What’s the worst amount of body damage/bondo you discovered after you bought the car??

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Brooks James

Brooks James

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I finally found a 72 Duster in 2001 that was rust (a roller) free except for pinholes in the floorboard. I was excited about the price and subsequently didn’t note ce that the body lines on the rear quarter were non existent. I took it home and started grinding it down to bare metal starting at the front and working my way back. The complete quarters were filled with bondo AND they had stuffed newspapers in to fill the holes before putting the bondo!!
I didn’t tell anyone about it for a while as I was completely embarrassed about it but now me and my car buddies laugh about it all the time. I’d like to hear some of your stories about what happened to you. Don’t be embarrassed anyone who says they haven’t made a mistake is a damn liar. Doesn’t have to be about the body. For example when i built my first slant 6 i buttoned it up and turned the crank to see how many ft lbs it took to turn a complete revolution- halfway thru it locked. I had left a can of permeated gasket sealer in there. So I fixed that and get it running and took it out for a test drive and the oil pressure was great from for 5 minutes and it slowly sunk down to nothing and I returned to the shop with a bearing knock. I had not bothered to check what the Maltese cross on the number pad meant. The crank was 10thousandths under from the factory. LMAO
 
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I had a 63 Savoy 2 door sedan about 1994. I loved that thing. Slant six auto. It had bondo in both quarters about 3" thick from collisions. They didn't bother pulling any of it out, they just filled it in and sculpted it. LOL
 
I owned a car with a lot bondo but I had a Plymouth Trailduster that I redid some years back. I sandblasted the roof and it was rusted through above the drip rail across the windshield and above the front doors. I ended up spraying the inside of roof with spray foam insulation to fill in the gap and then adding a skim coat of fiberglass to finish it up. I then painted the roof with a textured paint and it looked great.
 
When I was younger I bought a car in the rain and knew better. For weeks I had been passing a 1975 red Firebird, white interior with added the shaker hood scoop for sale backed into a driveway. I wanted it and went to look at it while it was raining. I know not to look at a car in the rain but I bought it on the spot. I drove it a few weeks and brought it to a garage for a new exhaust system. That's when the mechanic told me the car almost fell off the lift because the sub frames were completely gone. Closer inspection and the quarters were all Bondo as were the bottom of the doors etc. Lesson learned.
 
My old '67 Barracuda. Car was hit in the right front and laid the cowl vertical back 45 degrees. Just mud, no attempt to fix it. I fixed it. Right quarter was hit, then a "body man" hammered it until it was badly stretched. Then mud, a lot of mud. Then the quarter didn't match the decent door so they mudded the door, then the door didn't match the fender, yup, MORE MUD. I am a hack at body work, but I had a friend help me to shrink the quarter to something manageable.

The car was never near perfect, but was fun to drive with the 383/727 swapped in from my old '69 Polara. Even hooked up the AC, but never finished sealing it.

First pic is what it looked like when we started tearing it apart. Then the done car. No pics of the damage that I have come across.


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Our GTS convertible wasn't too bad except for the deck lid. They had been rear ended by a motorcycle. Trunk had Bondo that was poorly applied and was loose behind the finish panel with rust behind it. Fortunately a local Mopar wrecking yard had a very nice GTS deck lid with a nicer panel that I got for $50...Hard to tell in this pic, but it's to the left of the letters.
GTS Lil Cuda 1983 01.jpg
 
My 57 Ford Fairlane had the left fender sculpted in bondo to mimic the factory stamping (sort of a raised half round with a scallop in it) It was painted in primer when I got it and I knew it looked a little 'soft'. Sold it completely primered with all the trim taken off and holes plugged and sanded clean. Handed the guy the trim and he was stoked as I sold it in the "auto trader" and it was mostly pictures back then. My Mazda truck has rust holes through the single wall bed and its obviously bondod. I have raised portions of paint on that beast too, full of rust!
 
In high school a friend of mine bought a 69 396 Chevelle. Started working on it and found out entire rear deck panel was aluminum tape and about 1 inch thick bondo. Plus a lot more all over the car. Traded that off for a 69 Z28.
 
