[modas]

Hi Guys -

Well Christmas came early this year and I picked up my "new" doors from the chem stripper yesterday. One door was completely cherry and unfortunately the other door had a few hidden surprises.

One of the surprises was a crease about 8 inches long running along the lower part of the door. I put the hammer and dolly to it and managed to pound out a majority of it. (PIC 1).

However, after looking at the panel a little more closely, the damage extends quite a bit past the crease and there is a considerable low spot directly underneath the crease all the way down to the pinch weld (getting less severe as it goes away from the crease. PIC 2 shows how much of a low spot there is. Its not terribly clear so if another shot is required, please let me know...

So, my first question, to bring this part of the door up to the correct level, do I need to shrink this area or stretch it?

Also, on this same door, the chemical strip ended up exposing some rust holes in the skin which were not apparent when I bought the door. Most of them I was able to weld up with little difficulty, however, there is one section at the bottom that I just can't fix with welding. PIC 3 is what I started with, PIC 4 is what I've ended up with. I can't weld anymore as the metal is just so thin that I burn thru even at the lowest heat setting on my welder.

Could this be something I could finish off with body solder, or do I need to replace this little chunk entirely? My problem (at least in my head) is I don't have anyway of reproducing the contour of the door in that area so anything I put in there is going to look like cr*p.

Any help with my two questions is greatly appreciated!
thanks!

Joe

[John Kelly]

Hi Joe,

From what I can tell from the pictures... do not think in terms of stretching or shrinking until the low spot is raised up, and the highs are knocked down. It is about moving the metal, not changing the surface area by stretching or shrinking...at least not until you have the surface smooth. Then you will probably need to shrink.

The rust holes should be cut out and a patch welded in. Usually the thin area extends beyond what you see.

John

[modas]

Hi John -

Thanks for the reply. With such a large area that is low, how would I go about raising that spot? I was almost sure that it was going to be just a matter of hitting it with a little heat to bring it back up. Shows ya how much "I" know

I don't want to just start winging away and mess up my new door. Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it.

Joe

[colormecrazy]

Pry, push, hit, or pull. What ever you need to do to get that thing as close to flat as you can. As for the rust cut it out make a piece of metal the right shape and butt-weld it in (no over-lapping patch panels!).

[John Kelly]

This article mght help. There are links to other articles as well:

http://metalshapers.org/101/jkelly/index.html

John