is it me, or do body guys use four times as much bondo as thet did years ago? i ask a few and they said it was easier to do it that way. just cover everything in bondo and make it staight. i think that sucks. how about doing a little metal work!
I personally don't use bondo. I hate that crap. Yeah, it applies easily, dries fast, but the quality is shit. It eventually shrinks, cracks, and falls out over some years time. I use all-metal if I have to smooth something that I can't work out with a hammer & dolly, sanders, files, and what not. Plastic filler is just shit. Just my $0.02.
Well, i work in colissionrepair and i use about four times more bondo then i did ten years ago, but i was an electrician then!
On a side note...a friend of mine has a '54 Bel-Air...after a little inspection, I noticed that from the inside of the wheel wells that both rear quarter panels had been crunched. I put a wirewheel against the outsides and found 3/8" up to 1/2" of bondo on EACH F***ING QUARTER PANEL!!! They even slathered it along the doors and the front fenders to "smooth" it out. What a joke.
NO, my 65 GTO in the early 70's had thick layers of it everywhere, not much straightening involved. If you don't have tools, that is also a factor. I rebuilt fender openingd on a buddy's Camaro around '77 and had pop riveter, aluminum and a bunch of bondo. Not my fault if he didn't sell it soon as it was don as I advised. Turned out beautiful, blue metallic. I have tools and do it right now and rarely have to use much quantity, sometimes big area. Take a hood that's been walked on and beat back out a couple times. Straighten and shrink some, but it's tired, too much working and it starts to fall apart. Sometimes it takes a lot of coverage to make it right and it won't come "perfect"
I'm guessing noone here has ever tried taking the waves out of the side of a 65 Galaxie. I believe in using the minimal amount required with proper metal work, but long wavy panels are pretty much impossible to straighten in the lighter weight metals that started to be used in the '60s. It's not like a '40 ford where you can do a little shrink and the panel will respond. With lighter material, you get more waves. That's wy you do a skim coat and break out the long board, sander that is. Surfing is another topic. Ask the old timers and I bet they tell you the quality of auto finishing overall has come a long way in the last few decades. If a super straight, deep as a swimming pool paint job wasn't hard to get, we wouldn't put them in magazines.
I think it's a factor in keeping the costs down some, but it amazes me to see the big name guys on the car-builder TV shows use so much of it. Then again, when you're killing your guys to get a car out the door in anywhere from 7 to 30 days the less time you spend hammering and the faster it's sanded out the better - if that means plastering the sides with a coat of filler, so be it. On a daily or late model car, most people won't care about bondo in it. I'd rather have some dents and dings in it, myself. Or like the beater I have now, terminal rot. If you hated the sides of that '54, you'd be amazed at the rot repairs on one side of my '50. Lead, bondo, and a second quarter cut off a 4dr, complete with three-inch gap between the two pieces, the top held on with screws. I'm afraid to cut it off and see what's under it.
Putty is your buddy... Theres probably not a rod out there that has little or no bondo , If you want that perfect reflecion that rodders today require it takes bondo to make that happen. Even when you look at pictures of beautiful metalfinished cars , that's just the step before general filler and paint... Sorry to burst yer bubble but the old guys would have used it if they had it. lead has disadvantages too. Theres still plumbers that swear by galvanized threaded pipe, but 99 percent use copper or pex....Same deal.
Could be! I believe it can be attributed to 1. Lack of skill 2. Laziness 3. Speed 4. Ignorance I consider myself to be pretty good at bodywork. But I am still trying to hone my skills to try to do repairs with NO filler. It ain't easy. And if you are building cars for others, most often, you, or they, cannot afford the time it takes to do the job to perfection. Just business! I try to keep my filler down to under 1/8". On almost all my customer's cars, this is good enough, and does not justify doubling, or tripling the hours in the panel to metal finish it. I wouldn't get much work if I did it like that, and charged for it. And, BTW, I have been doing this ofor over 25 years, almost exclusively on old cars...customs, muscle cars, hot rods. As for the rest, I think laziness is the most common. People today want immediate satisfaction. They don't want to wait, sweat, think, or get dirty anymore. Even when they do work, the want ot finish it up as fast as possible. Newbies just don't know. You can look back on threads that advocated fillling door handle, and trim holes without metal work. Ignorance spreads with bad advice like this. As for plastic filler being bad....I don't think you can justify that. My 55 Olds has been done for 24 years, and has much more bondo in it than I would ever put in now...I was in my 20's when I built it. It only has 2 cracks in the filler, at the base of the roof, on top of the quarters, notorious for being a high stress area on a chopped car.
