93 240sx; DIY difficulty rating - Rear Passenger Side Quarter Panel/Fender

[wannawangan]

The Story

Leaving work one morning, a lady in an SUV backed up into me as I was backing up, leaving a large dent on my rear passenger side quarter panel/fender. Her insurance company agreed to pay for half the total cost of repairs. I received an estimate today for $1094.28 for complete restoration of the damage. So, I expect half of that payable to me and the other half my liability, pending, of course, I decided to have it repaired by the shop.

The Options

With about $500, I was looking to invest in some wide-body or stock sized FRP rear fenders and mount them myself or get some assistance from the NICO network. As far as labor and materials are concerned, what should I anticipate when going the DIY route?

[wannawangan]

Side View 1

Top View

Rear View

Side View 2

Cracked Passenger Side Tail Light
Modified by wannawangan at 12:05 PM 10/18/2005

[zer0c123]

I believe the rear quarter panel is welded on. I had some damage repaired around that same area last year. After the repairs were done I mentioned to the guy that I was planning on pulling a quarter-panel from the junkyard to maybe make the repair work easier and save money.

He replied saying that you don't want to remove the quarter-panel, it's a pain and it least a whole days job. So i'm guessing the difficulty rating is high for replacing or taking it off and repairing it. Also i paid a little over 500 to fix it, so maybe you can find someone that will do the job for around that.

[NISTECH]

All he said. also you would not require quater panel replacement to fix that. But pulling that dent out will take some skill to do it right. The location of the dent and how the metal got bent makes it a difficult task. Look carfully at your car. See where it is slighty caved by you filler door. That means the whole portion of the panel is pushed in or stretched back. Also below and to the outside of your tail light you can see where the panel is creased. The panel basically needs to be stretched up then have the dent worked out of it.

[wannawangan]

Thank you all for the input. Based on what you've both said, seems like the more logical solution would be to have the shop just pull the dent and reshape it. Definitely not something I would want to do myself! I guess I would have to consider biting the bullet and shell out the bucks to have it done professionally!

**David