VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - GENERAL Body - Sheet Metal, Paint & Wood Advice on Bumping out a Dented Trunk

Well my stupidity claimed the life of my '47 Fleetline's trunk yesterday. Long story and I'll spare the details but it involves me, my '76 Chevy truck, a patch of ice and a sloped driveway. The end result is I 'kissed' the trunk of my '47 and pushed the center and top section of the trunk handle and license plate bracket area in. Pics & story is below. I'm still upset when I look at them.

http://throwinwrenches.blogspot.com/2013/02/stupidity.html

My question is, is there a way to get the dimpled area on top of the decklid (near the license support bracket mounting hole) to pop back and keep 'oil canning' back in? Its probably more of a project than I can tackle and the car needs bodywork someday anyway...but I want to make this boo-boo a little less obvious if possible. My wife is ready to kill me. She saw the whole thing in slow-motion and has now confirmed that I'm a total idiot. Thanks for whatever advice you all can offer.

Daryl,

Sorry to hear about this unfortunate accident--I read your full account. When the trunk handle was hit, it dimpled the surrounding metal, most likely stretching it a bit; you've also worked it some, perhaps further stretching it. Can you get a dolly on the underside of the dented portion? You'll need to do some hammer and dolly work around the area, on dolly to stretch, off dolly to shrink. If it's in need of considerable shrinking you may need to heat it with a torch, then work it. I've found that a more reliable and more easily controllable method for shrinking metal is to use a shrinking disc (you can find them on the Internet).

Of course, heating the metal will wreak havoc with your paint job, but to do a thorough job, you will most likely have to disturb the paint anyway.

From what I could make out from your pictures, the dent doesn't look too terrible right now. A little hammer and dolly work could probably remove the oil canning problem without disturbing the paint entirely--that is, until you decide to do the whole thing and repaint.

Good luck!

Don't feel too bad stuff happens. I have pulled similar stunts in my day and I'm afraid that as I age it isn't going to get any better.

It doesn't look too bad, not much worse than I did to my '37s trunk years ago and you did make it look better!

Thank you both for the advice and the pick-me-up. I truly appreciate it! I did have an offer from a metal fabricator & body guy near Springfield (1 1/2 hours from me) to help straighten it out if I bring it to him and buy him lunch. He'll even show me how to do a little metal work as well, so I'll probably buzz down there some weekend soon and give it a shot.

Thanks again you guys & here's hoping that spring hurries up and gets here.

Sounds like you have a good salution!
Good Luck

Let us know how it goes, Daryl.

You bet, I'll update this post soon :)

Update: My wife & I drove down to "Da Tinman's" shop in Springfield. Cool place right at the airport in an old hangar. He granted us access to his shop & tools and showed me a few techniques for working dents back into place, and how to feel for the high spots and use those and your hands to feel where the metal needed to 'go back to'. Once I worked the top of the license plate area with a few body hammers and a soft blow hammer used as a 'soft dolly' from the backside, things fell back into place nicely.


Here's the BEFORE


And here's the AFTER


He also worked the lower edge and straightened out the latch mounting area that was tweaked. I could keep working on a few small areas but for the most part its ready for a skim coat of filler in a few spots and we're back to a smooth decklid! I will probably just buff this out again and touch up some of the paint until I can do the entire car the way I'd like to.

My wife Sarah & I learned a ton in a couple of hours and got to make a good restoration resource. If anyone needs metal fabrication or welding done, Jay Ater (Da Tinman) in Springfield is your guy. If you'd like details just PM me. Thanks for the motivation everyone!

I'll post up finshed pics once its back on the car and buffed out again.

Looks like you made a big improvement Daryl. Good that you found that guy. He must be a good sort to help you out like that.

I've seen some of Jays metal work. Very nice.