So someone pulled a hit and run on my car last night and left several large dents in my rear quarter panel.
I’ve been looking at the position and size of the dents to try to figure out how/what happened. The car was parallel parked on a street.
I live in the city and don’t have a garage, but will be getting one in a couple of months when I move to another apartment. I won’t be repairing this until I have a garage for the car.
Can these dents be pulled out? What kind of process will be needed to repair this and around how much? Thanks in advance for the help.
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Although the damage to your car is pretty bad you still got off pretty lucky because they did not hit your door and they did not cause structural damage that would limit you from driving the car.
Unfortunately that is where the good news ends because you are going to need some professional tools to complete the work and if you are in a city apartment even with a parking garage you won’t be able to do the job there yourself.
Without closer inspection its hard to say how a shop would handle this but more then likely all of it can be pulled. the only problem that could require some frame equipment is if the door jam has been pulled back from the door and that would require welding on a pull tab and doing a light pull until it is straight.
If the door closes normally and the gap between the door and the quarter is even and the same size as the passengers side then that won’t be necessary.
As you can see the dent crosses a few bends in the quarter panel so taking off the interior panel and pushing it out will not work.
Pushing it out from the inside may be part of the process but you can’t simply do it and expect it to look good enough to not notice.
If I was working on this job the first thing I would do is inspect the door and door gap.
If that was fine I would grind all of the paint off of the damaged area and out from it about an inch.
Then I would spot weld on a few pull tabs and use a slide hammer to slowly work from the outside of the dent into the deeper side of the dent. You also must hand hammer while doing this with an autobody hammer.
You want to work the area until 97% of the dent is removed or until it gets to the point where pulling and hammering is not able to get the final part of intricate shape of the bend/arc in the quarter panel restored then you can start using filler.
I always like to start with a kitty hair or reinforced resin filler. They have a better bond and reduce cracking.
Sand that with 80 grit until it is smooth and use a guide coat of black primer if needed to show your low areas.
Then skim coat with a standard lightweight filler and prime and paint.
It should take a full day for the metal work and filler allowing it to cure overnight. A half day for primer and cleanup and a half day to paint.
Its gonna cost you a nice big screen tv.