Service manual

Chery S18D Service Manual

4. Dents or wrinkles: Dents develop because the door panel is subjected to bumping or pressing,

leading to elastic or plastic deformations.

5. Bends or twists: They are mainly caused by too much load the door panel receives in use or the

plastic deformation due to bumps.

4. Basic Methods for Door Panel Maintenance

The basic maintenance methods for the above door panel damage types include dent reconditioning,

flame correction, welding, repairing and mending, wrinkle spreading and so on.

4.1. Reconditioning of Dents

For convex-concave damages in the outside door panels, if they are indirectly caused by structural

pieces or reinforcers, the structural pieces should be corrected first, and then the outside panel breaks

or dents are to be corrected. If the backs of the metal panels are accessible, hand hammers and

underlay irons or spoon-shaped irons, tommy bars, flat punches and so on can be used for primary

repairs. For enclosed metal panels or parts that are difficult to access from the backs, other tools can

be used for repairing, such as slide hammers and pointed hammers.

Here are some common ways of dent reconditioning:

(1) Repair the dents with underlay irons and hand hammers: the commonest practice is to beat the

damaged metal panels with underlay irons and hand hammers. Both sides of the metal panel to be

repaired must be accessible to the hand-held underlay iron and there are two ways of using the

underlay iron as the supporting piece for the hand hammer:

① Beat with a hammer from above the underlay rion. This approach is suitable for correcting

smaller and shallower dent or breaks.

When beating with a hammer from above the underlay rion, the hand-held underlay iron

should be placed against the back of the metal panels, and then beat the convex part. The

beating of hand hammer can make the metal panel contract and finally smooth the metal

panel.