> I'll second that (or is it third that) when I said the prep work in my
> previous post I was refering to sanding and removal of everything that is
> bolted on including the windshield. For dents let the pro's do it. Last
> summer I had a rather nasty dent from a tire that fell off the front. The
> insurance company gave me $700 after a $250 deductable. A body shop took
> the dent out and primed it for $150 I think, maybe it was $125. I bought
> the paint (a pint oflacquer) for about $30 and painted the fender in about
> 40 minutes. Another 1 1/2 hours is needed to wet sand and rub it out but
> my time invested is less than 1/2 day. To take the dent out would have
> taken me at leats 10 hours and still wouldn't have looked right. Even the
> smallest dent should be left to a pro. Been down the road enough to know
> what to avoid.
> ...Art
>
Art,
I agree wholeheartedly. Dent repair is one of those thing that
sounds simple enough to get a lot of people (myself included) into
trouble. After all, you just pound out the dent as much as you can,
fill the gaps with a skim coat of filler, and sand it smooth. What
could be simpler? The first time I ever tried to repair a dent, I
was sixteen. I must have put a quart of Bondo onto a 1" by 18"
crease/scrape, and then of course had to sand almost all of it back
off. I didn't use enough pilot holes when I used the slide hammer,
and ended up actually pulling some of the damaged sheet metal FURTHER
out than the surrounding good metal, and had to pound it back in
before applying the filler. After all that, I didn't sand the filler
smooth enough, and ended up with a highly visible repair. I could
get better results with more practice, but for now, I'd rather just
leave it to the pros. My only consolation was that my bodged repair
was on a 1981 Honda Prelude and not a piece of British Iron.
Scott
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