Kirkham Motorsports University How To Fix An Aluminum Fender

[David Kirkham]

Originally Posted by Racer_X

Awesome work, David. I admire your patience for working the wrinkles out. It taught me something, I usually go for the deep wrinkles first like the area where it folded back. You showed how to go for the overall shape and gradually bring it all into place. Now the big question I have is, how many actual hours did that operation take? 13 minutes of video time equals what actual time? My guess is 4-6 hours.
Love the use of the office chair also!

Thanks for the kind note. I was fortunate to learn the art from an English gentleman in his twilight years who worked for Rolls Royce before WWII. The hours is difficult to pin down for a few reasons (the repair was about 30 hours total). There was an enormous amount of time planishing all the little dings out before filing. Also, many hours were spent sanding all the little file marks and coarser sanding marks out of the body with successive grits to eliminate any hint of the coarser grits. The customer wanted a really nice job so we spent quite a bit of time blending the brushing into the original body to get everything to look right.

Finally, the damage wasn't confined to the area in the video (I just limited the video to the major damage so the video wouldn't get too long to upload). The trunk gaps were messed up because the fender had been pulled away from the trunk. There was also damage by the jack hooks where the metal tore and had to be welded up. All these things were fixed at the same time and I didn't keep records of exactly how much time the damage in the video took.

David