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roof dents?

3K views 13 replies 9 participants last post by  bigdave R.I.P. 
#1 · (Edited)
My 57 4 door has crecent shaped dents, I'm not sure if it what you call oil canned. I'm a novice to body work and need to know the process of removing these creases. If it requires hammer and dolly I'm worried about stretching the metal and making it look worse.
It looks like someone either put something heavy on it at one point or sat on it.
I'll try to get pics if needed. I;ll have to work on the light angle to show it up good enough to see on the pic.
Thanks
Dave
 
#2 ·
I have had very good success by just lightly tapping on the smile with a body hammer. i do not recomment pounding up in the middle of the dent with any force as that always seems to lead to more work. If you had access to the middle of the dent and held a dolly there with some pressure and lightly tapped on the smiles, I think you will have an easy time unless they are hard creases at the smile.

Hotroddder
 
#3 ·
:(My smiles are about 6-8 inches. You can't see any indentations except for the smiles. Maybe I should have stated that better. It's the smiles I'm trying to get rid of. My ceiling insulation is near perfect now and I think I'll have to remove it to get a dolly on the steel.
 
#5 ·
roof dents

When you are working on single layered metal such as a roof, you want to make sure you do not put the body dolly directly under the body hammer. Thats were you start stretching the metal. If the metal is really distorted (creased) you may need to shrink the metal. Move slowly and check the roof shape often should be ok.
 
#6 ·
I had pretty good with my dented roof doing like Hotroder said. It's called "dinging off the dolly." Back up the top of the roof (factory surface,) while hammering the dent. Start on the outside edges, working your way towards the center. I had some pretty deep one's (concave) so I bumped the all them way up (convex), them used a shrinking disk to smooth the dent out. They came out pretty good, only a small amount of filler will be needed. If I really worked at it, I'm sure I can straiten it to the point where no filler will be needed.
 
#13 ·
I Start on the outside edges, working your way towards the center. I had some pretty deep one's (concave) so I bumped the all them way up (convex), them used a shrinking disk to smooth the dent out. They came out pretty good, only a small amount of filler will be needed. If I really worked at it, I'm sure I can straiten it to the point where no filler will be needed.
Me too. I had at least a dozen dents in my top. Some were kind of deep. I bought the shrinking disk kit from Wray Schelin off of Ebay. His kit comes with a DVD and that was invaluable. Got every dent out using the slapper and dolly they way he describes. It will not need any filler.
 
#8 ·
As the others said, use an off dolly technique. Read up a bit on hammer and dolly technique if needed.

Typical dents in the roof respond quite well to the normal hammer/dolly techniques, and the metal often is not stretched, so most of the time you can fix these dents with no filler, or at worst, a minimal amount.
 
#10 ·
Hi, before you use a hammer, I have used a 4 inch suction cup on roof dents that pull out very easily. The cup is wet first to get traction and you can pull up with quite some force and many times save a lot of work for yourself. I have also used a couple of small nails and weld them along the dent and pull them up with a vice grip a little at a time in a circle pattern. This will work as long as their is no stretch to the dent. If their is a stretch, the nail method will work quite well as welding shrinks the metal. Hope this helps. Regards, Steve
 
#11 ·
Try this first. Just run a flat file over the top to show the smiles. Then just lightly tap on the highs of the smile and they file agian. I was shocked at to how little work it took to competely remove the light dents. If it does not work they you can get more agressive.

Do not bang up on the uderside or do on or off dolly until you try this.... it may only make things worse...


Hotroddder
 
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