Are you a profesional body man? How do you know this? While there may be some hacks on TV. But across the board, the quality level of the cars being built, and the skill level of the guys building them has never been higher. If you'd like to drop by and show me how to install, align, and straighten the pair of aftermarket quarters on this 64 chev I'm working on, without mud, I'd be more than happy to learn some new tricks. Hell, if you can metal finish this car, I'll erect a shrine to you in my back yard! And, no it's not covered in mud, but I'll be blocking primer til my fingers bleed. Oh, to answer your question, it's you!
Filler if applied right will not crack or fall out. If it is 1/2" thick, it will crack. I have never used all metal but I have heard good things about it. I have used Dyna-hair as well and it is extremely messy and difficult to use.
maybe you don't know how to use it? I put a bunch on my truck 25 years ago...no cracks, no shrinks, etc.
It is always hilarious to hear a person that doesn't do bodywork rag on bondo. First off, this isn't bondo of the 50's. It is a refined product now that is easy to use and lasts. To completely metal finish a car would cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. If you don't use bondo, then you can use filler primers on your metal finishing. Now there you will see some shrinking if you use too many coats. Want a car straight? Bondo the whole panel and use a long board. Anything that isn't required to make it straight will sand off. I am not advocating using it inches deep, but bondo definitely has its place in custom bodywork. I have seen leaded cars fromt he 50's that are a horror story when they are stripped. No metal left under the lead. The metal seems to rust away. You are going to build a car without bondo, and make it straight, good luck. I would like to see that. I hear it all the time, but have never seen it. Another urban myth. Pat.
Did we not read the whole post? I use all-metal instead. I know how to use the cheap plastic shit, but I choose not to. I started stripping panels before I started to repair them. I've seen good old bondo work, and I've also seen shit that was done 6 months ago that's already splitting. If you don't like a certain kind of toilet paper, does that mean that you don't know how to wipe your ass??
My thoughts exactly..... Plastic filler in small quantities is fine. I hope everyone's take-away from this thread is that you need to do enough metal work to keep the thicknes of the mud down as low as possible, and you'll be fine.
You said that bondo is shit. It's not shit, it works great if you use it properly. I have to assume that you don't know how to use it, if it seems like shit to you.
How is All-metal to work with? I haven't used it, but am very interested. In the body shop, we used to use a similar product but it was the shits to work with, sand, etc. You have my curiosity up. Gary
All metal sucks. It's hard as a rock, and brittle. Same for duraglass. In my 30 years doing this, I'd say 95% of the product failures I've seen are due to duraglass, or all metal.
Good point. I think a lot of cracking and other failures are blamed on filler when it's really just too much primer. Filler is stronger than primer. Filler is also stronger than glaze. And if your still using laquer products,then none of this matters anyway.
I'm more than happy to hack on Boyd along with everyone else, but on the show I don't see bondo being applied thick. They may cover most of a panel but it's just a skim coat and once they're done sanding the panel is mostly metal again with hardly any filler left in the low spots.
I think it's like any other "service" you pay for these days...in order for the business owner to reap the most profit, they do the repair the quickest, easiest and cheapest way possible. Quality takes a back seat to volume in most shops and most people driving late model SUVs and such don't know or care what a "good" repair is all about anyway, so the cycle continues. It's one reason that I don't get my truck fixed...I believe there's like FIVE guys in the whole WORLD who could do the repair RIGHT anymore, and I'm only lucky enough to know ONE of them! Anyone else would just glop bondo all over the roof and I'd end up with a shitty looking repair that still leaked like a bitch...and having one of the last few craftsmen actually put (gasp!) a new roof on the truck (and do it RIGHT!!!) would probably cost more than buying a NEW truck! That's what it's come down to today...you got 99.9% of the body guys who are nothing more than bondo slingers working as fast as possible to shove crappy work out the door...and a VERY few guys who can do good work, but are in such demand that nobody can afford them! So, you keep 3M in business buying duct tape and cover your seat when it rains!
