SILL REPAIR
1 ◂ The first job is to use a long bar and manually push-out the damage as much as possible. The metal is quite badly stretched and the shape of the sill means it is pretty rigid. However, an hour of this treatment gets the rear sill back into about the right shape.
2 ▶ Here, Duncan is putting pressure on the sill with a long bar whilst clouting the crease with a rubber mallet to get the overall shape of the sill closer to how it should be. This doesn’t take too long and thankfully the sill is deemed to be repairable with more work. 3◂ Next, a panel beating hammer and dolly is used to restore the basic shape of the wheelarch flange. Getting the curvature here right means we can then restore the shape of the inner arch tub and sill closing panel. We wonder what on earth did all this damage?
4 ▶ The rear outer sill is pretty much as it should be. This photo shows how far it was buckled inwards and the red line shows the gap between the outer sill and the crushed inner arch tub/sill closing panel. The seam has been popped and it is panel glued, not welded. 5◂ An hour or so later and Duncan had done an amazing job of reshaping the sill closing panel to match the sill. Using panel glue was impossible so a couple of welds followed by a bead of seam sealer will complete this very tricky part of the repair.
6 ▶ Holding a straight strip of steel up to the dented sill showed us just how bent it was – it was a good 40mm out of shape towards the front of the DS3. There is also nowhere to insert a suitable bar to bend it out again and start the transformation back to the correct shape. 7◂ So, it will have to be pulled downwards using a slide hammer and pins. But first, the sill will need to be stripped back to bare metal because the pins are welded to the sill. The paint and underseal is very thick and takes a lot of work to remove with air tools.
8 ▶ Here, the dent pulling pins have been welded to the sill using the electric gun – we’ll be using it again later. The slide hammer is then located onto each pin and yanked good and hard one by one in order, back and forth to gradually pull the dent out.
9 The sill needed two goes with the pin puller in two different places but eventually we got there. We only noticed later that there should be a black plastic trim strip and it’s been ripped off. The sill will be primed, painted in stoneguard and top-coated next month. 10◂ Before the final metal repairs to the rear sill can take place, the paint needs to come off. To do this, a proper air fed DA (dual action) sander is used with a dry 80-grit disc. This removed the paint and any undercoat quickly – it shows up damage better as well.
11◂ Because we cannot get to the back of the sill, we need to use the pin puller to bring the dents out as close as possible. High spots are tapped inwards whilst this is being done. A proper panel beating hammer must be used to avoid creating more dents.
12▶ Once pulled as much as possible, the pins are ground-off and cleaned-up prior to a light skim of plastic filler. OK, it’s not the sill but there are other dents further up in the wing resulting from the sill impact and these need to be bare metalled and pulled out. 13◂ Here, the repaired back wing and sill have been given the first skim of filler and being sanded back – it will take about three goes to get the shape right as it has some quite complex curves – being a black car there is no room for error and needs to be right.
14 ▶ The front sill is also given a skim of filler to get the shape right, although there is a coating of textured ‘stonechip’ to go on as well as that plastic lower sill trim. We will need to find a suitable used replacement as a new one from Citroën is an obscene £125!