Bought a 70 Duster in 1999 /6 3 speed one owner, I’m the second. A cream puff but maybe 250,000 miles. Drove it a couple years till I saw a bubble behind the back tire pass side. So I’ll fix it, the more I ground the worse it got. Seems the lady had side swiped something in the first year, got the bottom of front fender, door, and quarter panel around rear wheel. Front fender had about 1/2 gallon of bondo. Quarter had over a gallon but very little bumping out. Ended up getting a whole quarter off another Duster, door and front fender. Now it’s a full cage race car with a 340
 
Can't tell you how much bondo was on my '69 Dart when I first bought it.
I'm in SoCal and my Dart was in Oregon when I bought it from pictures on eBay only. I lucked out because the car was almost completely rust free when it was delivered. But a check inside the trunk found evidence that something put a fairly sizeable dent in the passenger side rear quarter just above and ahead of the rear tire. The outside of the car looked perfect.
After having the entire car media blasted, the passenger side rear quarter looked like a fat lady's dimpled butt full of cellulite.
The first paint shop I took the car to put a new skin on but messed up the placement and screwed up the body lines around the tail light.
The second paint shop...never mind, that was a disaster.
Finally, the shop that finished the paint/body fixed all of the issues and the body lines (and there're a bunch of them on '67-'69 Darts) are perfect!
 
I used to use Bondo brand filler awhile back but have switched to Rage Gold.
Funny thing....
Years ago, when you pulled the white plastic lid from the 1 gallon can of Bondo, along with the catalyst, they would sometimes slip in a piece of paper for some corporate offer or promotion. One time they had a man modeling a red windbreaker jacket with B O N D O on the back. It was FREE to the customers that bought TEN gallons of BONDO and sent in proof of purchase receipts.
That cracked me up....Imagine the guy wearing that at a car show. That dude's car must be LOADED with that stuff!
 
Wow, crazy how this thread came up. Im actually doing body work on my dart. I noticed the passenger side was hit before from being able to see the damage through the trunk. But i didnt find out how bad it really was, until the quarter body lines started to disappear as i was sanding lol. Now i got to recreate them and man its a *****!!!:mad:
 
In the late 80's, I bought a '63 Dodge 330. Slant six, automatic, 4 door. Plain jane bottom feeder B body. Bought it cheap and it had a bit of typical rust around the headlights, but really didn't look all that bad. It was cheap... I bought it to use as a general driver, mostly back and forth to work. It was just rusty enough not to do anything else with but drive it.

All was good until I got it home... I had two small boys, so seat belts for the car seats were needed and just a good idea anyway... I pulled the back seat and all was good and then pulled up the rubber floor mat... Yea, rubber floor mat. The floor had looked pretty good from underneath, with the exception of a hole about 6" square under the driver's feet. With the mat out... The floor was paper thin everywhere and no way was there going to be good anchors for front belts without major work. I could just envision the front seat falling through the floor once a couple adults sat on it.

I ended up running some steel bracing across where front belts bolted and then got out the fiberglass cloth and resin and 'glassed in the entire floor of the car with 2 layers. A friend gave me a carpet from a '72 Satellite that fit well enough to cover it up and I drove that car for several years after that.

Funny story... I was standing in the driveway watching my son walk up and as he walked past the Dodge, one of the torsion bars snapped. The car lurched over and dropped, and he jumped. He looked at me and said "I didn't do it!".
 
I recently procured a 58 plymouth wagon that had sat for 30+ years and was covered in moss. I noticed the passenger side fender was poorly repaired but when I power washed it, I got to see the true genius of the sculptor that had made the repair.....

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Now you know why makeup is a dream come true for women!
 
Bought a 69 Cougar. Unibody was gone, and Bondo covered the rust . More Bondo then metal.... It could have gone thru a metal detector and not set it off!!!!!
 
A friend was going to buy a 68 or 69 383 cuda 4sp vert...it was in ruff shape,you could see the bottoms of the doors and both quarters were heavy with bondo.The crown jewel was under the hood...there were no bolts holding the fenders and there was just one seamless flow from the top of the inner fender up and over to make the fender and inner fender one nice piece...everywhere you looked you could see someone covered the bad spots with bondo
But that car ran strong...power shifted smooth as glass.
 
Back in the 70's I worked in a few body shops that did a lot of used car dealer repairs and was nothing to have a half rusted car or mostly trucks that we would be told to aluminum tape over the rust and bondo them up so they looked good on the car lot.
After doing a few I felt bad for seeing the general public taken advantage of and and started welding in sheet metal and eventually got good at it but took lots of time and didn't get paid for my extra effort. Amazing things I've seen done in body shops back in the old days and glad things are better today.
This is the worse I found in my car but saw it when I bought it and was able to fix it right.
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Well the best I could do for an old retired guy anyway. Was amazing the door is the original door off the car the vin. # matches the car and was the original paint no bondo.
 
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