Bondo '91 Accord, round 2!

So you made it look worse? If it's that small, I don't see how your repair makes it better. It it was ugly to begin with, then ok...

My first body work when I was 14 or 15 consisted of using bondo brand filler because I didn't know any better. I used mesh or fiberglass to back it. This crap did not hold. Better materials (not bondo brand) and methods worked far better as I learned by trial and error.

Most rust repair I've done has been without a welder. I made sheet metal patch pieces and pop riveted them in place. I then used good quality filler to make it look pretty. I have repairs that I did in 1994 still holding with a bit of touch up.

The stuff I did with a welder thus far has been rather crude test work I did on the beater car. I just welded in some crude sheet metal patches to get a feel for it. I didn't do anything to finish them other than a quick coating of spray paint. If I wasn't playing with the welder I wouldn't have bothered.

Oddly, before that car was beater, also in the early mid 90s, before that car was mine, I found rust in a rear strut tower. Pretty bad IMO. Before I had a welder. I cut sheet metal and used screws and pop rivets. Once the sheet metal structure was in place I covered it in structural fiberglass. That repair held with no return of rust when I got rid of the car about a year ago or so. A decade plus of chicago road salt and no return. Of course it was easier to make resistant because it was a hidden area and didn't have to be pretty and both sides were accessible.

Good quality filler is going to cost probably 2-3X what bondo costs. The good fiberglass resin isn't cheap either. But it's cheaper than redoing it.

"the_lower_class_brat" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@p59g2000hsd.googlegroups.com:

And I remember when I was 17 and the sort of bodywork I produced then. I thought I was a master of Bondo and fiberglass.

Well here it is 28 years later and it's embarrassing looking at pictures of my youthful handiwork.