Old school rust repair vs. the flux-core way, which side are you on?

I used to grind everything down to bare metal and use Bondo, the whole nine yards, even on my 1994 F-150 here in Spokane. Last spring I got a cheap flux-core welder from Harbor Freight for $89 and started patching in new metal instead of just filling it. The welds aren't pretty but the rust has not come back, whereas the Bondo spots started bubbling again within 8 months. So for a beater truck, is patching with a cheap welder actually worth the extra time, or do you still swear by the filler and primer route?

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piper_green1mo ago

Yeah that tracks with how pretty much everything works these days. You can throw filler at a problem and it looks fixed for a while, but the root cause is still underneath, just waiting to mess things up again. It's like painting over a water stain on the ceiling, sure it looks better for a month but then the leak comes back and now you've got a bigger mess. Same with patching drywall over a bad stud or just tightening the lug nuts instead of checking the whole wheel bearing. The filler route is all about speed and being cheap up front, but the real fix takes longer and costs more effort, and that effort pays off in the long run. That cheap welder probably took you twice as long as slapping Bondo on, but now you're not redoing the same spot every year.

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