The weird thing I keep seeing with quarter panel patch jobs

Honestly, I've seen three different cars roll into my bay in the last month where someone tried to patch a quarter panel with just a thin layer of filler over rust holes. Ngl, one was a 2012 Civic where you could see daylight through the bondo. It matters because that stuff holds water and the rust comes back twice as bad in like six months. I know because I had to cut out a whole section last week that was just mush under the surface. Has anyone else had to fix a hack job like this recently, and what's your process for talking to the owner about it?

2 comments

2 Comments

rose_cooper12d agoMost Upvoted

That 2012 Civic story is rough. When you find a patch job that bad, do you take pictures of the damage before you cut it out to show the owner? I had a guy last year who didn't believe his truck's rocker was gone until I showed him a video of my screwdriver going right through the shiny paint.

fisher.adam12d ago

Yeah, the screwdriver video thing hits home. I used to just tell people what I found and got a lot of pushback, like they thought I was making it up. Now I take a quick video of every single bad spot before I touch it. It stops the "but it looked fine" argument dead in its tracks. That visual proof changes the whole conversation from me explaining to them seeing it for themselves.