Car Corner: Fender Replacement

Hi and welcome to car corner my name is Richard Saxton, I'm the coordinator of the automotive programs here at the Community College of Philadelphia. In today's episode, Dan Reid is going to show you how to bang out some dents with some fender repair. If you have any questions about the automotive program, please check us out at the website, thanks for watching and have a great day hi, I'm Dan Reid, with Community College of Philadelphia's automotive technology program, welcome to car corner. Today, we're going to be looking at what's involved in replacing a Fender on a vehicle. Now the term fender bender comes from well getting into a little bit of an accident, and the car I have behind me was definitely involved in a small collision. However, there's a couple different ways to go about repairing collision damage. You might choose to take the car to an insurance company. You might choose to take the car to an independent body shop. You might choose to take the car and just do it yourself. So what we're going to look at today is really what's involved in replacing a damaged fender on a vehicle now body work is a skill that I do not have nor my trained in so there won't be any real painting or anything like that here, but what I'M going to show you are some of the mechanical steps involved and generally what's involved in removing a key body panel from a vehicle. Now, what a lot of people don't really understand is that the car is pretty much a frame and the panels bolt on to the frame things like the roof and the a-pillars, which is the area in front of the windshield and then sometimes. What'S known as the B or C or even D pillars in the rear quarter panel of vehicle, that's like the vehicle frame, that's the actual shell of the entire car and all the other panels, the doors, the hoods, the bumpers, the trunk, everything else bolts to that Frame, so what you can do is, in the event of having to get your car repaired is instead of trying to fix the metal. That'S bent, which never turns out very well, is just replace the bent metal, and a further step you can do is instead of having to get a piece of metal that comes unpainted from the manufacturer, is to actually go out to a recycling yard and try to Find the car that is the same color and year as your car find that matching panel remove your damaged panel and then put the replacement panel back on. The big advantage of that is, there's no trip to a body shop involved and, furthermore, you're guaranteed. Almost a very close match, if not a perfect match to the paint. So first, let's take a look at a couple of the items that we have to work with, and probably the most basic form of touch-up is some real, simple touch-up work. Now one of my favorite tools to just do a very quick touch-up. If you get a very light, scratch on a vehicle is just permanent marker. Permanent marker comes in a whole bunch of different colors, including silver, and it can fill in some. You know very minor imperfections may be a very small pock mark or something like that. It'S not going to protect against rust, but if you don't have any paint handy, it'll it'll do the job. The the other thing is is if you are going to use this. It'S a good idea, maybe to cover it up with some clear nail: polish, that's, okay, we're not looking to repaint the whole car here, we're just looking to touch an area if we have a bigger scratch, we're going to have to use something called primer now, what Primer is: is the base layer on top of the metal? A lot of people think that when you spray-paint metal you just spray paint directly on top of the metal, the problem is, is metal actually is not a good surface for paint to adhere to? So we have to use a primer, and let the primer is, is the primer? Is the base coat that goes on top of the metal once we have our primer laid down after that, we're going to spray it with a top coat and then maybe a secondary top coat and then finally finish it off with a clear coat surface primer in Its basic form is going to make sure that that surface is ready for paint. So if you have a deeper scratch, that's down to the metal surface of the car, you just can't put paint on it. You are going to have to apply a small amount of primer, and then at that point you could actually go over the top of it with the right type of color. Now to figure out what type of color your car is. One of the things that you can do is you can go to a paint catalog at a store, an automotive store and they'll. Tell you what your paint color is for your car based on the year. This is just one company and it has a color and sort of a silver color manufacturer is going to sell you spray paint, as well as small touch-up containers. Once you start getting involved in spray paint, though you're really starting to get into an area where you're not going to get the kind of finish you think you're going to get out of the can spray paint is not how they spray-painted the car, while they spray Painted the car - and they did so in a in the factory - they generally do it with robots. It'S a very clean environment. It'S the right temperature, it's the right humidity and that's how we get that flawless gloss is the fact that the car is basically painted in a laboratory when you go to touch up an area and you're doing it with spray paint, you might be doing it outside. You might be doing it in your garage and, unfortunately, humidity temperature. How close you are to the surface with the spray can they're all going to dictate how well your paint job is going to turn out. If you have to use a spray, can don't expect fantastic results if you're just trying to get something, that's close to the color of the car. It'S probably going to be okay, but I would never pass this off as any type of professional repair. Another type of paint that we can have on a slightly different level is we can have paint from the manufacturer now. This is the same idea as the other spray paint I just showed, except this