Dent repair progress

mondeo

I guessed some people here might want to see from my progress from start to finish on a few dent repairs I am doing on my 96' Mitsubishi lancer run about. Specifically the drivers door I am working on is riddled with dents. Bugging me for the past yr so decided to buy the materials and just do the bloody thing while the weather is good.

Materials I bought were: sand paper
grey primer
Black spray paint
Clear laquer
Body filler p38 isopon

I only tackled stage one this evening and sanded down the paint of the effected areas. Will fill them tomarrow and sand/prime. More pics to follow.
I don't have a hugh amount of experience with body work but I have got good results in the past.

Took pics with camera phone so not great quality sorry....


Stage 1: Paint sanded back to bare metal in preperation for the filler
[URL="[IMG]http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww158/Tommaso_2009/dents2.jpg[/IMG]"][/URL]

dirtydiesel

Nice work, those dents look like bullet holes:D

mondeo

dirtydiesel wrote: »

Nice work, those dents look like bullet holes:D

Thanks, I regret I did not take a pic before I sanded back the paintwork so you could all see the dents in their glory...looked like someone had kicked the door in 6 differant places. Beyond me how they all got there. Oul ones with their trollys in superquinn probably...

dirtydiesel

Ya auld wans with shopping trolleys and badly parked micras are a nightmare in supermarket car parks.

Neilw

Would paintless dent removal not have been a better option?

mondeo

Neilw wrote: »

Would paintless dent removal not have been a better option?

The door needed a respray anyways so made more sense doing it this way.

Nonoperational

Looks good so far.

mondeo

Just wondering if anyone could give me a tip. You see the horizontal crease line going across the door? Well the biggest dent as you can see from the picture has flattened the curve of that out and I would like abit of advice on how I should fill that section in as so to sculpture the line with the isopon to bring it back up to it's original shape?

I'm just going to use my imagination but if there is a simple way to get it back to it's original look then that would be great;)

Thanks

E39MSport

Nice work there.

Ahhh good old Isopon.

I used it liberally on my ma's old Mazda 323 (4th gen, the curved one).

I crashed it and the whole feckin lot fell off !! It was hilarious (until I got home (on foot) ).

cuculainn

Neilw wrote: »

Would paintless dent removal not have been a better option?

Hey what is this paintless dent removal stuff you speak about???

Neilw

cuculainn wrote: »

Hey what is this paintless dent removal stuff you speak about???

Google is your friend

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paintless_Dent_Repair

http://autodentsolutions.ie/pdr-examples.htm

http://www.dentmagic.ie/paintless-dent-removal/

Owen

What you need to restore the shape, is a sanding block which is big enough to bridge the repaired area and reach the original door on both sides. Get some 120 grit paper under it, and sand by hand following the contour of the door. Eventually the shape will return.

For the areas you've already filled and sanded, give them a light coating of primer as a guide coat. Sand those by hand using a block again once or twice. Any lows will show up as areas with primer that haven't been removed. You'll need to fill those again.

MetzgerMeister

PaintDoctor to the rescue

Owen

I'm bored waiting for a guy to collect his Multipla

baaaa

What about those hand sucker yokes?Seen them yesterday for 30 quid,like a suction pad that one would use to scale a large glass building.
Does anyone know if they're any use?

Alun

baaaa wrote: »

What about those hand sucker yokes?Seen them yesterday for 30 quid,like a suction pad that one would use to scale a large glass building.
Does anyone know if they're any use?

I was wondering about those too .. I've got a golf ball sized dent right on the rear corner of my C-Max. No creasing, no cracks in the paint, and as far as I can see no easy access from behind to pop it out, but I reckon it could be sucked out easily enough with something like that. Only problem could be that the surface it's on is quite convex so a flat sucker might not do the job.

Where did you see this thing for sale?

Owen

I'm no expert in Paintless Dent Removal, but if those suckers worked, the PDR guys would be using them. I've never seen a PDR guy with one in his toolkit.

MetzgerMeister

PaintDoctor wrote: »

I'm bored waiting for a guy to collect his Multipla

Can't get that ugly yoke out of your sight quick enough?? Hah!!

baaaa

Seen the sucker out in atlantic homecare in blanch.It has a face the size of the end of a tin of beans.

mondeo

Hi,

sorry about delay with this, It was a slow process..


This is when I primed over the repaired areas. Tried my best to follow "PaintDoctors" tip with the sand block to get the shape back.
This door was a absolute bugger to get off and even more so to get it back on again:P
[IMG][/img]

This is the finished product back on the car, HOWEVER as you can see I made a dogs ear of the "clear coat" I should be able to see myself in that door as I took the pic but clearly it is very smudgy. I applied the gloss as per instruction and it feels smooth like the other panels except there is no mirror effect to it. Just a blury finish.
I did improve it by applying two coats of wax to it, but I fear I will have to buy more laquer and put another coat on it to bring it up properly?
Overall being not so experienced on this sort of thing I think I made a good attempt at this but it could have been much better. Any tips???:)

[IMG][/img]

Owen

If lacquer isn't applied properly, you get that clouded texture. You can remedy it - but only if you've applied enough. What you need to do is a technique called flatting and polishing.

Flatting is done with wet & dry paper, 2000 grit, try and use the 3M stuff as it won't leave scratches - cheaper stuff will. Get a bucket of soapy water, wet the paper, and start to rub down the lacquer by hand. You should see a white froth build up - that's the uneven lacquer surface being smoothed out. It will take _forever_ but you'll eventually get to a point where it's as smooth as glass, but still dull looking. Dry it all off, and you'll see a horrible finish and panic a little, but all you need to do now is polish it back to a shine. Get some meguiars speed glaze, and a soft polishing head on a polisher, plenty of water again, and keep polishing it over and over until it gleams.

Owen

Just to clarify on the above, if you haven't enough lacquer on, it could make things worse.

mondeo

PaintDoctor wrote: »

If lacquer isn't applied properly, you get that clouded texture. You can remedy it - but only if you've applied enough. What you need to do is a technique called flatting and polishing.

Flatting is done with wet & dry paper, 2000 grit, try and use the 3M stuff as it won't leave scratches - cheaper stuff will. Get a bucket of soapy water, wet the paper, and start to rub down the lacquer by hand. You should see a white froth build up - that's the uneven lacquer surface being smoothed out. It will take _forever_ but you'll eventually get to a point where it's as smooth as glass, but still dull looking. Dry it all off, and you'll see a horrible finish and panic a little, but all you need to do now is polish it back to a shine. Get some meguiars speed glaze, and a soft polishing head on a polisher, plenty of water again, and keep polishing it over and over until it gleams.

What I done was I put a light hazy coat of laquer on first, following that I put the top coat on. I kept spraying it until the panel looked wet and worked my way down.
I will try that with the 3M stuff and give it a go during the week. If that fails can I re laquer the door while it's on the car? I has been told it is better to laquer with the door flat as it gives the laquer less chance to run down the panels like a runny egg... I don't fancy taking the door off again as it was a bugger.....

Thanks for the tip I will do as described:D

MetzgerMeister

mondeo wrote: »

What I done was I put a light hazy coat of laquer on first, following that I put the top coat on. I kept spraying it until the panel looked wet and worked my way down.
I will try that with the 3M stuff and give it a go during the week. If that fails can I re laquer the door while it's on the car? I has been told it is better to laquer with the door flat as it gives the laquer less chance to run down the panels like a runny egg... I don't fancy taking the door off again as it was a bugger.....

Thanks for the tip I will do as described:D

You shouldn't put so much lacquer on that it'll run. A build up of several thin coats is always better than thick coats which more than likely will run.