Removing "bondo"

[Bakins]

How do you guys remove body filler? There seems to be 3 kinds on mine: one is "peach" and flakes off pretty easy, one is black and is a PITA, and another is gray and is in between.

[Bakins]

Also, removing paint from interior panels - like the trunk, etc - use aircraft stripper?

[chevynut]

Hi Brian,

In my experience it's usually easiest to grind the body filler off with a 36 grit disc, then if there's any left that you can't grind off I use aircraft stripper to remove it. I sandblasted basically the entire interior of my Nomad with fine sand. You really don't need to worry too much about warpage of the interior panels, but I would still be a little careful and not be too aggressive.

Whatever you do, DO NOT let the sand hit the inside of the outer panels. They will warp. I ended up with a slight dip just in front of my hood brace because the sand hit the backside of my hood while I was blasting the brace. I never thought that could happen with such minimal blasting, but it did. See my pic that shows the underside of the hood. The sand barely hit it. I should have put a piece of sheetmetal there to protect it. This also happened at the edge of my fender braces, and my roof brace, but it was very slight.

[Bakins]

Thanks. I've been grinding it so far. It's a dusty mess!

Guess I need to buy a sand blaster...

[warren57]

The two best methods I know of are:
1. Let me put the bondo in, it always falls out later! (not the best plan)
2. A little heat. I have heated the metal up and it makes bondo fall off. A propane torch works good. If it's in an area you can't heat up, grid away...

[56-210Sedan]

I have used a heat gun in some instances, along with a scraper and it works well, i can not say this is the best practice but it does work.

[Busted Knuckles]

I have a Porter Cable vac sander I purchased to pain t a customers boat a few years back. It seems the boating community is very Eco-conscious. I started sanding the hull of this behemoth with a 8"d/a sander and you owuld have thought I set a puppy on fire. I had to stop work and go buy this setup that has a vacuum that hooks up to an electric d/a and you plug the d/a into the vacuum and plug the vacuum in to the wall of course (duh) when you turn the d/a on it starts the vacuum there is a rubber boot around the base of the d/a pad. It actually works very well no more bondo dust cloud in the shop followed by a weeks worth of cleaning