Learn me: DIY straightening a lumpy panel with multiple small dents

The 1998 Volvo V70 I recently bought has had all the mechanical work done that it needed, so now I'm tackling the cosmetics.

When I bought it the tailgate had a major dent on the left hand side. I was hoping that a solid pop outward would leave it looking good, but now I'm faced with multiple smaller dents so that the panel appears "lumpy."

I don't need it to look perfect but I'd like it to look better than this and possibly learn something along the way. I know the dents near creases will be near-impossible to fix, which is fine, but I'd like to make the large flat area look a bit better.

Prerequisite: I don't want to pay someone else to fix this and I don't want to have to paint it.

Hard to show in photos but here's the best I could do:

This may show the issue a little better:

what would a painless dent guy do ?

That right there is my nightmare.  I can take a single dent, tap it out, shrink the high spots, bondo.... and it looks like I painted it with a melted candy bar.

Have you checked prices on a used tailgate?  That is what I would do, that doesn't mean it's the wisest choice.  I just know that an hour or two of swapping a tailgate is a recipe for a much better result given my awful skills with dent repair.  You might even get lucky and find one that is the same color.

Heat gun and dry ice

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

The car is paint code 427 which is a somewhat rare pearl grey color, and they ain't exactly common in the yards around here. Ultimately I'd rather have it be all one color than go through the trouble of swapping a mismatched tailgate 

The car has 240k miles and is very much a "budget daily driver" type of project; I'm saving the $$$ investments for parts I can swap over to a nicer car in the future, so for the cosmetic fixes I'm trying to be very judicious with my spending...

In reply to captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :

Isn't that typically only effective on large, consistent dents? I'm not sure that would help with this "pock marked" panel.

I have a set of body hammers somewhere so I may just carefully go to town when time allows but wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any tricks before I begin.

can you pull the inside panel so you can get to the back ?

at one time I saw a rubber bag that you inflated between the inner support and the dent , 

slowly filling the bag with air pushed the dent out.......

In reply to pointofdeparture :

Removing dents means finding a place to hide stretched metal.  Yes you can " shrink" metal but that usually means really just hiding the metal under bondo.  
 

I might tackle something like that and maybe achieve an improvement but I'm sure it wouldn't be invisible without a repaint.  
 

I've seen artists  do paintless dent removal on places like that but they are just that, rare artists. 
 

Part of body work is learning when to give up on dents and replace. 

In reply to frenchyd :

Yeah, I hear you. I'm already mentally prepared to settle for "little/no improvement." Just going for SOMETHING better with only a time investment, since I can see the waves in the panel from where I sit and drink my coffee in the morning and it bugs me 

That panel appears to have been repainted in the past. Don't be surprised if you find bondo cracking or coming off in thin chunks when trying to make it straighter.

In reply to NOT A TA :

Out of curiosity, what makes you say that? It's all original as far as I can tell. I've been popping the dents in and out with my thumbs from inside the panel and there's nothing that makes me think there's any filler there.

pointofdeparture said:

In reply to NOT A TA :

Out of curiosity, what makes you say that? It's all original as far as I can tell. I've been popping the dents in and out with my thumbs from inside the panel and there's nothing that makes me think there's any filler there.

If you can pop them out that easily, and they pop back to "dented" status, I don't see how you can "shrink" the metal enough to be much of an improvement without having to do some further paint work. The more you whack, the more it'll stretch and likely get worse. 

edit: the hatch does look kind of orange-peely to me, is that what makes you think re-spray, NOT A TA?

pointofdeparture said:

Just going for SOMETHING better with only a time investment, since I can see the waves in the panel from where I sit and drink my coffee in the morning and it bugs me 

Park the car the other way around. Problem solved.

In reply to pointofdeparture :

So with a heat gun and dry ice, if you start on the outer circumference of the dented panel, it'll want to pop the dents out, pulling from the middle and sometimes you'll get them all to pop out at once. This happened to me on the escort quarter panel, like it was magic. If that happens, when the temperature normalizes, it may want to pull back to the dented position, so continue to apply heat to the previously dented inner portions for a decent amount of time, 15-20 minutes with the heat moving. Then let it cool on its own and it should stay popped out to factory design spec. 

In reply to captdownshift (Forum Supporter) :

Hmmm. There is a place a few miles away that has dry ice. I may just give that a shot to see what happens!

Not sure if this will help or not, but I had a dozen or two oilcans to get rid of on the Molvo build and  the trick was to know where to shringk

What I found was that if you had a dent that boings in and out, you can pop it into place and putting pressure around the perimeter, there is a magic point where the pressure suddenly locks in the metal in the proper orientation. THAT is where I would hit it with the shrink disc.

The paintless dent guys claim to be "shrinking" metal with the little tap tap hammers, but I dont really get how.

Firs rule of dent removal is first in last out. That means that with a dolly pushing suporting the deep part of the dent, you attack the perimeter of the dent with whatever hitting tool you are going to use. Every dent has a "brow" somewhere around the edge of the dent. Try working that?