventies and the hot item for resale was Granadas and Monarchs. Both notorious for rust.
One particular Granada he had, had a beautiful paintjob sprayed but in the trunk, he formed the floor with window screen and gave it a good healthy coat of roofing tar. With carpet on top, it looked absolutely perfect.
He sold it to an unsuspecting single mother who soon found out that the groceries she put in the trunk were now on the ground!
She took him to court and he got a good ***-kicking. He got what he deserved.....had to take the car back and pay the woman damages.

 

In the mid 70's, while working in a bodyshop, saw a fellow bodyman take a couple of bites out of his sandwich then stuff it into the Chevelle dog leg that he was patching. He then packed a couple pounds of bondo into the fender. I recall the Chevelle owner being insistent that the patch be all metal. After seeing this patch job, I had to ask, why the sandwich ? "I didn't like the sandwich and I don't like the guy that owns the Chevelle. "

 

friend came in a year or so and told me he had found someone took one of those yellow rain coats and put it in the corner of the floor in his 55 tbird. said he almost couldn't get it pulled loose.

 

same thing with my pontiac project........bodys really straight ...but i peeled off about 1/4 inch of needless bondo down the whole side.......only thing i found was a few tiny dimples.....hmmm...

 

40 years ago when I was in high school, some guy who was showing off, blasted past the school in a 64 Pontiac. He launched across a set of train tracks down the street, when he came back the left rear quarter panel had seperated from the body. The filler was on inches thick and packed up with old ******* magazines.

 

Bought a 63" Ford Ranchero many years ago; 260 2 barrel with a 2 speed auto-trans,NICE interior with lots of chrome plating-carpet-upholstery,14" Appliance Cragar SS copies with Goodyear Trans Am Radials,lifted all around, painted white, black cover on the bed, nice exhaust. It ran nice, sounded good, and was surprisingly quick.Wife did'nt like it, bought it to replace her falling apart 65' Mustang, "it rode too harsh".Wound up taking the front and rear suspensions, brakes, exhaust,radiator and other parts and swapping them to her Mustang. Found out that the rear coil-wrapped overload shocks were "bolted" into what was left of the subflooring; hardware cloth, bondo,screws, and lots of roofing leak seal compound. It was all loose, and all that was holding it in postion was the upper shock mount points. Whoever had done that should have just used a treated 4X4; at least it would have been solid. I stripped everything off that car I could, used what I could, sold or gave away what I could'nt use, and had a hulk hauler come and get what was left. I'm a Chevy guy and that has been my only and last experience with FoMoCo. Did Falcons come pre-rusted from the factory?