Straightening the Heavily Dented Roof- Eastwood MIG Stud Weld Kit

Pilehouse didn’t live a charmed life, it was used and abused as a farm truck, then sat for many years in the woods. Mother Nature has really left her mark on the truck. From the scratches and scrapes, to HUGE dents and smashed in sections, some would say I’m a masochist for taking on such a project. I’ve always liked a challenge and I thought straightening the roof would be just that.

Some of the dents on the roof were fixed by metal bumping them back into shape with the Eastwood Pro Hammer and Dolly Kit, but other areas weren’t so easy. I found a few pesky dents that were in areas I couldn’t get to, or were simply creased and needed some pulling before I worked them with the hammer and dolly. We recently released a new MIG Stud Welding Kit that was perfect for the job. This kit allows you to turn your MIG welder into a stud welder. I’ve always hated using a traditional stud welder. It’s bulky, heavy, and hard to get a solid weld with. It’s pretty simple, just add the MIG Stud nozzle to the end of the MIG gun and slide a stud into the nozzle. Then just hit the trigger for a couple seconds and I’ve got a firmly attached stud for pulling dents.

Below is the damage I was repairing. It looks like a sharp edge scraped against the roof and really did a number on this spot. After Stripping the paint and surface rust, I had bare metal to weld my studs to.

I began welding studs into the deepest portion of the crease and using the slide hammer to pull the dent out. I like to leave the studs in place until I’ve got the dent roughly pulled out. This way I can come back and give a couple more pulls on the slide hammer if an area didn’t quite pop out like I wanted.

After I got the dent roughed out, I cut off the studs and used a flap disc to take the stud welds back down to the surface. I then like to check the area with the palm of my hand for low spots I missed. This crease came out after only a handful of pulls and you can see below it’s MUCH better. It only took a little more hammer and dolly work to have it ready for a skim coat of filler, then primer. If you have the patience you could eventually metal finish this area perfect and only use primer. This whole project took 30 minutes, so I’d say repairing this crease was a relatively easy job (I wish all repairs were this easy!).