The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Any tricks to removing this dent?

It doesn’t have to be perfect, just enough to spray the primered surface with original color so my patina truck looks a little better. Others dings I can work with but this one in the tail gate has me baffled.

I did a similar one by drilling s 1/4" hole in the opposite face of the tailgate and put a punch through from that side to pound it out. When I was done, I welded the hole shut.

Wasn't perfect, but looked a lot better than when I started.

Jason's fix is one approach to that tough dent.

Another is to remove one end piece from the tailgate to be able to insert an anvil (or dolly in the body shop vernacular) inside the top roll and work the dent out. I had a bed rail that was flattened and used a large ball bearing that I welded to an adapter screwed onto a slide hammer. My dent wasn't as deep as yours. Here's some pics of that approach. You'd then need to plug weld the end piece back on. Either way, it'll be a lot of work.

The 16 gauge metal will be pretty hard to pull out with weld studs and slide hammer, but it might eventually work.

I used Kevin's method.

With the ends off, a piece of iron pipe (borrowed from a bar clamp) was inserted inside and used as a dolly. Yes, it was a big job. A repro tailgate would have been an easier solution for us.

What am I missing here? How do you work the dent out with a dolly when you don't have access to the back of it?

The dolly (in my case the ball bearing) goes under the deepest part of the dent and you hammer around it on the high spots. It definitely takes a while, but the dent will come out eventually.

Weld on studd puller

So far I like Jason’s suggestion. If it fails I can still go more invasive. If needed, where would I easily find a bearing that diameter?

I found that bearing on either Amazon or eBay. Don't recall exactly, as it's been a few years ago.

Tough problems like that I take a high speed grinder with cut off blade, cut it out and and put in a new piece or straighten the old and weld it back in. But that’s me.

Cutting and welding is another option.