color is actually from the manufacturer, and the idea is that it's basically the same paint formula that they used when they when they manufactured the car. The nice thing is: is they also package it nicely? It'S got directions, it tells you how to use it, and this one in particular, actually comes along with that clear topcoat and what's important, is, is that the clear topcoat be compatible with your base coat? What can happen is is, if you have one paint from one company and you spray it with the top coat from another. You could actually get an adverse chemical reaction and cause some damage between the surfaces, in which case you're going to have like a crinkly finish. Rather than a nice smooth one, all right next thing we have here is an old standby body. Filler body filler is a polystyrene foam, it's a two-part mix and what it is designed for is to fill an extremely small scratches and very very minor waves, not a a wave in the surface after that. You have to sand this product and you can't use it more than 1/16 of an inch there's limits to what this product can do. I'Ve seen people with large dents on cars and they basically pack this stuff on thinking that it's just going to fix everything, and basically it ends up. Looking terrible and it's pretty obvious that you put on body filler now, body filler is kind of a necessary evil. In the industry, it's hard to work without it, but if you're just replacing a full panel on the car, you shouldn't need any okay. You shouldn't really need any of this. The panel should be fairly straight, as it is all right. Other things that we have other tools that we can have is, I can have different types of sandpaper now, when again, when I get into the actual refinishing of the car I'm going to have to sand it down, sandpaper comes in different grits of different textures and Again, that's beyond my capability, I'm not going to show you how to do that here because, frankly, that's I could never do that in the right way. I pay somebody else to do that. That'S why there's professionals in the body industry you want to school for that and that's what they do, tools that we're going to need, though, when we actually come down to replace our components on the car is obviously I'm going to need a good set of hand Tools but there's a couple tools that I normally don't really use on a car that I'm going to want to have handy one is blue scotch tape. I'M sorry blue masking tape. Now this is what's known as painters tape. It has a very low tack surface and the great thing about this is that you can put this on something and peel it off, and it won't leave a residue. It also has a low tack, so it won't peel any paint off any surfaces, and I like to use this to protect areas. While I'm working on the body of the car taking body panel on and off a car can be sometimes a rough experience and parts are heavy and sharp, and if you accidentally bump into an adjacent panel, there's a good chance that you could actually scratch it by Lining the edges of our surfaces with this tape, it's going to act as a protective buffer that we can just take off when we're done the job and there's there's no problems to the body. Other tools we might need is, I might need a cordless drill. Now the drill, along with some drill bits, are going to be used to primarily remove things like rivets rivets, sometimes still are used in this industry to hold on body panels and components, and the only way to remove a rivet is to actually drill it out. Now, occasionally, you'll find a small piece of trim that you come across it and it doesn't look like it has the head of a screw or anything like that, and that's because it's actually a rivet and the only way to remove them is to drill them out. So I have those tools, handy and ready to go if I need them to pull any rivets out of on this panel or the trim when it comes time to put the rivets back in, you actually need a tool, rivet gun and the rivets that actually go Along with it now, the rivets themselves are inexpensive, they're made of aluminum, and these small rivets go into the rivet gun. When you compress the rivet gun, it basically turns this into a mushroom head, pulls the back through the front and at which point this metal pin, snaps and pops out, and the rivet is now a mushroom shape on both ends and is holding two panels together. Manufacturers love to use ribbons because they're, cheap and they're fast, it's kind of a one-way street. I can put a rivet in very quickly by a robot faster than I can a nut or a bolt they're, also very inexpensive. These ones are made of aluminum, so they don't corrode or rust. So they're great for things like holding trim on a car. Other components I might need might need some special tools here to pry trim carefully off the body of the car trim is the affectionate term for some of the piping around the windows or maybe trim along the side of a door or something like that. I'M going to have to take that off and reuse that possibly and in the process I don't want to damage it reason. Why might be expensive might be hard to come by. So I'm going to be real careful when I use some of these tools and trying to remove some of the trim last thing that we're going to need is we're going to need some type of kit. That'S going to have replacement hardware now hardware on the inside of our of our bodies for the vehicles a lot of times our small plastic clips. Now these plastic clips are supposed to be reusable, but the fact is on this car. That'S over ten years old, the plastic is going to be brittle and these well, they might come apart on a good day if they're, just not feeling up to it, they'll just snap in half and break, and at that point I'm going to have to have some Way to replace it when I go to put the parts back together on the car, so I want to make sure I have a whole nice assortment of these on hand for when we're ready to go so question is, is when I have to go to replace The body panel on my car, how do I know that it's going to be