Fixing dents on awkward panels

B11gt00e

Hello there,

I recently watched the excellent Wheeler dealer episode where the fixed up a ferrari Dino gt4. Anyhow, the legend Ed China has an excellent new workshop set-up for repairing dents and knocks on awkward panel areas.

If you watch the clip below (from about 4minutes onwards) you'll see the key & spot weld technique I'm talking about... Its a fantastic system and was wondering if anyone here knows of any fella anywhere in the country that is employing this technique??

Thanks in advance,

Bigtoe

P.S. They did a lovely job on the Dino... if you pushed for time and haven't seen this episode, watch 'part 6' where you get a quick overview of the work done on it.

I Was VB

Years ago when i was a panel monkey i did use a similar system and i hated it with a passion.

Between the pins not welding to the panel and not having the strength in the tools i went back to the old self tapper ontop of a slide hammer.

In the time it took him to set up the jig i would of had it repaired, as most bodyshop have glasmattics which is a set time job allowance to do certain jobs, doubtfull that they are gonna waste upto a hour to pull out a dent let alone a repair of it.

Just my personal opinion of it.

unfit2006

Useful in certain applications.
Offers very good control on pulling a dent with minimum damage to surrounding panel.
Quite time consuming though as I Was VB says.

B11gt00e

Many thanks IwasVB and Unfit2006. The dent I had mind is a somewhat strange dent on a long coupe quarter panel between the passanger door and the rear wheel arch. The thing is, the dent is low down and affects both the quarter and the sill (which appear to be one and the same i.e.) and I don't think there's a panel there that can be removed independently... that's why I got pretty excited upon seeing the Key & weld technique.

It figures that it's probably expensive and time consuming, but I have an inkling that this is the type of knock that's gonna take time love and €€€ to rectify.

Busy as hell today and for the next few weeks, but will try to get a few photos up at some stage as its a damn hard knock to describe.

MercMad

Have you any access at all to behind the panel ?

cantdecide

Is this technique related to the one where you have a staple gun type machine. It has a flat surface that sits down onto the panel. You pop the weld into the middle of the dent and a pivotted lever handle drags the dent out...

I might be talking about soemthing that is common place but I've only ever seen it the once.

B11gt00e

MercMad wrote: »

Have you any access at all to behind the panel ?

Not at all... she was up on a jack today getting a puncture fixed and the quaarter panel becomes the sill and it runs all the way to the front of the door... the top half of the panel runs over the door all the way down to where bonnet meets windscreen... so from below, No access, but....

Are the bits inside your wheel arches removable or generally in place... I'll either have to get a photo up here or just ask some advice off some panel boys I was told about nearby.

Its so low down that nobody would really notices it, but for me it ruins the lines of the car and annoys me... but not worth pumping loads of money at an aesthetic fault... that's for things like brakes, tyres and of course tax renewal which is at the end of the month... Ouch!