Pounding out a dent, Dent size = Hammer size Options

[Spoke]

I've decided to keep my wrecked red car until my new 74 2L 914 from Part Pricer is road ready.

I just needed to pound out a few dents to get Big Red back on the road.

Here's a couple of before pics.

[Kargeek]

Nice work! I have done a lot of body work over my 30 years of fooling around with cars and at one time I was taught metal finishing and body repair by a top notch body man. The key thing to keep in mind when pulling out collision damage is to reverse the process of the impact. Look at how the vehicle was impacted, what damage was done first and the secondary damage. We would put unibody cars like 914’s on a frame machine and set up a pull say, for a right side rear quarter and apply initial pull pressure but not completely back to shape. Sometimes rear damage would transfer to the front of the car with a ripple to fender etc. and during the pull we would work out the front damage first as that was that last area of damage that happened to the car during its accident.

Same thing goes for managing a fender dent. Apply reverse pressure to the center of the damage and work out the dent from the outside areas that are least damaged. It's amazing with patience and the right body tools how you can manage metal back into shape. Good luck!