the right color and a lot of times people will say you know what color card II have. I have a red car. I have a blue car. I have a green car. I have a silver car, that's great, that you think it's that color, but the fact is, is the manufacturer actually has some kind of real fancy: sounding nice name: champagne, red burgundy, Forest, Green Lake silver. These are all different colors. That manufacturers come up with words. Make people feel good and they feel if they have a special color, they must have a special car, so car companies named their cars with funny sounding names and special sounding colors. That'S great! If you happen to know what color your car is. However, a lot of people don't and the way that you can find that information and I'll show this here on the on a website. Screenshot from a website in a minute is, if you go to a website, called paint scratch comm now this website, what they do is they sell touch-up paint for your vehicle. So what they're trying to do is they're going to try to make sure that you get the right color to match your car car colors change every year, and even if it's the same model of the car, they may have discontinued a color one year. If it wasn't a good seller, they may have brought out a new color if it was popular that year and on top of that there may actually be more than one color, that's sort of like your car. Another word there could be three different Reds made in one particular year by one manufacturer, so the color code for this car is is is called light silver metallic and they made that color for two years. So I had a very narrow band of which to find parts for this car. I could only find that color. They only made it for two years, so I could find fenders from other years, but none of them were ever going to be the right color. There was a silver color that was out, but it had some blue in it and when you put it next to this finish, it definitely looked like it was a bluish silver rather than an actual straight silver color. That color is actually a code, and now the color code for this car is ly 7w / 5b. That is the actual paint code that the manufacturer uses when the car goes down. The assembly line the computer doesn't say: oh, that car is light silver metallic. It goes by that paint code now that paint code is somewhere on the vehicle. It'S stamped on the body, it's on a sticker somewhere and it's different for every car. So here what we have is for every manufacturer they're going to put that paint code somewhere on the vehicle, there's going to be a panel somewhere or a sticker or decal, and this right here are just some examples of where the paint code can be located for Various vehicles - there's no rule that says it has to be in the same spot on every car, and when you do find the paint code you still have to decode. It there's a lot of other words and you know codes that go along with it and every manufacturers getting different. So when you find the paint code for your car, then at that point you can start your search and you can make sure that when you get a panel for your car it matches. So the panel that I got for the spender behind me, that's damaged, is actually pretty much a direct match. This fender came off a car from the same year and it's the same exact paint code, the fenders not damaged. I got this from a recycler for around $ 100. Now I did take this car at one point to a body shop to see how much it would cost to get fixed, and I was quoted well over $ 1000. You do the math. I can either do the work for $ 100 myself and I get a panel. That'S definitely going to match or I can pay somebody over $ 1,000 and I might not be happy with the end result, not to mention the fact that I'm going to come up. Probably away with the higher insurance premium, I think I'll just fix this on my own for a hundred bucks and we'll just show you how to do it here. Alright, so let's get started and we'll start fixing our big dent. So the first thing we're going to start with is we are going to have to remove this headlight, and this headlight actually comes out as one piece now. The manufacturer has made it fairly easy to remove the headlight because it's actually has to be removed in order to replace some of the bulbs on the car. So it's really just held in place by three bolts. Now one of the things that I'm going to have to do when I put this car all back together - and I put this headlight back in as I'm going to have to realign this headlight because it is attached to the the radiator frame of the vehicle here. So I'm going to have to once it gets dark yet actually pull up against a wall and kind of realign my headlights and make sure that they're lined up right. So let's get started. The other thing that's important, too, is that when you start doing bodywork you're going to wind up with a lot of little intricate pieces of hardware and it's very important to make sure that you keep track of the hardware because well some of them may look like It goes back in a specific position. It may actually not and that's because since the body is made out of different component materials on the vehicle, they might actually be plated in a certain way, so they prevent rust or corrosion. So just keep track of what you pull out and where it goes, and I should be able to pull my headlight out at this point without any difficulty. I'M going to have to undo the electrical connections see here, use a small screwdriver. Definitely don't want to drop anything, don't want to cause more damage than is always happen to the vehicle, see that guy is really putting up a fight see here. I can actually do this. It doesn't give me much room, that's how I get to the bulb. Try to see there we go and it's off alright you're, going to put this somewhere safe. At this point. I definitely don't want this to get damaged. This unit from the manufacturer is about 400 bucks. Put that up there and now we can see a little bit more of what's going on here. It'S interesting that when cars are