This week I started work on my '55 to get it ready for winter (yep, I'm gonna drive it in the winter, I have no choice ). The car underwent a kind of amateur partial restoration in the 80's, apparently, and "amateur" is an understatement. First thing I did was pull out the carpet and seats. Not too surprising, but I got pretty pissed because all but 3 of the 8 bolts that hold on the front seat broke off. Wasn't too bad under there, there were REALLY lousy floor repairs at the front corners (just screwed-on sheetmetal) but the back wasn't too bad. The rockers are where I found all the bondo. AGHHH. Everyone here knows that Bondo is just for filling really shallow imperfections and maybe little pinholes, right? This***** was on 1/4" thick in places...looks like whoever did the "bodywork" used aluminum foil as a backing, then slathered the bondo over. AGH! In where the right front quarter panel meets the door frame I was able to just bash most of it out with screwdriver, but I'm still going to have to wire-brush through TONS of Bondo elsewhere. This isn't a cosmetic restoration right now, I just need to get all the rust welded up, painted, and rust-proofed before winter so it doesn't get worse. But since Bondo over big rusty holes just makes it worse faster, I have a lot of grinding to do...blah
Improperly used bondo is a******. On my '64 Elky, both quarter panels had up to 1/2" thick bondo on it, most of it not even fully dried. On one side, they'd welded in a patch that was full of holes, and behind both wheels were cloth rags and scotch brite. Then on my '64 Cutlass, there was a lot of nasty,*****pily done fiberglass and bondo on top of it. Why can't every bodyman be a good one???
Why can't every bodyman be a good one??? Cuz too many so called "production" body men are not metalworkers. Quick and dirty and get the money is the rule of the game. Bondo slop overs have been around as long as that stuff. Ive also seen it over masking tape and hardware cloth. Thats why you go over a car with a magnet BEFORE you buy it.
I bought a vw bug to turn over ( bought for $300). It looked good, but the entire front 1/4 right in front of the door was completly bondo and chicken wire. Believe it or not it looked perfect on the outside, and the paint was probably at least 10 years old or more, but as I dug out the mud, it was well over an INCH thick in many places. I was shocked. The chicken wire was in two places in that inch, so I guess they built it up in layers, letting each layer dry. A lot of work, I probably had it easier redoing in metal than they did in bondo. Of course, I did a quicky job, so I slathered quite a bit on, but there was metal behind it!
[ QUOTE ] Burn that***** out with a torch. Just be careful. (That last bit was for****us) [/ QUOTE ] Hmm...will that really work? Would it work with a propane torch too? If so, I might do that. There's a pretty good coat on the underside of the rockers and I'm not worried about hurting any of the paint under there. About the VW bondo thing...ha! I wonder why they did that, they could have at least gotten a beat-up old fender from a junkyard and covered THAT with bondo.
Yes, a torch. Propane works fine. You dont need to set it on fire, just heat it up, and scrape it out.
I worked for one of those: "I'll paint any car for $59.95" places in the early seventies. Just out of high school. My main job was tapeing and masking. After the cars were painted, I detailed them before pick up. I lasted about a month. My first day at work, it was kind of slow so I went down to the lower garage to help out in the body shop. The place was a pig sty, so first thing I did was grapped a push broom and started to sweep. The premier body man stopped me cold when I when I started to sweep up a pile of fresh bondo spagetti that he had just cheese grated off. He graps up a couple of heaping handfuls of the spagetti and begins filling a 4" rusted out hole in a quarter panel. No*****! All he did was knock the loose rust out with a hammer and started craming the spagetti in. When the hole was plugged he mixed up another batch of bondo and smoothed it over the now filled hole. The guy could scupture, I'll give him that. The baked enamel would help hold the bondo in for a little while and in most cases until the 30 days warrenty was up. I've often wondered how many people had a chunk of the that***** fall out after slamming the door.
Anyone tryed a Crud thud to remove mud? its a cool guy over price snap-on tool i have been eyeballing.
Its great stuff! I got this 64 Ford from a Dealer in CA. He said it had no body work in it, Its super clean. So I had it shipped here to Florida. For $3,500 At first I was mad as hell But after I thought about it, he did not lie. That sure ain't body work. Jdee
I looked at that Crud Thug or whatever they call it too...looks like a great tool, but it costs $450 or something
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