American Motors Rambler Fender And Dent Repair - Learn How To Fix A Dent

We had to resort to the torch and anvil method to pop the crinkle and dents from the front fender. Wanna know how?

For those of you who are following the CC/Rambler build ('67 Rambler American with a Jeep 360 and stock Gremlin parts), it ran an uncorrected 12.75 at 112 mph at LACR in Palmdale, California. Call it a glory run if you will because we first broke the stock rearend then shattered the overrunning clutch in the transmission when the engine was at 6,400 rpm and the tires were at zero for a millionth of a second. Fortunately, we didn't oil down the track and the Rambler made it back to the trailer in high gear and safely back to the shop. So while the transmission got a repair and a tweak from Racetrans and axles and a Sure Grip arrived from Moser, we got to fixin' dents.

To recap, before we owned it, the Rambler had been cocooned in a garage in Southern California after someone's grandmother parked the right front fender into the garage wall and simply never returned to the scene of the crime. Car Craft spelunkers excavated the prize and noticed it had been hit lightly in the right rear and repaired as well. Other than those mishaps and a few small dents and scratches from bicycles and kids, the body was in pretty good shape. We wanted to go to the paintless dent repair guys to fix the front fender, but they told us not only was the paint already cracked and flaking off but also they don't really handle metal with such a huge crease. We'd need to repair this thing the old-fashioned way, by stripping paint and panel and beating until the dent went away. Watch us play with fire and hammers.

Paper and Grit

• 24-grit is used to sand away existing paint and filler; it eats everything.
• .40-grit on a body sander/grinder is used to rough-up the bare metal before applying filler.
• .40-grit on a DAQ orbital sander or a straight-line DA sander is used to rough-cut the filler.
• .80-grit on a flexible sanding block or board sander is used to sand out 40-grit scratches and add the body line.
• .150- to 320-grit is used to sand down the 80-grit scratches in the filler and add the final finish.

To the untrained eye, this looks like a wrinkle above the fender lip (A) and a pushed-in dent in the middle and lower half of the quarter (B, C). If you want to get behind the dents and force them out or grab the lower section and bend it straight, you'll never get it right. This is really one huge dent that covers the entire area rather than three separate ones, and you have to work it that way.

As a comparison, you can see the driver-side wheel lip and body line intact. The theory we are using says to start by repairing the body lines, increasing the strength of the natural body contours and weakening the strength of the dents, making them easier to pound out.

We started with the wheelwell because it is the most rigid shape on the fender and therefore the strongest. The lower lip is supposed to be flat, perpendicular to the side of the car, but it was rolled under by contact with the tire during impact. We used a shrinking hammer with a slide hammer as a dolly to flatten the lip, adding strength to the original shape and taking strength from the peak above it.

After the lower lip was fixed, the contour directly above it began to take its original shape without our even touching it. When the fender was first hit in the front, a peak was formed on the lower portion of the fender (A). This peak is directly connected to the peak above the wheel lip (B). As the lower peak was pounded flat with the pick hammer, the damage above the lip contour began to weaken and take its original shape. Cool, huh?