I put a lot of hours into the body on my bucket. Cowl was shit, about 70% there, made all patches and gussets. Last summer I coated andsanded it, my girls painted it. Look's good enough for us, and we use it. Next modified will be higher quality metal work done nice with little bondo. If I wanted it perfect I would have had to cut out a bunch of my first work and re-patch it. I still wouldn't be driving it, THAT would suck more than a hillbilly body job. I can get anal with the next one.
Not that I realy advocate heavy usage of the stuff, but: The plastic fillers you buy today are WAAAAYYYY better than they were even 15 years ago.... My dad recently told me the story of a knowledgeable Str**t Rodder that had spent countless hours working the metal on his ride so that any plastic that was on the car was so thin you could see through it. It strarted cracking and flaking off all too soon. He got pissed off, ground out the teaspoon of pink metal, smited the low places a couple times with a ball pein hammer, stuffed them full of fresh filler, repainted, no trouble since (6 or 7 years). Also, not only are body shop owners trying to get it done quickly, the owners of the banged-up vehicles are usually pressing them hard so they can have minimal time finding another way to get to work and back... or the insurance co. is pressing them so they don't have to keep paying for the rental car.
I have to say something. Sometimes I think all of this bondo sucks, only metal finish, only lead is all bullshit posturing by people who know shit about bodywork. Now I am not saying everybody, but come on give it a rest. Lack of skill is not part of the reason people use bondo. I have seen some terrible bondo work, and some really nice work. I cant remember who said it, but bondo does go on all of those pretty metal finished rides you see pictures of. If it did not you could never get them straight enough to paint all pretty and shiny. If applied correctlty body filler can last a long time without cracking or shrinking. When you see assholes in the paint from bondo, thats cause the guy that put it on was an asshole, not cause the bondo sucks. Lead has a lot of problems with it too. Unless your good at it, you'll probably end up putting bondo over your shitty lead work. If not applied just right the lead wont stick and it will peel off, and youll be out more time and money than if you used bondo. I am not saying fill in 3 inch deep dents with bondo, you gotta do it right, but if done right bondo is a killer tool for finishing your car nicely.
Geezzzz....Hack! You don't mind putting everyone in the same bucket do ya!?!? Your're picking on a load of people who don't deserve it. I'm a Dealership Body Tech...and YES, as required by the estimate given, I have applied too much filler to some jobs...but I can still do an exceptable metal finish when given the time...and BTW, full panel replacement doesn't take a metalman. Perhaps it has something to do with the INSURANCE INDUSTRY paying sweet fuck all to anyone who wants to do it right because "Sam's Collision and Chinese Takeout" down the road will do it for half the total price of quality work. How? Because Sam hires off the street, pays shag all and stuffs everything solid with bondo...NEVER asking for replacement panels. The INSURANCE INDUSTRY doesn't care because SAM has to warranty it and they got it done for half price! We ask for new panels and 1/2 of the time lose the job...1/2 of the time get the estimate cut down and ourselves laughed at,(thats where the bondo gets slung...) and 1/4 of the time get the job at OUR estimate level so we can do it like we want. Think those fractions don't work out? Well, thats because you haven't dealt with Insurance companys on a regular basis! Don't you DARE place me (or others you don't know...) at the level of an incompetent...I follow the insurance estimates and do what I have to do to live and I make NO bones about it...but I CAN do the deed properly when Mars and Jupiter align, or the customer INSISTS on quality with his adjuster. Unfortunately the customers usually just do whatever the Adjuster tells them because they're scared shitless that their insurance might go up or whatever... What you said right there BITES man...
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