Thread: Aoto Body explained..

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Well I could never afford something like that. Only thing I can think of right off is to cut as much out of the back side, as long as it doesn't interfer with the window mech. Would heating up the center of the crease to a red hot and then doing some off dolly work then quench it with a spray of water start to level it out?? I did have studs welded to the center, but that slide bar wouldn't hold, and they kept breaking off, so I just gave up on it.

Originally Posted by slantback37

Only thing I can think of right off is to cut as much out of the back side, as long as it doesn't interfer with the window mech. Would heating up the center of the crease to a red hot and then doing some off dolly work then quench it with a spray of water start to level it out?? I did have studs welded to the center, but that slide bar wouldn't hold, and they kept breaking off, so I just gave up on it.

Cutting out the inner panel should be temporary, weld it back in when done with the repairs. About the thinnest cutting wheel would be the .035 thick 3" cutoff wheel, for the least gap to contend with when welding back in. Unless there's an overlap where you can remove spot welds...

You have a stud welder? If so, there should be a heating tip available for it. I would not recommend the torch heating as like I said before, you're heating so much at once that it will be more difficult to gauge where/when to stop, unless torch shrinking is something you have considerable experience with. It would take longer with the heating tip, but IMO a slower, more controlled approach will be easier to read changes in the panel and give you better results in the long run.

Just to show the effectiveness of the shrinking tip, here is a sandblasting damage experiment I did a couple months ago. The inside was sandblasted where the peening action of the media caused the panel to stretch inward.





Damage as shown from the outside:








To repair, we used heat in the form of the heating tip on the dent puller.











This heat was moving the panel outward as it was shrinking. Kept going until the panel seemed to stop responding to the heat shrinks, and as it still hadn't returned fully to its original crown, then thought we'd bump up the little bit that was needed using this small shot bag as the dolly on the outside....








The panel responded well to the tool selection, moving the panel the direction we needed.





Not perfect, but looks like we're doing the right thing. A bit more work and it would be to a high build primer fix state.


Where sandblast damage is more of a uniform stretch, the repair shown above is rather uniform in the placement of the shrinks. Your's will likely have more stretch localized in the center of the dent, so any shrinks applied should be concentrated around the stretching....