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Autobody Basics-Pulling Dents By London Vande Zande
Autobody Basics-Pulling Dents
Autobody Basics-Pulling Dents will be our first lesson on, well...pulling dents. Pulling dents is one of the most challenging and rewarding of all aspects in the body shop. Grandma just hit the garage again backing out and you've got to help her. Well first of all you give her crap and remind her how good her cookies are. Start analyzing it. The quarter panel is in a couple inches and it's scratched down the side a good foot or two. Let's open the trunk and see if we can start hammering it out. Grab your favorite body hammer, preferably the one with a pick or dove tail on the other end. If the dent is creaced your going to need to reach around with a contoured dolly. A hammer and dolly sure work well together in these situations, you may need a helper to do this or your go-go gadget arm extension. Tap lightly from the inside and see if you can't walk it out together. Don't start in the middle, analyze the dent. I usually start my way back from the way it went in. The hammer and dolly should try to meet together and you'll hear a nice sound as if you were only hitting the dolly, you'll have to work with it. Do this till satisfied. If the hammer and dolly aren't doing it for you then grab the BFH. No! You don't want to make it worse. Pry bars work well if you can't hammer it out, but only to a certain degree. Do this slowly and methodically, it will normally challenge the best of us. That's not working though? O.K. here's the secret if you have a few bucks laying around and you enjoy doing work and pulling dents. You'll need to find yourself a stud gun uni spotter. This is a must have in the shop if people (grandma) keep on hitting the garage. It's a hand held spot welder that will weld pins to the damaged area. This can be quite fun, but make sure you grab your basic essentials. SAFETY FIRST. Grind the damaged area completely to the bare metal, the pins will not weld on dirty metal. Be careful of sparks especially near the gas cap door. If the damage is near this then wet a rag with water and shove it in there, just to be safe. Be careful not to hit tail lights or adjacent panels when grinding. You won't be happy working for the light, emblem, and it sure isn't rewarding if you now have to paint half the car. Alright, back to the Uni-spotter. If you have one you already know how to use it I assume. If you don't, maybe your local shop will lend you theirs for a few bucks. Run a row of pins in the crease about a inch apart. Grab the slide hammer and begin pulling, in this case she backed out and hit the garage. Start near the rear and carefully begin walking out the dent, back to front. You'll be able to do this until you about have it back to original. Cut the pins of with a side cutter plyers and grind off what's left of them. Pick up the pins you cut off. They may find their way in to your tire. Great, you should be good to go. Tap in the high spots lightly, and I mean lightly. You don't want to haul out the stud gun again. I usually use the pick side of my favorite hammer and tap on the high spots and all the way around them. You need a good hand to feel. Shut your eyes and get rubbing. Putting a glove on may help you feel the contour of panel better. It may be rough, but you don't want any high spots. Now it may be time for that hammer and dolly again. Warning, you'll be putting alot of body filler on trying to form your way around high spots or by having to pound them in after each course of body filler. Don't get me wrong though, it happens to the best of us, you're just trying to avoid high spots. Congratulations! You should be done and I bet you did a good job.
Go take a break and get some of those fresh baked cookies grandma's got for you. We'll bondo it up later.
London Vande Zande is a passionate freelance writer of everything automotive
being a 20+ yr. veteran in the autobody and paint industry.
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