For me it's a friend. These day folks treat it like it's nuclear waste or a tool of the devil. I went to a yard sale and bought a slide hammer dent puller for 2 bucks and when I got home I just had to try it out. My tonner panel had some bad dents in the rear corners and I never felt like pulling out the interior panels to bang it out. This puller thing fits the head of an 8d nail neatly in it's chuck, weld the tip into the dent and bang, bang, bang. It's actually kinda fun. Then the fenders looked like crap so I cut them off and welded on some strap I found. Then to that I added some 3/8 rod for stiffening and a radiused corner at the bottom. My wife called from town and asked if I needed anything (besides more beer) and I said two quarts of bondo. The guys at napa didn't know which type so the gave her one qt of glass strand and one qt regular. Well I'm not showing the first stages of glass fiber bondo, because the lighting was cruel, but with my flat green paint fogged on over rustoleum primer it won't look like poor body work, but an old beater truck, just less beat. I set the bar low on body work. The reason I even post this is that today my wife's grandkids went back home after 3 weeks and I didn't have to work this Saturday and I have most of the stuff done for my daughter's wedding which is in 3 weeks, so I thought... I can work on a vehicle again. I will be driving the panel up to Lynden for the antique tractor and machinery meet first week in August and I thought it should look better. And no, the fenders will still be full of dents, just not rotted off on the bottom......Details at eleven.......

 

A little bondo never hurt nothing. A lot will wreck the paint. If you cake it on then in the heat or when there is stress on the body it can potentially buckle under the paint and it looks bad, for lack of any other word i can think of...

 

I had a 54 Dodge 5 window shop truck that had an old faded paint job. I decided to sand it down and paint it. The rear fenders were practically sculpted from bondo that had been laid in 20-30 years before. Over an inch thick in places. It had help up amazingly well. I didn't even realize the fenders were bondoed until I got in there.
My panel had lead 1/2" thick on the rear corners. And I'm not sure why it's in there but there is a flat piece just the shape of the curve of the body, adjacent to the rear door and about level with the floor. It must set right up against the sheet metal because even a small dent there leaves that protruding crease. If there are any dents there at all you will see it. You can see it in this picture.

 

BTW, not bad patching on that fender. If you need any patch panels from this let me know.

 

I really don't like the looks of a restored vehicle with shiny paint and then you see the bondo all cracked. Around here it's usually bubbling along the door bottoms and other rust prone areas. If either of these occurs I just get out the grinder, fix it and daub on some more flat paint. The panel doesn't have working wipers, so it's a sunny day driver and it lives in a nice dry shed when not being used. I have had it about 1 1/2 years and it has never gotten wet. It's sort of like a trailer queen without all the glamour..... And WB, I don't see any patch panels needed. Thanks for the pictures of your parts panel. Mine looks pretty good beside that hulk! It's 7am and I'm gonna go mix another layer. Those 20) 16' pieces of 1x12 pine on top of my '92 are supposed to be the portable dance floor for my daughter's wedding. My goal is to have that done by tonight. Oh, and my wife wants some alterations to her hen house as well. Lord I was born a ramblin' man

 

Nothing wrong with the judicious use of a little bondo. Use it to smooth small irregularities or fill small holes in panels. You have to be able to seal/paint the back side of the repair or it will bubble.

 

I flood the back side with rustoleum rusty metal primer and then seal any gaps with sikaflex polyurethane marine sealant. Then Like I said I keep it dry after that.

 

Today's body fillers are much better than even 10 years ago. They are more of a plastic with way less powders in them. They are also very flexible and hardly shrink. If you stay under half an inch you will be fine. Joe777 is correct. You must seal the backsides up to prevent any moisture from sneaking in through your welds and especially where you used the screw in dent puller. When you get the filler that oozes through those holes, water can wick in that and rust the steel under the filler. That is a sweet panel truck by the way. I would love to do one of those some day.

 

Thanks. The tonner panel is a Minnesota native from a junkyard in Parker's Prairie. Last plate on it was 1966. The front clip came from a 2 ton I went out to Montana to retrieve from Tinman. It was blue so I had to fix that, but the metal was amazing. Did a bit of 'painting on the rest of the panel truck today. I used 3 colors of satin green rustoleum and krylon. I keep running out of cans so today after work I painted in the tacoma cream belt line. Made the paint from flat white mixed with 'new caterpillar yellow'. This makes a flat tacoma cream so it looks old and faded minutes after it's applied. I'd say it's gonna be a 40 footer, as far as paint jobs go, and will have cost about a hundred bucks. I will be the first to say this isn't for everybody....

 

Dang GB, that panel looks good. You should make an instructional video on how to do weathered paint jobs.

 

This is what I started with... Maybe 5 years and 40,000.00 to do a 'real' restoration... For what? to drive up and down my 1/2 mile of loose gravel and mess it up? It was a tonner and it was a panel and it was a jailbar. That's what I wanted... This is the one I could afford. So I banged and beated on it, made a set of unobtinable long wheelbase tonner running boards from wood, built a flathead V8 from second hand parts with homemade teflon buttons to center the wrist pins and a wood dowel and sandpaper to hone the new king pins. I had a useable tonner rear axle under a trailer that I installed with mix and match leaf springs. 3 corners had busted leaf springs ... It had been owned by a uranium mine in Parkers Prairie Minnesota. (You would even say it glows). Even 2 gallons of bondo wouldn't devalue this POS. All I'm saying is I have a blast with this truck. Yes it's beat to s%!*, but it is as comfortable as my oldest pair of shoes! Edit: While I'm on a rant I gotta say with all the penny pinching and McGyvering I did on this to save a buck here and there which includes about 8' of tailpipe I welded up on Tuesday night from 10 individual pieces of old exhaust pipe and saved fittings... I went to the dentist this afternoon at 3:00 and was out at 4:25 and the receptionist handed me a bill for 795.00. They ground out 2 old fillings and one chip and filled them with some kind of Bondo. It was a 'plastic filler' that cures with a source of blue light. I think it was Ben Franklin (did he write 'poor Richards almanac ?) who described a dentist as 'A prestidigitator (old word for magician) who by putting silver in one's mouth extracts gold from his pocket'.

 

Just talked to a friend that I will see in two weeks. He will be coming from an area where another guy has a pair of NOS 42-47 one ton panel rear fenders. We are working out a deal. These are not the fenders we stumble on every day. Not like 1/2 ton pickup. Not like one ton pickup. Not like 1/2 ton panel, but only like one ton panel. I still keep working on all the tin. Welding, banging ,pounding, bondoing. Whatever... How do we know when to stop???