Straightening out a hood

Navajo350

Member
What would be the best way to straighten out sheet metal? I have an unstyled A hood with the original stenciling. I don't want to wreck the lettering. The hood was shaped to the contour of the radiator. I would just like to straighten that out and also fix the riveted mounts...

Thanks for the help!

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Check you tube videos. I use a regular hammer and whatever piece of metal that I have on hand to use as a dolly. I made a few pieces of metal into the shape required to straighten my grills on my 400s.
SDE
 
(quoted from post at 19:54:50 05/31/15) It might be easier to give some tips if you would post some pictures. It's difficult to guess how bad the damage is.
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Again, I would like to straighten the front so it hangs over straight down like. Theres a dimple under the lettering in the horizontal contour, and pretty much all riveted mount need attention. I took a picture one of the bad ones on the back right side of the hood.

I have an extra set of 18 spoke wheels that came extra for the tractor and would like to eventually put them on. I don't know how this happened, but 1 spoke is bent. Any ideas. I don't want to put it on until it's fixed, but as is, would this wheel spin straight?
 
Are you sure you don't want to repaint it? The amount of rust on it will eventually rust out or at least get pitted. Stenciling doesn't have to be that difficult. I did the stenciling on this tractor by making the stencil with common computer paper and putting the stencil on the tractor with spray adhesive. You could use tracing paper to aid making the stencil and use an exacto knife to cut it out.

Anyway if you want to leave it like it is and not damage the stenciling I would lay the hood on some clean soft wood and gently hammer the dents out from the inside. When hammering it's easy to do too hard and have it dented out from the inside so it's better to be patient and hammer a lot rather than hard.
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Spoke probably got bent by installing those 150 pound weights that were available and tightenening the j-bolts too tight that hold them on.Nice original hood. Get some Fluid Film and spray the hood with that to preserve it.Might want to sand the very top with 400 grit sandpaper 1st.
 
(quoted from post at 13:56:25 06/01/15) Spoke probably got bent by installing those 150 pound weights that were available and tightenening the j-bolts too tight that hold them on.Nice original hood. Get some Fluid Film and spray the hood with that to preserve it.Might want to sand the very top with 400 grit sandpaper 1st.

Interesting about the wheel weights. I just noticed more slightly bent spokes on the other wheel. Hopefully that won't be too hard to straighten them.

Thanks for the tip about the hood. I will look into doing that. I hope I can straighten the hood and fix the hood mounts without damaging it much.
 
It looks like it is bent just to the left of the J in John Deere. Do some searching on "Hammer Off Dolly" method of auto body dent repair. I piece of pipe about a foot long that matches the curve of the hood edge will make a good dolly. For the hammer you can try a hard plastic hammer with a nice new straight face. Don't swing hard just steady short blows that keep the hammer face square to the hood. A piece of heavy angle iron will work as a dolly to straighten the bottom edge. The key is the dolly needs to be heavier than the hammer to put the energy of the hammer blows into the sheet metal.
 
(quoted from post at 17:06:21 06/02/15) It looks like it is bent just to the left of the J in John Deere. Do some searching on "Hammer Off Dolly" method of auto body dent repair. I piece of pipe about a foot long that matches the curve of the hood edge will make a good dolly. For the hammer you can try a hard plastic hammer with a nice new straight face. Don't swing hard just steady short blows that keep the hammer face square to the hood. A piece of heavy angle iron will work as a dolly to straighten the bottom edge. The key is the dolly needs to be heavier than the hammer to put the energy of the hammer blows into the sheet metal.

I will definitely try all that, thanks.
 
(quoted from post at 17:06:21 06/02/15) It looks like it is bent just to the left of the J in John Deere. Do some searching on "Hammer Off Dolly" method of auto body dent repair. I piece of pipe about a foot long that matches the curve of the hood edge will make a good dolly. For the hammer you can try a hard plastic hammer with a nice new straight face. Don't swing hard just steady short blows that keep the hammer face square to the hood. A piece of heavy angle iron will work as a dolly to straighten the bottom edge. The key is the dolly needs to be heavier than the hammer to put the energy of the hammer blows into the sheet metal.

I will definitely try all that, thanks.
 
(quoted from post at 17:06:21 06/02/15) It looks like it is bent just to the left of the J in John Deere. Do some searching on "Hammer Off Dolly" method of auto body dent repair. I piece of pipe about a foot long that matches the curve of the hood edge will make a good dolly. For the hammer you can try a hard plastic hammer with a nice new straight face. Don't swing hard just steady short blows that keep the hammer face square to the hood. A piece of heavy angle iron will work as a dolly to straighten the bottom edge. The key is the dolly needs to be heavier than the hammer to put the energy of the hammer blows into the sheet metal.

I will definitely try all that, thanks.
 
(quoted from post at 18:03:10 06/02/15)
(quoted from post at 17:06:21 06/02/15) It looks like it is bent just to the left of the J in John Deere. Do some searching on "Hammer Off Dolly" method of auto body dent repair. I piece of pipe about a foot long that matches the curve of the hood edge will make a good dolly. For the hammer you can try a hard plastic hammer with a nice new straight face. Don't swing hard just steady short blows that keep the hammer face square to the hood. A piece of heavy angle iron will work as a dolly to straighten the bottom edge. The key is the dolly needs to be heavier than the hammer to put the energy of the hammer blows into the sheet metal.

I will definitely try all that, thanks.

Will I need to apply heat to fix all the minor dents to straighten the hood after the hammer off dolly technique?
 
You will end up burning off the paint if you apply heat. Heating is used to shrink the metal. You can search "heat shrinking" to get an idea. Basically you get it real hot and quick cool it with water. The metal contracts or shrinks a little bit.
 
(quoted from post at 17:34:24 06/03/15) You will end up burning off the paint if you apply heat. Heating is used to shrink the metal. You can search "heat shrinking" to get an idea. Basically you get it real hot and quick cool it with water. The metal contracts or shrinks a little bit.

I was going to apply the heat from inside the hood; a little at a time.
 
For the heat to have any effect it will be hot enough to burn the paint of both sides and a few inches in all directions around it. Light heating that won't burn the paint won't be hot enough to move the metal.
 

I can see that dolly and hammer body work takes a lot of skill. Mainly because hitting the metal stretches it, and soon you have to get into the trial tricky part of shrinking it. I am doing major body work on an old car, and since I have none of those shrinking skills I have done very little bumping. I needed to make a flange for one panel to fit over another. I sought a flanging tool,but I couldn't find one that would do what I needed so I made one out of a pair of vise grips. This tool forms or reforms metal by squeezing so there is less thinning and stretching than when hitting with a hammer. It appears that your main challenge is the little Channel that runs along the bottom. I think that you could cut pieces of steel and weld them into the jaws of a pair of vise grips and make a tool to squeeze the Channe back into shape, like I did the flange. my flanging tool worked very well until I got to where it had to curve. Then I just took my grinder and rounded the two sides of the jaws of my new tool and then the flanger went around the bend slick as can be.
 

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