I have a pretty major dent on my driver side rear quarter panel (pics attached); it was there when I bought it. There is also a much smaller dent on the front fender I'm less worried about. It doesn't affect drivability, just is very ugly. It's a 1994 2 Door 4WD 4.0 L. Body shops don't want to touch it since it's an old vehicle and would be more expensive to do it properly with a new panel than to just buy another XJ. This XJ is one-owner, bone-stock, in very good condition, has minimal rust, and "only" 180k miles, and I could not find another one this nice for less than 5k with prices these days, so it is worth it to keep the car instead of finding a dent-less one. My question is how easy would it be to just bang it out myself? I honestly don't care if it looks mint, just as long as its a little better than it is now. How should I go about that? The dent is big enough I'm not convinced a slide hammer would do much; I would rather get behind the panel and bang it with a mallet. However, I would have to cut somewhere to get behind there; I'm not sure where. I do have access to a welder but have no experience... I'm still brand new to fabrication. Should I just suck up the dent as a reality of owning an old Jeep? Let me know your $0.2.


Rear quarter panel dent

Front fender dent

 

I do not believe it would be worthwhile for anyone other than an experienced bodyman to have a go at that, as it would require a lot of work to make it appear better, would need cutting, fabrication and welding, and probably paint

A rank amateur would possibly make things worse

If it goes well and can be registered, I would stick with it

I do not believe a repair would be "worth it" in resale terms

 

if you can get to it from the back side after removing the interior panels then tap it out gently or have a pdr guy pop it out

 

Yeah, that's a tough one. My dents aren't as bad but I have dents in virtually every body panel. I was talking to a guy at a body shop and he was looking at it and suggested that I just leave it be. Just to repair one quarter panel with a small-ish crease was going to cost about $800. I was going to have 5 figures into making my XJ look good again. And then I would be worried about it getting a scratch. If I had known how banged up mine was I wouldn't have bought it. But that is the chance you take when you buy one sight unseen(other than pictures).

I am glad I decided to not worry about the dents. I did a 6 step paint correction to it getting it as shiny as I could and called it good. I even sanded and painted over a dent in the rocker panel where the paint had cracked. This way it won't rust.

I have my interior plastics out of my Jeep so I can clean the backside of the metal and treat it with a rust preventative and if yours is like mine, you will see there is too much metal on the inside to get a good shot at knocking those dents back out.