Tried a stud welder on a super thin Honda quarter panel yesterday...

Was working on this 2008 Civic with rust bubbling up under the rear window. Normally I'd just replace the whole panel but the customer was on a budget. Thought about doing filler but the dent was too deep. Grabbed my used stud welder I got off craigslist for $80 and went for it. Honestly expected to blow through the metal but it held. Pulled the dent out in like 6 passes. Still had to do a thin layer of filler but way less than I planned. Has anyone else had luck pulling dents on thin gauge Japanese stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

mia_singh241mo ago

My buddy down the street tried the same thing on a 90s Civic hatch he was fixing up for his kid. He got a cheap stud welder off some online marketplace for fifty bucks and figured he'd mess up the panel for sure. First couple pulls he set the heat way too high and almost blew through the metal but he backed it off and it started working real nice. He said the thin Japanese steel just needs way less power than what the instructions say. He pulled out a dent about the size of a baseball in maybe five minutes and only used a tiny skim coat of filler after. That little car is still on the road two years later and the repair looks fine.

taylor821mo ago

Yeah @mia_singh24, that story reminds me how most instructions are just a starting point. It's like recipes - you always have to adjust for your own kitchen or ingredients. Same with cheap tools, you gotta learn how they actually behave instead of trusting the manual. Your buddy figured it out quick though, which is the real skill.