Body Filler Problems: Car Restoration Tips

"Hi! I'm Doug and I work with twenty great guys in St. Louis at Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods and we are going to do some work for you today on Expert Village. As I start to look at this, I can see that the rust is partly caused by an old body repair. You can see this pink stripe here, that's body filler. That's why this part of the car rusted, and other parts haven't. The car sustained body damage at some point and somebody put body filler over bare metal. Whenever you do that, you will always have rust. This is a great example of how inexpensive repairs in the history of your car, will cost you more later on. This pink here is body filler. All of the rust that we are going to repair today...all of this panel that is coming apart, is caused because body filler was put on bare steel. Body filler is nothing more than talc, which is, you know, a mineral. It's like dirt. So you have dirt fastened to your car, right up against bare steel, holding moisture against your car until it comes apart like this. We are going to cut all of this out and repair it with metal."