Removing dents with heat

[perryg114]

I have a few hail and rock dents this might be worth trying. I wonder if you could use LN2 instead of dry ice. I have access to LN2. It works great for removing moles. Soak a q-tip in the stuff till it stops bubbling and then hold it on the mole till the mole turns white. I wonder if the same process would work and not kill the clear coat. We use the stuff in cold traps for vacuum systems. It is fun stuff to play with.

Perry

[bilby05]

Originally Posted by Darkspeed

Dont do this if you dont know what you are doing.

Glad you prefaced the technique with the above caution. I gave that some thought, for my dent, but realized I wouldn't know what to do with a huge glob of melted aluminum and some unrecognizable trailer parts. :-) I am working on the slow and careful and gentle method of slowly pushing the dent out from the inside and using a laminators roller to complete the job. I hope my ineptness does not cause permanent damage when done that way.
cheers, bill b.

[Frank's Trailer Works]

a pictures worth a thousand words. Heres 3000 words.

[Darkspeed]

Originally Posted by 62overlander

a pictures worth a thousand words. Heres 3000 words.

Cool! Did the same on my front street side segment.

[dznf0g]

Frank, is that all pullin', or did you do some rollin' from the inside?

[aceflys]

Originally Posted by dznf0g

Frank, is that all pullin', or did you do some rollin' from the inside?

I was at FTW today and saw first hand of the pulling of this dent. There was no inside access. It took a few pulls. And BAM! it was gone. Then you know Frank had a big smile on his face and Wayne had to eat crow. I brought them lunch and we enjoyed it in Frank's vintage Fan canned ham trailer. Great day at The Work's.

Thanks Frank

Ace

[perryg114]

So give us details on how it was done. Looks like you glued some pegs onto it?

Perry

[aceflys]

Originally Posted by perryg114

So give us details on how it was done. Looks like you glued some pegs onto it?

Perry

Frank will have to fill you in. Not sure if there was any trade secrets being used.

Just joking!

I'm sure Frank will tell.

Ace

[Darkspeed]

Originally Posted by perryg114

So give us details on how it was done. Looks like you glued some pegs onto it?

Perry

glue sticks and a pack of dent puller stems

Dent Pulling Glue Sticks - PDR (Glu-Stix)

Then a slide hammer to pull on the stems


Glue stems to aluminum

attach slide hammer to stem

gently use weight on slide hammer to pull dent

work your way around



you can also get a kit

http://www.gluepullers.com/

[perryg114]

The is good info to have. Is there a favorites thread function on here so you can same important threads? I am on two or three different computers in a day and the links are never on the machine I am on.

Well I don't have any big dents yet but I do have a lot of small hail dents and rock dents on the front.

Perry

[webspinner]

Perry, in the bar at the top of the thread, there's a button labeled "thread tool" and in the pull down menu from that, there's a place to "subscribe to this thread." You can choose whether or when to get email updates.

To find the thread again, go farther up the AirForum web page and look for "quick links" towards the right. In that drop down menu, you can find your subscribed threads.

[Mr.Bill]

The "hot torch cold rag" trick is how body shops used to fix hail dents. A welding supply store can sell you a heat sensitive crayon that you can mark the metal with - when the crayon mark changes color you stop heating. But you'd have to know what temperature you wanted to heat the metal to in order to get the correct crayon. Most auto body shops won't touch aluminum - if it's bent, you need a new one.

[desertair27]

Originally Posted by 62overlander

a pictures worth a thousand words. Heres 3000 words.

Love it,thanks for sharing!

[Frank's Trailer Works]

There was nothing fancy and nothing I came up with on my own. On The Vintage Airstream Podcast, Colin Hyde talked about hot melt, vise grips, and an elevator bolt as a dent puller. No fancy tooling, no kits and no slight of hand was employed. I tried it and it worked very well. My employee, Wayne told me I was wasting my time. Ace was skeptical, and I was confident it was going to work(because I did not want to take the front end cap out). Unfortunately, I am always confident right up until it doesn't work, then I become doubtful. In this case, confidence paid off.
Now please note, this dent is not 100% gone. The skin was creased and that can never be properly repaired. The up side is at rallies, no one will be saying "yeah, turn right at the shiny Caravel with the big dent in the front end cap"

[worldinchaos]

Originally Posted by webspinner

Perry, in the bar at the top of the thread, there's a button labeled "thread tool" and in the pull down menu from that, there's a place to "subscribe to this thread." You can choose whether or when to get email updates.

To find the thread again, go farther up the AirForum web page and look for "quick links" towards the right. In that drop down menu, you can find your subscribed threads.

Or if you are like me, and addicted to the interwebs, browsing airforums constantly (during nighttime, daylight is for the trailer work), then you might end up with 200+ subscribed threads. One solution for the really important ones is to bookmark them in google chrome, which you can sync between all your computers. I do that so all my favorites, saved logins, autofill, etc are ubiquitous between my work computer and both the Mac and windows side of my home computer.

Just one solution... Or you could just not subscribe to every thread with a single interesting bit of info.

[bilby05]

Finally had a warm sunny day and decided to take a shot at the big dent. Having previously removed the light fixture at the end of the bathtub, and enlarged the space behind the fixture, I stuck my hand in there and pushed against the bump and "sproing" it popped out. Sorta. It popped back in once, but I think once I get a "J roller" and remove the remaining divits it will stay in place and look nice. I will try to attach a "during" picture to go with the before and later post the after.
cheers, bill b.

[Keyair]

How flamable is the insulation between the skins?

[perryg114]

It is not flamable at all. The skin will melt way before the insulation but you might melt some wires to the skin and cause a short. I would consider using cold instead of heat. You can heat the skin up with a hair dryer and then hit it will cold to pop the dent out. There is also glue on the inside what will outgas and smoke. I just pushed some minor rock dents out from the inside on the front end cap. I have the skins off repairing leaks anyway so I figured why not fix those little dents.

Perry