[landarts]

The rear passenger tail light housing was pretty bad and I had planned on cutting it out and replacing with a section from a donor bed panel I have. I went over to the storage lot where I have some of the bigger items along with a few of the project trucks and loaded up a passenger bedside that I had planned as a donor when I bought it. Brought it back to my home garage and got it mounted and secured onto a couple of saw horses so I could plan the dissection. I was just about ready to start cutting on it when my brother called and asked why don't I try to fix it first and if that did not work out then cut it off and replace. So over dinner I started thinking of the repair in a different way, how to attempt the repair and get a good results. I put together a plan in steps and if I could not get past a step with satisfaction I would go back into the garage and start cutting.

First I planned on how to get the inner piece of the house bent back out close to the location where it would be usable. The solution I came up with was two fold. Drill a few holes so I could stick a small Phillips screw driver in the holes and pry back to get it going in the right direction. Then I took a piece of bar stock I had on hand and cut a small cut in it so I could slid the cut into the metal and pry back. Both of these ideas seemed to get me closer to working the other are that was caved in. started using different pieces of wood, long metal rods and a few metal long bolts I have used to pound out odd shapes with. Hammered on it and while with everything I could get into the area then brought out the stud gun and started to try and weld a few studs on and could not get them hold for any pulls. I cleaned the area again with a grinder and wiped it down, still no luck. Thought maybe something was wrong with the stud gun so I grabbed a few boxes of nails I had and fired up the mig welder and created a porcupine looking piece of art. Anyways the nails worked out great and started pulling with the Steck stud lever again and hammering the highs.