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There was a suspicious bubbly spot on the Packard's passenger side hind quarter when I bought it and I new full well it was bondo popping from a half-assed repair, but I decided it was time to dig in and see what was going on. I discovered a rather badly brazed-in patch panel covering as-yet unknown damage. Was this how body shops did patch panels back in the day or was this a hack job? (I'm betting hack job).


Full Gallery:http://imgur.com/a/3TKCm#0

Ben, I think you already know the answer to your question, but if not, who ever did that certainly was not a professional body/fender man. Looks like a homemade schlock job.

Yeah, I know it's a terrible hack job, but there are times that I'm forced to ask. Sometimes you find that dumb things were done in the past.

"We pour liquid metal to form each crankshaft bearing"

"Pour lead into the seams of sheetmetal joints then file and sand it smooth without a respirator? How else would you do it?"

"Why wouldn't you use asbestos brake pads? That stuff is great!"

The way they used to do it was with pop rivets, so you have the deluxe brazing job.

The next method is spot braze like yours and shovel lead in there to fill the seam. The braze tins very easily.

I saw a patch like that on one of Marty Beron's budget paint jobs. Everybody knocked it, but my reply was "Hey it lasted thirty years and the car sat outside".

One thing about that patch is that the fender is still there. I've seen cars totalled when someone decided they were going to show everybody up and start cutting.

I remember someone trying to cut the stainless beltline mouldings off of a Custom 8 convertible. I told them they should understand that Packard was very proud of the skill it took to put those mouldings on. They scoffed and totalled it.

The interesting part is there was no lead in this repair. Bondo only.

As far as fixing it, I'm fairly comfortable doing this repair properly though. I've stitch welding patch panels in place to replace the wheel wells and other stuff on my '64 Lincoln (and made sheetmetal NACA ducts and other stuff like that). No patch panels for those cars and they all rot the same way.



Finished product at the end of this short gallery
http://imgur.com/a/Uc96s

There is a time and a place for everything, even substandard repairs.

It could be that was part of a cheap body and paint job, done at a time it was a used car of very little value.A proper, expensive repair was out of the question.

If you want to be philosophical, you could reflect that the owner at that time had to decide whether to scrap the car or do the minimum of repairs. And the only reason it survived, was that he elected to do the cheap repair.