Long shallow dent: Bondo or hammer out?
 

I dented my car during parking the other day. After sanding off the paint transfer my S5's basecoat is mostly good, but there is now a long dent above the left-rear wheel.

Since the dent is not noticeable from afar I am not in a hurry to fix it. My question though is if I do want to fix it, should I bondo the dent or hammer it out? For the later option I am particular concerned whether the underside between the wheel and the door is accessible from inside the car, so if anyone has experience with that it would be great.

Just to add, I bought the car partly to practice these bodywork techniques, so I definitely want to work on it myself rather than bringing to a shop.

Thanks in advance.

Here are two photos of the dent,

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2721/...b023a526c2.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2516/...1330627727.jpg

Bondo is horrible. The right way to do it is to pull out what you can and then give it a skim coat of filler. Bondo will eventually crack

Well Bondo is simply one manufacturer of body filler, but your right, pulling the dent and giving it a skim coat. I suggest you get an autobody repair text book or find a very informative website. Personally in this case I would grind the paint in the dent to bare metal, use a stud welder and dent puller to straighten the metal. Give it a couple coats of body filler and rough sand it before guide coating, then etching primer to stick to bare metal and primer surfacer to even out minute highs and lows as well as prepare for base and clear. GL.

Dude, mine looks the same.....but a bit deeper.

I was told to pull mine out if i wanted it to look decent. I'm far to lazy for that shit so it's either overs or leave it alone.


http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/i...03f12577b7.jpg

Hopefully shit changes when i get my tax refund and i feel like putting in more work..... I doubt it.

as therotaryrocket said, get a stud welder and dent puller and try to pop them out to the original body lines, hammer down the high points lightly thin coat of bondo to size it to the body line, sand with 36-120-180, and from this step, I use polyester glazing putty on top of the bondo and sand with 120-180-220. then etch prime on any exposed bare metal.

+1 one thing ,nothing wrong with going up to 400 wet up to 800 wet to get it 100% body filler is a must no such thing as hammer out and painting but dont sart it if you are not willing to finish it, this in the long run it will hurt the car and you will end up with rot + one more RX looking like shit

ps that dent looks bad it goes into drivers door +dd handle not a small fix !!

So stud welding appears to be the consensus. I was hoping hammers and dollies can do the same, but perhaps the location does not allow for that possibly.

The damage on the door handle was there when I bought the car so it was unrelated to the dent.

Just to add to the question, in general how shadow a dent has to be for you to consider only using filler? My car has quite a bit of small, shallow dents here and there--all from previous owners--and I am not sure whether I should be pulling all of them.

the OP dent- try a paintless dent guy first, yours looks like it might come out clean

Overfenders.

make sure you spray down sealer onto the filler, otherwise you will get the bleed. the little dark barely noticable fade transition going from the filler to the metal (the filler soaks up paint). ive forgotten too once...never again.

if its just golf balls size dimples and smaller, you can just use polyester filler like Evercoat Metal Glaze. You dont need to sand down to the metal to put it on.

There is no way to "hammer out" that spot. If you pull the interior panels off, you will notice that there are 2 layers of sheet metal. You have to pull the dent out.

Stud puller?

listen, try the paintless dent guy, worse case is he says he cant help you, best case is he gets it totally out or 90% out and you dont have paintwork.
The dent will be the easy part, the bitch is now you have to paint the 1/4, it wont match the bumper, it wont match the door, you have to blend up the roof, etc.

^ Ya might as well give it a shot.

You can also try this since it's a wide shallow dent: http://www.ehow.com/how_5157319_remo...anned-air.html

Whether it's pulled or frozen, I'd pop it most of the way and only then bondo the rest if necessary. I wouldn't use more than 1/8" of bondo on any dent; if you need more then you need to pull or hammer the dent more first.

^ that seems like a very good idea. you also might wanna try pulling the dent with a strong suction cup, i know your dent is long but one time i pulled a dent out of the roof of one of my cars with a gps suction cup.