Another update. I finally got the $497 fender from Tesla. Prior to the $300 paint job I had a local guy quote me (was going to spray the fender by itself and match to paint as best as possible), I wanted to take some bits apart to be sure I could do it and not run into issues. After looking at exactly how the backing layer of metal is on the OEM fender I decided to take a stab at actually correcting it. Given my intention to replace the fender anyway I figured no issue if I wreck it.
Here is a close up of the area with the second layer of metal that the original guy who came out felt he could not properly work with:
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So anyway, I raised the car up a bit, put a 2X4 on the tire to brace against, and took a standard crowbar to the back of the dent, pushing against the second layer (not the outside sheet metal), hoping that the second layer of metal would somewhat dull the sharp edges of the crowbar. It did not; with some high points very noticeable. Then I switched over to using a 1/4" thick piece of plywood, which worked pretty well to avoid the high points from the crowbar. Within a couple of hours of messing about it looked like this:
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I was tentatively optimistic at this point that maybe it wasn't quite as hard as I'd been led to believe, but despite adding more leverage and force I could not get any more dent to pull out. That's when I hit youtube up more and found this video:
This was my exact issue, although much smaller in scope. But the problem is I couldn't get behind the dent properly so I removed the wheel, then removed the plastic liner completely (very easy to do with wheel gone), and busted out the grinder:
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After a few minutes with the grinder I realized a dremel with a cut off wheel was more appropriate, so I finished up with that, but compared to the OEM, here was what I cut off. Notice I was also lucky in that the second metal layer is not glued everywhere, but just in key points--and none of those key points where covering my dent.
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At this point I felt that the dent was accessible enough that any PDR person could do it. I mean why not at this point? Unfortunately of the 4-5 PDR people I contacted only two got back to me: the guy who wanted $400 but upon seeing it said he couldn't do it, and the guy who wanted $2600 and a week.
I've never fixed a dent in my life, but Harbor Freight for $50 has a "fender hammer and dollies" kit, so I picked it up Sunday morning.
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Start hammering:
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After a while (notice reduction on the right side in the dimples)
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At this point I think holy crap maybe I can actually get this done...
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Well after 2-3 hours of playing around, taking some breaks:
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The crease in the fender has in the above pic what looks like paint damage but actually it's just light reflection due to imperfection in the angles.
And here it is outside after some very sparing application of tesla's official touch up paint:
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