ok so the body of my maverick is in decent shape other than the roof that looks like someone was tap dancing on it and a dent in the hood(fairly small), and a dent in the back right quarter panel, the bottom part of each quarter panel is rusted through(if i look down the left and right sides of the trunk of the car i can see the ground...left side is about 8x3 right side is about 3x3) any suggestions on how i can fix the body damage?
good morning :Handshake , i think the roof damage comes from kids playing on it. hood could be the same... as far as repair...someone will have to ...dolly...the dents out of both... the quarters will need a patch from a donor car... i had a roof dolling and a quarter patch done. not a bad job to do,just finding someone that will mess with an old car...you don't find much dolly work done today... i am lucky...i have a body man that loves to mess with old cars...i just wish i had something that needed painting... ...patches' friend Frank...
You could try to heat shrink the dents out too. It's not something I've ever tried, but it looks like it takes a lot of practice and patience. Basically, you use a torch or heat gun or heat the dent, then dob it with a wet rag to cool it. It's supposed to shrink the metal and thus pull the dent out. Rust can always be fixed by welding in new metal. Butt-welds are the best, but they're harder to do. First you have to get the two panels exactly perfectly matched with each other, then you tach weld every 6 inches or so, then go back and put another tach in between each of those and so on and so forth. It's called stitch welding and helps to keep the metal from warping. Another neat trick is to overlap the two pieces, and screw them together. Then using a cutting wheel, you cut between your screws peeling back the steel as you go. Between each screw you start your stitch weld. Doing this gives you a nice butt-weld without having to spend hours cutting and grinding to get the panels to match perfect. Just use a very thin cutting wheel so you don't have to weld across a huge gap. After all the welding, grind it down using long sweeping strokes along the weld line. This will keep the weld from being too wavy and will also cut down on your filler work later. Well, depending on how straight you want the car to be.
