Fixing someone elses bad body work.

[frost0100]

My friend has a classic cougar, but same applies... He has some bad body work on his passangers side that small 4 inch panel under the door. Someone tried to shape it in with bodo, and wasnt even close.

can this be removed? sand it down to shape? cut it out and redo? Now my friend isnt going to be doing any metal work to his car - his skills are limited. Is there an alternative to this? Glass? Re-bondo? Keep in mind IM sure his car is full of bondo at this point - just covered up. This car is a beater at the moment. He's not looking for perfection by any means, just doens want the bottom of his car to bow down towards the ground.. Oh the frame is fine. He checked and it's layers upon layers of bondo..crapola

Thanks for any input.

 

[iskwezm]

if you know what your doing,get a grinder with a 80 frit disc and remove the bondo and start over

 

[bigcat]

hard to tell from the description, but if skills are limited its even harder to say....

 

[frost0100]

I'll see what I can do as far as pics goes.. I'll forward him the info on grinding and starting over.. That is what I thought too.. But I figured I"d check with you guys first - I always get GREAT info from this board.

 

[ashford]

if metal woking skills are lacking, use a fiberglass or kitty hair to do the mass buildup. but i strongly suggest popping the metal out closer to where its supposed to be. generally a 1/4 inch of bondo is too much and cracks more easily

 

[69Rcode_Mach1]

I agree, I do not believe in working with bondo. It is a bandaid that will eventually have to come off, and when it does it leads to even more headache than before.

 

[Silver66FsBk]

read your post and you could remove it with the 80 grid or you could use
a propane torch and it will come off 100 times faster.that's what I did to
remove the bondo from my mustang.

the new body fillers that are available today are 100 times better then the
stuff they used to use back in the day.but make sure you get it from a
body shop supply store and not pep boys.

or if you got money you could try to find someone that still does
metal finishing.

 

[billbanshee]

if the car is a bondo buggy already then then it will be a good place to start learning body work cause you dont have to worry about screwing it up

 

[Exracer]

If there is a significant buildup of filler, the only correct thing to do is remove it and get better shaping of the metalwork under the area. I teach autobody and invariably the proper thing to do is remove/reshape the metal that is damaged and weld in new patch panels.

In lieu of that you can make a cold repair with epoxy and a small plate. Kittyhair is good for filling and gives more stength, but still needs to be followed with proper filler and shaping followed with a professional glazing filler to blend the reapir area into the adjacent panel. Use a good 2 part quality primer-surfacer and block the area with 220-400 wet/dry grit with a block.

Good luck and any project like this will further your skills, but you've got to try it first!

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