Bent Arch Repair

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Calling out to all body gurus out there, bought a BMW with accident damage and would like to attempt to straighten it myself.

 

The culprit:

 

Double skinned obvoiusly with absolutely no access from behind.

 

Any suggestions on how to tackle it without cutting anything? The least invasive I can think of for now is welding some screws to it and using a slide hammer.

[nick205 12 5 Cars]

From the look of it, the lower C pillar/wheel arch is deformed quite badly. The metal will be stretched so will be very difficult if not impossible to straighten as you have more metal than you need. To my mind it needs cutting out and a repair section letting in. Are you sure there's no deformation/damage to the inner structure?

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

I've straightened the inside part and it turned out quite nice, need to do the outside now.

[deathbringer929 49 1 Cars]

you could try brazing a plate on and using a slide hammer with clamp. the braze will grind off with a scotchbrite pad and as its a different colour you should be able to remove without thinning the panel.

[dobboy 231 2 Cars]

A decent PDR man could get it somewhere close to where it should be. He'd probably use glue sticks and little suction puller things amongst other tricks.

[harryskid 193]

Some thing along these lines should do the job, even mig welding and cutting the wire might work!

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

Tried welding some pulling pins but pulled to hard on them and they broke off leaving holes. Filled the holes, ground off, and left it like that. I'll just look for a replacement arch, some of those creases don't look like they'll return to normal

[deathbringer929 49 1 Cars]

cut that section off and re-shape it off the car ready to weld back on. this costs nothing to have a go.

[unariciflocos 49 1 Cars]

I'll search for that section in scrappies, don't want to mess about with a lot of filler, but that's a good idea I hadn't thought of. Might resort to that if all else fails.