worst body work found on a car you bought

I saw a 39 Chevy coupe that had the trunk pan and floor made from flooring cement. They must have poured it in there and used a trowel to level it. My body guy an old time metal knocker used so little bondo in my car I was surprised. We put a whole freaking side in the car too.

 

66 Malibu I bought as a parts car. RR quarter was damaged and somebody welded a used quarter from another chevelle right over the top of the existing quarter panel. The car was an inch wider on that side. Nothing lined up. I sold it to a body man who made that thing look good. too bad for whoever bought that car.

 

I didn't buy it but a number of years ago I saw a Mercedes 300 Gullwing that had burned. Exposed where the bondo had burned loose was window screen.

 

i recently found out that theres a half inch of bondo over the whole driverside rear door on my falcon but at least they did a good job putting it on.

 

Back in 76 I painted a vett for a 53 vicky 265 3 speed diamond tuck red/white. a shop kid dents the drivers rocker panel, while changing the tires. I **** you not , inside we find a pair of worn out converse tennis shoes..

 

really pisses me off to see these posts and what some so called bodymen do. more often than not its the owners who want to make a quick buck prettying up their pig and flipping it for profit. real bodywork is time consuming and expensive and these cheap mutha's don't want spend the money. I know some local so called hot rod and custom shops that carve some of their cars out bondo, even worked for one shop. don't make it right. with all the bad press about these bondo buckets, no wonder every time i quote a price for quality work these cheap *****s almost have a heart attack, they say so and so shop can do it for less. well to those i say, then bring it to so and so and have a nice day, five gallons of bondo is cheaper than five days of metal work. WTF. you want a quality body and paint service then you gotta pay up its that simple.
sorry for the rant

 

not my truck, but a customers. I got this 52 Ford in , the guy wanted the front fenders swapped out for gl*** ones. So at first glance you could tell theres a considerable amount of filler in it, front fenders on those trucks were two piece. Some one filled the seam with bondo. As i was removing the fenders a chunk roughly 3x6 and about 1/2inch thick fell off in my hand. Then i noticed the truck once had a visor, and they just filled the mounting holes with bondo. Same with the lower box sides and part of the hood. To make matters worse someone cobbed on a Nova subframe. The front driver side was 1/2" back than the p***enger, AND offset over an inch on the driverside. They cut the coils,which caused the wheels to tilt out at the tops. i have no clue how they got this truck to track right.

I feel bad for the guy, he payed 10k for the truck on ebay, flew out and drove it home. He isnt a car guy, just someone who wants to be able to take a ride in an old rig once and a while.

Thing is i dont know if the PO did a **** job to make a quick buck , or that was the best they could do....

 

In a 65 Mustang we found a piece of pegboard as a backer for bondo..... must have run out of window screen! gotta take a pic of the quarter panel it's a cl***ic!

 

Had the F-100, let Sonny Mac work on it. Fu*ked me good. His nose job was a Pepsi can sodered on the inside and filled with bondo on the outside. Over the windshild was filled with fibergl*** cloth(wadded up) and bondo. If you ever hear from Sonny Mac or get an offer from hin --RUN AS FAST AND FAR AS YOU CAN! He is a con artist. Don't order anything from him and DO NOT give him money up front.

 

Had a couple of good ones.

A 73 Mustang that had the quarter were rough. Took the grinder to it and found out the the bondo was back up with tar paper.

A 56 Ford pickup were the cab corners were rough. Looked like someone just painted over the bondo with out smoothing it out. Hit it with the grinder and the disc exploded hitting me in the chest and the car in the next bay. Here they used concrete to repair the cab corner.

a 51 ford pickup were they used expansion foam in the cab corner and cover it with bondo.

 

56 ford car rocker panels stuffed full of newspaper and covered with about 1 in. of bondo , I here thats pretty common. It's the first area I check before buying a vehical.

 

The "custom" work on my Dodge when I bought it. Yes, those are trailer tail lights.


After

 

Damn, the "after" turned out great !

 

When I hear about these "found" repairs I think: why didn't you crawl under and around the car before you bought it? Sometimes you can't see all the "repairs" but most of the time they are pretty obvious! Especially the floors, fenders and trunk areas. The 'hacks' don't usually cover their tracks in the areas that aren't visible when you are standing outside the car. That said, I have also found some undisclosed "repairs" on some cars I've bought...

