kanuck

The very front of my hood and front nose has a basketball size dent in it. Just to the driver side of the centre of the hood. It's mostly on the nose, but the edge translates to the hood. It was there when I bought the car. The paint is intact on both the hood and nose (no spiderwebbing either). I’ll probably try to remove the nose and am not really worried about it. But the hood is steel and I’m wondering if there’s a way I can temporarily “shape” it back, at least to get it close to where it’s supposed to be.

Any techniques with a rubber mallet and 2*4 or something else I could try? Down the road, the car will go to a body shop for dent repairs and a paint job, but I just want to bang it back myself for now since it’s kind of an obvious one.

Hope the pictures show what I’m talking about, it’s hard to see the dent in pictures.

kanuck

An edge shot where you can kind of see how it droops a little on the driver side.

Thanks for any and all advice!

bnoon

The nose should be easy enough just by loosening and repositioning the nose support brackets unless the plastic is actually damaged.

The hood dent, I would stack some 2X4 chunks under the hood, line them up under the dent, cover the 2X4's with a towel, then slowly close the hood down... As the hood closes, the 2X4's will press the dent upwards. Use two hands (one on either side of the dent) to press downward and bow the curve back into the metal.

If there's not enough room to get the above done, then cover a 2X4 with a towel and use a hammer to drive the 2X4 into the bottom of the hood until the dent is gone. With that shallow of a dent, you should have no trouble just pressing it out by hand using the other method though...

Jim85IROC

iTrader: (2)

hood dents are tough to fix. A hood is a very rough environment for body filler, so it's important to get it as good as possible so that minimal amounts of filler is necessary.

kanuck

Thanks bnoon!

I'll give that a try. As long as I get most of it out, it won't look so bad until a body shop gets at it.

VERTIGO Z28

iTrader: (1)

Rubber mallet with t shirt covering it (the mallet). Start off light and see how it goes then a little harder untill its done.