manufactured, you look at the car as a whole and you think it's extremely complicated and must have taken forever to put together. But you have to remember that they're also made for not only speed of assembly about speed of disassembly, so the next thing I'm going to do at this point is I'm going to take off this trim that is attached to my fender in this cable right here. This is actually the hood release cable and that when you pop the hood release inside the vehicle, this bicycle cable comes around to the front. That'S not going to come off! That'S going to stay on the car! Well that just out of the way! So now I have the fender pretty much exposed across the entire top section. Here I can see that I have three bolts and I verified that as well, because by looking at the replacement fender, I can see that there's really only three holes for me to have this attached across the top. At this point, I'm going to take those three bolts out and then I can take the bumper off got a little bit pork. So after I'm done taking off the top here, what I'm going to have to do next is I'm going to have to remove this front bumper cover and the reason? Why is because this vendor welds bolted across the top? It'S actually bolted down here on the bottom? Its bolted across the back as well, so I'm going to pick this up and then we're going to take the bumper cover off now that we've got our headlight out. I'Ve got my bolts across the top out. What I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the bumper off or at least loose from the vehicle, and the reason why I have to do that is because there's some bolts behind here that actually hold the nose of the fender on down to the further Body frame clip of the front of the car, so let me get started and do that now. It'S interesting to note that a lot of these panels and things that you see on the front of a car they actually just pull right out most of the time. They'Re not held on by screws or clips, or anything like that, they're just held in place by by friction, and if you pull hard enough and you put a screwdriver in the right spot, they pop out so there's one side and up underneath here. There is a allen bolt now this allen bolt attaches to a strut and that strut is actually the bumper that is a shock absorber. That'S attached to this radiator support, so I have to loosen that and now I'm going to go do the same. On the other side, cars 11 years old, and what I found is that one of those bumper bolts is really really seized on there. What I think I can do is because I have the driver side loose, which is the fender I'm replacing is. I think I can just pull the fender forward enough kind of move it out of the way that I can get to the bolts that I need to get to without a lot of work. And if I have to not disconnect everything to take the bumper off, then in that case I'll just leave it connected and save myself some time. So if I pull this forward, do these clips, I can pop this off and just slide this forward and actually just push this out of the way a little bit and I'm just going to let this sit here and at this point, what I can do is Get to these bolts that hold this bracket on and I think the next thing I'm going to do is take off the wheel on the inner fender liner. So before we take this fender off and take the inner liner out of the fender, I'm going to have to take the wheel and tire off. One thing I want to show is that the what's essentially the lug nuts on this vehicle, you'll notice that it looks like they take an allen key fitting you really don't. These are actually just covers over top of the factory lug bolts or wheel, bolts for this vehicle and there's actually a little special tool that you're supposed to use to to remove these things. It'S just a hook that goes inside and you just pull them and they pop off like that, and then that's my actual wheel, bolt that I'm going to take off and I'll take the wheel off. So now that I've got a lot more room in here to work, I can start working on all the little screws and fasteners that hold this fender liner on the inside. Now the fender liners job is to pretty much just act as a weatherproof shield. So that way, you don't get dirt and debris from the road surface, packed in all the little nooks and crannies here on the body. If you drive without one of these things on the vehicle, there's a good chance that you're going to wind up with some corrosion issues and also later in seasons where there's a snow slush and ice you'll actually get that packed up on the inside here. And it could actually lead to steering suspension concerns, as well as some weight transfer issues and things like that, because you get all the snow jammed and where it doesn't belong so and start taking this guy apart again, try to keep track of the hardware as you Do this job, there are a lot of little screws that hold these things in all right, and the reason why I really want to take this out is because, once I get this panel out, there's actually bolts on the up on the inside here that I have To get to that actually hold the fender right here to the what essentially is the door jamb of the vehicle so once they get this out, I can I can get in there got just about everybody out here sure nothing is hiding, and this guy's a little Bit stuck and the reason why is because, since this outer surface of the fender is pushed in so badly from the accident, it sort of sort of pushed in actually sort of it's a it's pinching this panel from the on the inside, so I might have to Kind of fight this out there we go a lot, a lot of dirt falling down, so I have the safety glasses on there. We go that is our inner fender liner, throw that over there and now we can actually see kind of you know some of the body structure of the vehicle now, in the event of an accident, a serious accident, this structure down here this free member. All of that would have to be absolutely straightened by a professional or in some cases when the damage is that severe? That'S what leads