 

Why??? Because one should have pride in one's work. This will be great practice for many aspects of bodywork.

Always avoid the temptation of shoddy work.

Cosmo

 

I tend to believe that the 'repairs' WERE noticed before the purchase in many cases. This is what's known as a 'bargaining chip'. I use it to lower the price. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna make fun of the 'repair', though.

Cosmo

 

I am amazed at what the "successful" creative use of filler can achieve. I got this piece of work from a fender. One weighed twice the other one until I started pulling chunks like this apart. The entire concave body relief was "added" to a flat panel...







HAve FUn

 

I just found this yesterday while stripping my '59 El Camino. I suspected it was there though, as the other side was similar. They never even rivited the inside, just bent the sheet under and figured it would stay. Loads of bondo and fibergl*** covering it all up too......

 

my car was coated in layers of galvanized tin and tar then bondo!!!! to bad i lost the pics

 

i couldnt help but to post on this one ....i traded a sick freshly painted c-10 for a 1951 chevy styline i wanted it more than anything well i was sanding it out to paint it and fix a few things not only did it have the tar bondo cement for a full lower quarter held on with roofing flashing but the doors had vinyl siding in them vinyl siding!!! i ended up fabbing a quarter and selling the car with 2 good quarters and vinyl siding for lower doors !

 

After
[/QUOTE]

Yes, those tail lights DO make your **** look big.

Fortunately I like big ****s, I cannot lie...

 

Eastwood used to sell a tool , comprising of a magnet on a spring in a plastic tube, the spring had a pointer attatched that you could view through a window in the tube, thus the stronger the pull required the less paint, bondo,whatever was present, these were quite accurate and fairly low cost. I had a quick look at the Eastwood and Frost websites but couldn't find one perhaps they are no longer made?

 

This is a more expensive version of the tool I was attempting to describe in the poat above.

 

When we acid tanked my ’53 Chevy pickup body to strip it to bare metal, we found that the floorboard on the driver’s side had a piece of a refrigerator welded in as a patch. See in the photo the white panel that Mark LeDuc is holding. The other photo is the hole where the piece of refrigerator was removed.

I don't know whether that's bad bodywork though. Maybe a little Alabama ingenuity.

 

I forgot about the car O/T I bought many years ago, footwell looked a bit ropey underneath , but fresh metal on the inside, when I removed the patch panel from the inside of the car I found another underneath on top of the factory floor , a previous owner admitted to me years later that he had done this to strenghthen the car??????????????????

 

I bought a 77 GMC crew cab from an uncle many years ago. The panels below the second row of windows right above the rockers were both gone to rust. My uncle being in construction cut them out and put in soffett vents that he had in the bed of his truck. Just put them on with self tapping sheet metal screws. They actually looked pretty good for awhile.

Lundy

 

Great thread, two weeks ago I got into a jeep that had the diamond plate "band-aid", and under that,screen and duragl*** as a side panel, down both sides, Only problem, a jeep body has to be tide to the floor! This is what I got into.... first had to straighten the F'd up floor that had been pounded out of shape due to the lack of support, fabed up a few sides, tide back to floor... I believe this to be well over the 70th western New York Jeep I have done... Sold it, and the customer wanted it Orange....Cheers

 

As a professional body tech,we call the guys who do the work posted above,BUTCHERS! They give us all a bad name..

 

At the shop I worked for a few years back we were doing a run of 58 to 64 porsches. guy brought his in because it had solvent pop. got out the da and ended up with the grinder every panel was frankenstein brazed together and then covered with a minimum of 1/2 inch of mud at the shallowest spot. I was told to grind it all off and fill it again... Well I dont work there anymore.

 

Bought a 56 Chevy a few years ago to flip .Got a deal on it ,because everyone that looked at it was affraid of the paint "bubbling" accept me.Here is how someone fixed the rocker with Kitty hair ,fibergl*** ,and lots of bondo .Both rockers were done this way ,as were the lower parts of the doors ,but they left off the fibergl*** on the doors and just stuffed a qaurt or so of bondo through the holes till they hit something solid.It was a ball the size of an orange in the door.I welded in new rockers and new sheet metal patches in the doors .Nothing wrong with using body filler ,so long as its done right as a skim coat.Never okay to use it directly over weld seams (thats what all metal is for) or for rust outs IMO ...