Earlier this Summer, I received a call from the Jaguar restoration shop we work with closely… “Chuck – we had a little fender bender down here… A customer was out on a drive this past weekend and backed into something in their Jag. I know you’re strictly an E-Type shop, but would you do us a favor and take a dent out of an XK-140 fender?”
There’s only one answer to that one – “Sure – bring it up – we’ll take care of it!”
The dent was soft, but deep – but with the thickness of the XK’s skin, we were able to coax this dent out to the point where no filler was needed – have a look!
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- Here is the car this fender (wing) came from – a 1955 Jaguar XK140 MC.
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- The car is very well restored – and maintained, so this little accident was a heartbreaker that the shop and the owner wanted to erase ASAP!
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- This is the RH rear fender of a restored XK140 MC.
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- Here’s another shot of the dent – soft, but set in pretty good – this one doesn’t look like it is just going to pop back into shape.
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- And it didn’t… Here is the backside – we started from here by gently pushing the metal back where it started.
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- Here is a shot of the paint stripped off – we only removed the paint in the immediate area.
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- Here is step 1 – hammering the metal back into the general shape. Most body shops would stop here and use filler, but let’s see how close we can get…
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- Next, we started in with some shrinking – here, you can see some wrinkles that were then worked out as well.
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- Here is the finished product – wetted down with some soapy water.
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- Another shot with soapy water – the overhead lights show that the curves are right.
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- Here’s another one…
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- The completed fender – not absolutely perfect doen to the molecular level, but only block-sanded primer was necessary from here.
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- Dent? What Dent!?!
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- This shot really shows how well this one turned out.
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- Not an E-Type, but an XK140 MC was close – and cool – enough, and we were happy to help!