to totaling of the car at that point if the actual support structure underneath is damaged so badly or can't be pulled back into shape. That'S again, that's one of the things that leads to a vehicle being totaled smaller damage on the outside, like this is relatively inexpensive. It generally doesn't total the vehicle unless the total value of that vehicle is really low. So we keep going and I'm going to get the this bumper bracket off and then I can undo these bolts here in the front and I'm going to have to put this bumper bracket on the new fender. So I want to make sure I don't break any of these clips and I don't lose any of the hardware when I have to transfer these parts over alright that bumper bracket had to come off some dirt stuck behind it, because there's bolts behind here that I Now have to remove to remove the front half of the fender if you notice the fender still bolted still attached at this part down here on the body of the vehicle. So I think at this point I can go get those out and it's got a front right there and looks like I have one more bolt back here. That'S going to be a little little tight for me to get so I'm just going to have to use a ratchet alright, so the front of our fender is now disconnected. So what I have to do now is go on the inside here, where my fender liner was and there's two bolts on the inside and then also the side marker light I have to disconnect. I have to disconnect it because it is electrically connected to the turn signal system of the car. Then I have to transfer that over to my new fender as well. Alright, alright one more bolt on the inside all right all right at this point. What I'm going to do is I'm going to open the door, there's one small screw up on the inside and we have to take care of that right now. This peace missions canister got to put it back, but it had to get out of the way because I couldn't get to that one bolt all right, and that is still not quite it. They put a lot of hardware on a fender, because it's a three-dimensional object. You have to basically bolt it down at every possible spots that way it doesn't flex and warp. So I'm going to go down here and get these last two bolts and then it should finally come off. Let'S see here, the manufacturer has put on a rubberized undercoating here to protect these exposed fasteners from the weather. When I go to put this back together, I'm going to have to recover them as well. So now at this point should be able to pull. This off looks like I'm going to have to break some undercoating seal down here at the bottom, but that's okay, and there comes our fender. Let'S go transfer over the old parts and put them on the new fender and they get that put back on so now through the magic television got. My replacement fender here factory color factory, finished same year same paint coat, and I transferred over the couple little plastic pieces that I had to in order to put this on. So now comes the hard part which is actually putting this fender back on, which takes quite a bit of time a lot of massage work, moving it around making it fit. So, let's get started right now. One important trick I can do is I can try to use, what's known as witness marks, which is the paint marks of where the old hardware was bolted together before this is a three-dimensional panel, and that means I have an X Y and a z-axis when it Comes to actually mounting it on the vehicle, I also have to make sure that all of the panel gaps line up properly when I go to reassemble this, so take your time. Don'T tighten anything down right away, leave things a little bit loose because you're going to have to do some test fitting to make sure that things like the door can close. The hood can close and nothing is going to get damaged. You - and I just can't stress how important it is at this point to just take your time and be patient. What I'm going to do at this point is I'm going to slowly close the door and see how it lines up against this panel and make sure there's no rubbing. It looks like it's going to rub a little bit down here at the bottom so before I close this all the way and have to kind of push this in a little bit because right now it doesn't doesn't quite fit there. So I'm going to have to get these bolts in at the top and get that bolt on the inside of the door as well pretty good gap and right now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to slowly close the hood and make sure I Don'T pinch this area with this section of the hood and looks like we're going to be okay in that department, and so at this point I can pick it back up and start to assemble the inner components all right and now. At this point I can put my fender liner back in alright, so now that I've got this panel fairly well squared up, I still really have to check this top gap, I'm going to check it for height and I'm also going to check it for width now, When I do that, what I'm going to have to do is again slowly close, the hood. Take a look at the width of the gap, match it to the other side and try to get it even and right. Here it looks like there's a pretty significant gap compared to what I have here on the other side, and so what I'm going to do is going to pop the hood and move this fender in just just a little bit. This way to try to close that gap up, let's take a look again and that it definitely looks a lot better. Alright, let's keep going so now that that top section squared away my fender liner is in I'm finally ready to put my bumper back on and then after that, we'll do the headlight all right. Let'S get the headlight put back in and let's get the bumper bolts back up. All right looks like the bumpers. Lined up pretty well head lay lines up at the fender closes with my door lines up with the hood looks like I'm about ready to just button. This up put the wheel back on and I'll be good to go. I'M Dan Reid thanks for watching car corner no one's and all that and I'm sweating you talking to me what you talking to me watch talking to me. You