Confronting The Bondo Monster

The PO told me there was a little bit of bondo in the body. A piece had begun to come out, so, I thought I’d fix it… little did I know it was a mess. It’s deep, maybe 6X3X3/4” deep, and there appear to be a few large spots starting to pull away as well. Anyway, I’m not even sure how to go about starting a real fix. The more I look, it would seem that a somewhat violent event took place in that area. I think the area was pushed in, then bondo’d to make it look normal. The entire area pretty much from the driver front fender to the door seems to be affected. Should I just refill and walk away ?

 

That's a super common area for rust on our jeeps. Mine had a hole there, so I just cut a square patch and replaced metal. I would think that would be the easiest way to repair yours too. When you cut out the section, you can then treat the pillar support with some rust protection.

 

Not sure it shows well, but, there’s about 3/4” of bondo there. The rest of the area seems to be the same

 

That's the classic.... "I know a guy who can fix it cheap" repair.
Your jeep is rusted in all the same places as every other jeep. The proper way to fix it is grind out all of the filler, cut out the rust and weld in new sheet metal.

 

I just did this on my 6. As much as I didn't want to it had to be done. Worth it in the long run.