some underbody damage
 

needless to say, the car was jacked in the wrong place and has some underbody damage. the thin protusion of metal has been bent over and it seems like the protective coating has also been stripped off. this is a picture of, not my car, but the area of what i am talking about.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...hmentid=149533

so will sanding it down a bit and applying some rust inhibitor fix it or will i have to take it to a body shop?

Hard to tell from the pic, but that looks pretty extensive, how much would you have to sand down? I've been told by quite a few people, the only way to do it right is to cut ALL the rust away, and replace with new metal welded in.

I'm having the similar problem, mine is rusting starting from the proper jack points, so you can't use them anymore. I'm hoping I can cut the rusted metal and replace, but I'm not sure how much it would compromise the unibody. Actually, thats what I was about to research a bit about right now. Good luck.

See if you can bend it back, if it has any hidden rust (a weird crubling noise or dull cracking sound could indicate it) you might want to consider replacing the damaged section. After you bend it back clean up the area and hit it with some underbody coating and rust stopper.

reminder, the pics are not of my car.
im just pointing pointing out the area in question just in case anyone was confused.

my underbody is not as rusted as shown in the example pic.

Yup, then just bend it back, I noticed with mine it had rust behind it and as I went to repair a section (bend it back) it just crumbled right off, I didn't even know there was rust there, but if you bend it back lay down some rust proof paint or metal sealer and put on a better undercoating than the factory crap, I used the rhino liner stuff from auto zone.

what should i use to bend it back into place? a crescent wrench?

Ah, right, that would be me, I need to work on my reading comprehension :)
Sorry about that.

I used a large cresent wrench, worked very well.