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(not so) paintless dent repair
A few years ago, a strong wind blew the telephone line off of our house and into the MINI. Parked six inches to the right it would have missed. Six inches to the left and it would have broken the rear window. I suppose I should have been happy it just dented the fender. The dent was in a place that made it a poor candidate for pointless dent repair, but that didn’t stop me from trying. Ultimately I fell back on the wiz – scratch wizard that is. Here’s the journey:
The dent wasn’t huge, but I noticed it each time I opened the hatch. The hook didn’t crack the paint, but it did crack the clear-coat, which will become an issue shortly.
I started by buying a cheap set of PDR tools on Amazon. First tool to try is the external dent puller. This tool pulls the dent from the surface using small glue tips that pull and release.
After several pulls, you can start to see the dent getting smaller. That is, until it just pulls off the clear-coat that was damaged by the falling hook. I was getting the dent to move, but crossed the line into “not-so-paintless” dent repair. I chipped away additional failing clear-coat and pulled a few more times.
I was making progress, but since I was now pulling on the base coat, I thought it best to shift to the inside and try pushing with other PDR tools in the bag.
I made pretty good progress pushing from the inside and hammering from the outside. I probably would have kept up with this approach if the clear-coat wasn’t missing. Another hour and it would be almost undetectable, but since I was going to have to use some filler to try to level the clear, I just switched over to the Scratch Wizard body filler.
After a little bit of filler…
and a little bit of primer…
It was ready for paint.
And clear-coat. All together, there were 5 coats of primer; 4 coats of paint; and 3 coats of clear-coat that I tried to feather into the rear quarter panel. I need to level the paint after it hardens a bit and then seal. Total repair cost: $125. I’m pretty happy with it. Now on to the hatch lid where the clear-coat is failing in large chunks.
I’ve been thinking about covering the hatch lid in vinyl then removing it. If it works like the test area above, it will come off in sheets.
Update: I finally got around to refinishing the hatch. Looks pretty good and a solid color match.
GeorgeCo Garage Tests: Bead Maker
Automotive protective coatings have come a long way since your father’s can of Simoniz. (Which for the record is actually a different word than “Simonize” which is a recognized synonym for the transitive verb “to polish.” Who knew….)
There is an amazing variety of coating and sealants available today with prices ranging from tens to thousands of dollars. A professionally applied ceramic coating is a thing of wonder. But what about the DIYer? I’m going to stay away from the DIY ceramic coating for the moment (too many horror stories about water spots), and take a look at a couple of popular polymer coatings which promise 3-6 months of protection, starting with P&S Bead Maker.
MINI revisits the Dyno
It’s been over seven years since I had John Behe tune the MINI, so I took it back to the Dyno at RPR Performance to see how it’s doing. This car has just bolt-on mods: 15% SC reduction pulley, JCW injectors, cold air intake, and exhaust. We’re currently running MSD wires and coil pack, with Brisk Racing Plugs that are one-step cooler than stock. The intercooler diverter has been modified to try to improve charge cooling. And that’s it.
I’ve had the car dyno’d a few times. When I purchased it in 2011 when it was still stock with 48k miles. After the tune I got when the SC reduction pulley was installed a few months later at about 55k miles, and then in October 2018 just to see how it was holding up now that I’m approaching 100k miles.
The data is interesting for a couple of reasons. There is a drop in HP above 6000 RPM and it starts to run rich until about 6600 RPM then seems to come back to the expected values. Don’t know if there was something funky with this pull, or if perhaps there’s an air leak on high boost.
I plotted the data against previous runs. I had to extrapolate some values since I only had data on 250 RPM intervals, but it’s generally good. The comparison is stock; MTH tune (on my prior MINI); the original tune on this car; and then today. Overall it’s holding up pretty well.
I like to use the MTH comparison for people who are thinking about a canned tune. MTH isn’t around any more, but this was an inexpensive tune you could get over the internet. You just told the tuner the mods you had and they sent you back a tune. Pretty good bank for the buck, but you see the real gains in a custom tune when you look at low end torque.
It’s a little hard to read in the chart, but the orange lines are the most recent dyno results (solid line is HP; dashed line is torque). Yellow is the custom tune. Green is stock and blue is MTH.
During the off-season I’ll go over the engine and look for the leak. (I can hear it at high RPM.) It’s not throwing any codes so it’s either ahead of the MAP sensor, or after the Cat (or both). It’s about time to replace vacuum hoses anyway.
Final event… more rain
Closing out the driving season for me was one final day on Summit Point Main Circuit with PCA Potomac. And it rained. Again. Seven events. Seven washouts.
Shenandoah Circuit, yes, in the rain….
One more BMWCCA DE, one more soggy weekend. All three events this year were wet at some point this year. The Shenandoah circuit is usually a very fun circuit, but I got caught out on the wrong tires. My worn Falkens were no match for the amount of water on the track and became rock hard once the temperature dropped. Still a bad day at the track is better than most days at work.
