Here’s our last bad example. Even though I saw this one stored in SoCal, the snow tires and severe rust tell me it came from some snowy clime. Sure, it could be fixed, at great effort. But plenty of similar examples abound, in much better condition. Even at free, this car isn’t worth it. Been there, done that.
Here’s another real-life example close to home. As a magazine project to prove that there’s plenty of good ’50s car material out there, in decent condition, for good prices, I found 30-some cars, and selected this one-owner, never hit, all-original ’52 Chevy 2-door sedan as the one to buy ($1,200) and bring home. I wish I had a picture of it sitting, crusty, on four flat tires in the yard where I found it. But this is after I’d cleaned it up and was rebuilding the brakes. As you can see, the original dark green metallic paint is not only very faded, but also had surface rust all over.
I love to poke fun at ’58 Buicks and similar huge, overchromed ’50s cars. Who knows how much restoration this 2-door hardtop took—but it’s basically a smooth, shiny, bright red paint job, lowering, and new wheels and tires that make it a standout. There’s no customizing or other tricks. This car shows how much impact a good new paint job can have, even on a big, otherwise ugly old car. Well, it’s not ugly anymore.
In proper order, I fixed all the mechanicals first, including brakes, suspension, steering, wiring, and eventually added a V-8, automatic trans, stereo, and even air conditioning. I had the bumpers and grille rechromed and removed and filled emblems on the hood, trunk, and elsewhere. Then my upholsterer talked me into adding white tuck-and-roll inside (out of order). So I had Stan Betz mix a little color-matched green lacquer so I could spot-in the few places I’d primed where chrome was removed and a ding or two were filled. Then I tried a little 3M rubbing compound with a buffer. Wow! It not only took all the surface rust right off, but it polished that old nitrocellulose lacquer to a high sheen, as you can plainly see in this photo. Believe it or not, this is mostly the factory original paint, just power-buffed and waxed. It looked so good; I drove it this way for several years before starting this book. Now it’s finally getting the full-bore bodywork/repaint.
Bad Filler and Dreaded Rust
If a car has one or more new paint jobs over the original, you really have no idea what might be under them. We talk about this more in the next chapter on stripping paint. Fortunately, filler—especially bad filler—is usually pretty easy to see. If it’s not immediately obvious from bulges or waves, sight carefully down the sides of the car, from front to rear and vice-versa. Besides front- and rear-end damage (which is relatively easy to replace), cars most often get hit in the sides (as opposed to the roof or tops of the trunk or hood), and this can be more serious. If you don’t see waves or ripples as you look down the sides of the car, open the doors and check the jambs. Bodymen usually don’t spend a lot of time in these areas, and damage is easier to spot here. If you do see bent or twisted metal, or poorly sanded filler, especially in the middle pillar of a 4-door, I’d probably pass and look for a better car.
Another way to find filler is to look and feel inside body panels that you can access, such as inside the trunk or the wheelwells. If a panel is bumpy on the inside and straight on the outside, you know it has filler in it. If you can feel both sides with two hands at the same time, you can probably tell how thick it is. But, especially on newer cars, many areas are inaccessible. The owner isn’t going to let you pull off the door panels or other parts to see (or feel) inside.
I have seen several types of “filler finders.” Most work magnetically, some with batteries and beepers or lights. Look in auto accessory catalogs to find them. But with a little practice and something like a refrigerator magnet, you can get pretty adept at judging whether—and how much—filler is under the paint. Any type of magnet works; just make sure it has something over the surface (such as masking tape) so it doesn’t scratch the paint on the car.
Since we’re discussing rust in this chapter, here are a couple examples from my Chevy that are of the fixable type. About the only place I found exterior rust was under the chrome trim, where water collected. But this was primarily surface rust. I used a small, air-drive grinder to remove most of it, but this area had a hole in the lower right about the size of a 50-cent piece that needed a patch welded in.
With the rust ground off, weld ground smooth, one coat of high-fill primer, and a little catalyzed spot putty, sanded smooth, this is how the same area looked after a final coat of primer.
But you never know where you might find rust in a car. When I removed the interior panels, I discovered the left rear window channel drain tube had been plugged up, and the inner side of the trough was rusted completely through. Note the drain tube in the lower right, which had to be unclogged to start with.
Rust is either easier or harder to find, but, unless it’s simple surface rust, it’s badder than filler any day. If you can actually see rust bubbles—or worse, holes—in the paint, be warned that it’s the tip of the iceberg. Such body rust is coming from the inside out. If you can see any on the outside, it has to be worse on the inside…probably much worse. But, once again, many under-the-surface areas of car bodies are hard to access and these are the places where rust breeds and grows. Start by checking logical places for water to collect: the trunk floor, the interior floors (if you can lift the carpets), around exterior window channels (especially at the bottom corners). Open the doors and check the bottoms. If you can’t check interior floors from the top, crawl under the car and look at the floorboards from the bottom. This is especially important for cars that have ever lived in a cold climate where roads are salted (regardless of where the car might be right now).
The rusted area then had to be cut out with a cutting wheel on a die grinder. I scraped and wire-brushed as much as possible inside to remove more rust, but it was pretty inaccessible. So I resorted to liberally spraying the inside areas with a spray-can “rust converter” made by Permatex.
Then I cut and welded patches to fill the cutout portions of the inner panel. If you have rust holes on the outside of the body, the