When I first brought the van I was aware of the damage to the front of the van but the repair filler and paint that had been done didn't look too bad a job. It is now time to see how good or bad it is.
Having spent an afternoon with paint stripper that does not work and getting covered in dust with my wire wheel I got most of the filler off, just one big lump left.
There was also damage to the inside of the panel, it wasn't too bad just quite a lot of it.
With a days' work and a can of environmentally friendly paint stripper that doesn't strip paint I finally got the front of the van cleaned up. The damage was to all off the left side of the panel. There was no need to repair the panel although there was a small weld next to the light bowl that may have been used to pull the panel's dent out originally.
As I don't have or can get access to Go Go Gadget arms to reach through the front windows I figured I'd need to remove the head lamp bowl to get to both sides of the damage for panel beating. I started by drilling the spot weld with a drill bit in a normal battery drill, I soon found the drill wandering as I could not get on the spot welds square.
I then had to use an angled die grinder to grind out all of the welds trying not to go through both skins. With bigger holes than I intended the welds were free. A whack on the back of the bowl just left a dent, so where I could get access I eased the lip and released the rust with a tiny pry bar and ground down hacksaw blade
Then grinding the attachment of a dent puller to the shape of the bowls lip and a spray of WD40 I gently persuaded the bowl out without damaging it.
The bowl came out quite easily with the puller and a bit of penitence. A clean up in the blaster should tidy the bowl up.
I then used a light coat of black paint as a guide coat to cover the panel and went over it with a sander to reveal the high and low spots.
If you click on the photo for a better look you can see the beating the panel got from the previous repair and how aggressive they were with the sanding disc. I'd hate to think how much time and money it would take to get a pro to straighten this out so I can see why they just pulled out the worst and layed on the filler.
So with my new bargain priced £170 panel beating kit and panel file I'll be spending some lonely hours trying to get this panel looking better. There will probably have to be a bit of filler put back onto the panel as my panel beating skills are still at grade 1, but hopefully not a van load.
