More of a repair than a modification...

[great white]

Last year, the trailer got a big ding in the lower panel.

Couple months old and dented all to heck. Boy was I mad!

I had pulled in to a gas station and some old farts with California plates pulled in and cut my off on the way to the diesel pumps.

My choice was to let the 98 year old woman hit the truck with her moving house or do a quick dirty dart to avoid her. I chose to dart. Thing is, it was in the lot leading up to the pumps and there were concreted steel posts all over the place about 3 feet high (still haven't figured out why they were there?).

Well, to cut a long story short (er), the trailer turned into one and then we couldn't get it off. Ended up unhooking and hooking up at near 90 degrees to pull it away from the post without doing any more damage.

Luckily it didn't rip, only dented to heck and gouged to high heaven.

So today I grabbed a piece of cardboard, the cordless drill and my body hammers and dollies.

I dropped the underbelly tray and trim and then went at it with the body working tools.

20 Mins later the approx square foot of damage looked like this:





I don't have before pictures (I'd rather forget that day) but it was this big:



Not too shabby of a repair considering that whole area was driven in a good 10-12 inches.

I'll dress it a bit with some sandpaper to hide the scratch marks a bit more and then try to match up the paint.

The metal is just too thin to bother with trying to body work it dead smooth. It would never sand properly and is so flexible the filler would crack off. I could use flexible filler, but I'm only going to go so far with this.

I'll get it near invisible unless yo know it's there and that's good enough.

Gotta say, I feel better now that the ugly dent is gone out of my "new" trailer...

[TURBS]

You could seam in a new piece of aluminium underskirting.
But all in all looks tons better than I'm sure it was.
Ron

[great white]

I thought about seeing if I could source a new panel from FR, but this is free and will look just fine once worked a little more and painted.

the Aluminum is so thin, you could not weld it. maybe TIG, but the guy would have to be really good. It's very thin, like "pop can" gauge thin....

[TURBS]

Originally Posted by great white

I thought about seeing if I could source a new panel from FR, but this is free and will look just fine once worked a little more and painted.

the Aluminum is so thin, you could not weld it. maybe TIG, but the guy would have to be really good. It's very thin, like "pop can" gauge thin....

I fixed a piece of skirting on my flagstaff Tt when I had it .
Dealer had some scraps from other repairs.
I just used a panel seamer and pop rivet it together then painted to match then siliconed the seams.

No-one ever noticed.
Ron

[OldCoot]

Rubbing compound might get rid of most of the white.

[great white]

Originally Posted by dunnnc

Rubbing compound might get rid of most of the white.

Thanks but that's not white, it's the bare aluminum.

Just needs more gold-ish paint.....

[TeresaInCAL]

Little paint and you'll be the only one who will even notice it. Good job!

[EXGMTech]

looks like a spot a clever bumper sticker would be perfect