Well i was taking off my spoiler, and look what i found!!! My whole quarter panel is bondo, i knew that already but this is really just stupid!! Someone bondo'ed like the whole back of the spoiler and all around it!! Why not just find a new one?!?! They took a piece of sheetmetal and riveted it to the body, and pretty much formed the spoiler from the filler around that. Wow I'm impressed.

and another (sorry i had to reduce the pics a lot to get less than 102kb's)

You got a before picture?

Kevin

awhile back i bought a 70 chevelle...looked clean and went over the 1/4's w/ a magnet....i get it home and start taking it apart/ sanding down the paint and what do i find but massive piieces of sheet metal riveted over rot holes and skimmed over w/ bondo.



id rather buy an untampered with rust bucket and fix it from there...its always a bitch undoing a bondo bucket.

Holy ******* repairs batman!

While it is quite an abuse of body filler.. at the same time, it's somewhat (not alot) impressive that one can Macgyver a part from tin, rivets and filler... was there a ball point pen in there too by any chance ?

nah sorry no before pics it just looked pretty normal, but not aligned right, and on the bottom edge you could tell there was some bondo because they filled in the crack between the body and spoiler, like it was one piece. Then i started unbolting it and it came off in big chunks!!!

no not any pens in there, i did find an old shoe though. It looks like the front part of the spoiler was ok, but he totally made the whole back part. Are these spoilers supposed to be hollow?

only way to repair thirdgens

yeah that sucks! I built a Geo Storm rear quarter panel out of bondo once but that spoiler looks to have had more filler than the whole quarter panel on the Geo I built

heh, i remember back in HS in autoshop, there was this one kid with a black camaro... real POS..

anyhoo, he dented the rear fender just behind the wheel...

i come in one day, and its parked in a bay.. i notice the paint and everything is stripped clean... to bare metal... im thinking, ooh thats cool, hes finally going to fix it..


i come back during lunch and what do i see? what looks like giant piece of chewed bubble gum on his fender. i can SEE that its not even mixed right.. its one big glob about as big around as a basket ball sitting on his rear fender.

yeah i've seen some pretty ******* bondo jobs i say have it done right

Don't forget we are driving "******* corvettes". Its sad to say but i def. see more trashed redneckmobile thirdgens than nice ones.



PS- I have nothing against rednecks. Go Dale Jr.!

I have heard of people using duct tape, and bondo over that, and I have heard of people using coke cans when they were heavier, and then bondo over those...

John

yea... people actually do use wood, chickenwire, ect, to hold somthing out, and then glop bondo over it... not a great way to do anything, heh...

The proper way to do it is to either cut out the bad section and make a part to weld it all back together or to buy a new fender...

John

Yes, i would have to agree. Just buy the new piece. Fenders, and hoods, doors, and spoilers aren't that bad, but what about if some dumb f**K hits you in the parking lot on your rear quarter panel, or you have a big rust spot that appeared becuase you live in a wet forest (or at least a wet place)? Thats an expensive job to do, unless you know how to cut out the piece and weld back on a new one..... Bondo is probably the cheapist thing for most people.... I am not saying i would do it. But alot of people dont have that much money to throw around. And a bondo job done right, for a non show car can still look damn good, so people would not normally notice. Just one mans opinion.


P.S. I am not personally for bondo

Bondo is not a bad thing if used sparingly... SPARINGLY is the key... it should not be the main means for a repair, only the final step before prime and paint... If some of you knew how much body work goes into a "SHow car" and the fact that there is probably only a handful of old cars that have been restored and are now "Show winners" which have no bondo...

Did you know there are NEW cars that come out of the factory with Bondo already in them...

When my dad worked for GM, and something would happen going down the line, and they had to fix it, they would sometimes bump it out, and then use a little filler to smothe it over, and then re-paint it... Those guys on the line are so good it is incredable.

John

a friend of mine bought an old el camino for like $400, the frame was rotted, biggest waste of money i've ever seen. there were quite a few spots of bondo. after removing the bondo, we realized that the old owner patched the holes with newspaper, then covered the newspaper with bondo.

I'm a shady body repair man, a friend had a lumna and at the back door and th wheel well it was all rusted out, he was trading the car in the next day and was worried about the body shop so i nthe middle of the night, i took my aluminum foil and bono out to his car, fixed it, sanded painted, you couldnt tell there was any work done or anything, he ended up not trading the car in, The bondo lasted a year and a 1/2 before he blew the tranny up, Still couldnt tell...i coudlnt believe it lasted that long..

Agreed. The problem is, it's so easy for any idiot to take $5 and buy a big tub of bondo, mix it up with a rusty screwdriver, and slap it on the car with a cake spatula from the kitchen.

That's really why bondo/filler got such a bad reputation! When the only alternative was lead (before bondo), you needed special tools (like a torch and file and etc) to work with it. There were still bad lead jobs, but they weren't such a common occurance as a bad bondo job is now.

Besides, what would you anti-bondo-guys rather pay a body shop for? The hours of shrinking/stretching a panel back to perfectly straight by using a torch and hammer? Or, the hour or two spent by bring the panel <i>close</i> to perfect, and laying a skim coat of filler? I vote for "B"! (That is, unless "C, new panel" isn't an option!)

Eastwood sells a panel replacement kit that uses rivets, but it's pretty well designed: http://www.eastwoodcompany.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=31102

But man, that was a crappy repair, NeedForSpeed. Let us know how you fix it! (And at least you know you can't do any worse than that jerk did!)

I vote for "A" as soon as I win the lottery! Whats the word on using fiberglass and resin to patch holes up? Gotta be better than bondo...

I like fiberglass, I use it for all kinds of things. custom stuff.